Bill McKibben Supports Carbon Tax

Support for a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions seems to be growing. First it was Al Gore last month at a speech in New York City and now writer Bill McKibben in an article called How Close to Catastrophe? that will be published next month in the New York Review of Books, but which is available for reading now because the New York Review of Books allowed it to be posted on TomDispatch.com. McKibben articulates the danger posed by global warming in very scary terms when he says “But very few understand with any real depth that a wave large enough to break civilization is forming, and that the only real question is whether we can do anything at all to weaken its force.” McKibben’s reason for advocating a carbon tax is as follows: “Almost every idea that might bring us a better future would be made much easier if the cost of fossil fuel was higher -- if there was some kind of tax on carbon emissions that made the price of coal and oil and gas reflect its true environmental cost.”