Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Harvard Professor and Guardian author Kenneth Rogoff thinks the best way to tackle climate change is to impose a global carbon tax, then use the money to help China and other poor countries eliminate their energy poverty and dependency on coal.
We must tackle global energy inequality before it’s too late
There should be a worldwide tax on emissions backed by help for developing countries to cut CO2
While denizens of the world’s wealthiest economies debate the fate and fortune of the middle class, more than 800 million people worldwide have no access to electricity. And more than 2 billion have no clean cooking facilities, forcing them to use toxic alternatives such as animal waste as their main cooking fuel. Furthermore, per capita carbon dioxide emissions in Europe and the US are still vastly higher than in China and India. What right do Americans, in particular, have to complain as China increases production in smokestack industries to counter the economic slowdown caused by its trade war with the US? To many in Asia, the inward-looking debate in the west often seems both tone deaf and beside the point.
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Any solution to the problem requires two interconnected parts. The first and more important is a global tax on CO2 emissions, which would discourage activities that exacerbate global warming and encourage innovation. Equating the price of CO2 emissions globally would eliminate distortions whereby, say, a US-based firm might choose to relocate its most carbon-intensive production to China. Moreover, a worldwide carbon tax would achieve in one fell swoop what myriad command-and-control measures cannot easily replicate.
The second critical component is a mechanism that impels emerging and less-developed economies to buy in to emissions reduction, which can be very costly in terms of forgone growth. In recent years, the biggest contributor to the global increase in CO2 emissions has been fast-growing Asia, where roughly one new coal plant is being built every week. For advanced economies, where the average coal plant is 45 years old, phasing out such facilities is low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing CO2 emissions. But in Asia, where the average age of coal plants is only 12 years, the cost of taxing plants into oblivion makes doing so virtually impossible without outside aid.
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Kenneth Rogoff is professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University. He was the chief economist of the IMF from 2001 to 2003.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/06/global-energy-inequality-tax-emissions-co2
The author, Professor Kenneth Rogoff, is a person of influence; as a former senior figure in the IMF, and as a senior economics professor at one of the USA’s most prestigious universities, his economic theories are helping to shape global policy and the economic ideas of America’s next generation of leaders.
F China . . .
JPP
@ur momisugly Kenneth Rogoff,
It’s not Carbon Monoxide we are talking about here. It’s Carbon Dioxide – which is good for the planet – Kenneth Rogoff tell me where I am wrong Professor. Are you looking at the facts ???
…..and democracies must surrender to the wisdom of tyranny needed to save us all.
Progressives must have all of the power and money so the planet will survive.
Small price to pay?
Oh, I’m probably 100 years late in this comment, but to the Good Professor:
• Who collects the tax?
• Who decides how to reallocate it?
• How much “collection graft” will be tolerated?
• How much “distribution graft” will be tolerated?
To me, this seems the problem.
After all, as several posters here have cited, by 2030, China … all by herself … will be emitting 50% of all CO₂ on the planet. One advanced, progressing country, with faux-aggrandized systemic poverty to remain a Third World country, will be emitting 50% or more of all CO₂.
AND TO THE POINT, not 50% of today’s CO₂!!!
But 50% of the CO₂, which will have grown by over 50% from today by 2030.
WOW.
Just wow.
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So what I see is a China that nominally “buys into the CO₂ world tax”; she, ostensibly being the largest CO₂ cracker, will fight tooth-and-nail to KEEP ALL of the CO₂ tax raised. And it’ll not go to much of anything CO₂ mitigating. It’ll get wrangled into collection-graft, general-fund black-box accounting redistribution, and distribution graft. Plenty of it.
Moreover, as a perpetual Third World country, she’ll be endlessly whining about NOT GETTING ENOUGH of the rest of the world’s contribution, considering she, nearly alone (and ironically, as we’ve allowed her to, by our lack-of-chagrin) making all the goods for the rest of the world. So, she should get more!
Oh, the humanity.
Uh.
Mmmm…
NOT!
I’m quite a practical old goat, and I say definitely not. Not a chance. China’s fabric of geopolitical economics is woven from cheating, graft, human rights abuse, pollution-without-control, and basically use-it-or-lose-it self-serving policy.
It is this which I believe we all should be alarmed.
Just saying,
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
Sad! Rogoff should have kept playing chess. He was good at that.
I propose a tax on Harvard’s endowment fund, and those of the other Ivy League schools, to buy F-22 fighters and hyper-velocity missile defense systems. And a Space Force. And Seawolf submarines. And airdropped Liberator pistols for the Chinese people. And the Venezuelan people.
We will need a massive expansion of the govt to handle this tax, to be sure.
That seems to be the answer to most problems.
Not impressed by his chess background. Bobby Fischer was a good player, too.
I like how he dismisses concerns about the US Middle class being squeezed out of existence when people somewhere don’t have electricity and somehow that is our problem. If he had any common sense, he would realized that it is govt corruption which keeps people in poverty these days. Look at Liberia. (Huh?) Or, the history of Communist China.
It is like they are all trying to get Trump re-elected.
The developed world is not in any way responsible for the explosive population growth which was the policy of several underdeveloped countries. That is why “per capita” measures are worthless. Only emissions per square mile of the country are meaningful because that takes into account ALL factors. But of course, that way, trillions of dollars can’t be sent to China. This “economist” is a Marxist….not an economist.
The Marxist’s unfettered capitalism (e.g. redistributive change), also monopolies and practices, that are first-order forcings of progressive prices.
“SolarReserve’s Crescent Dunes received backing from Citigroup and the Obama Energy Department but couldn’t keep pace with technological advances.”
Bloomberg Business had a story yesterday about this one billion dollar boondoggle in the Nevada desert. As someone else said, ” a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money”.
How about a 25% levy on academics salaries to give to china. ”If they want to be so generous with our money, how about they make a small gesture FIRST.
Hello Comrade Rogoff
And what agency has a global legal authority to impose, enforce, and collect a global tax? The UN? That’s where this is going isn’t it? An even better idea is to get rid of this rogue organization and start over.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/25/un/
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This is why no one should go to Harvard,
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The big surprise to me is the claim that you can fight economic slowdown by increasing production.
I guess I’ll just never be a good economist, or communist, or whatever.
Well, when you consider the fact that the economy is usually measured by GDP, increasing production increases GDP. So, it would “fight an economic slowdown” in the sense that it treats the symptoms of a slowdown (declining GDP) rather than the actual cause. It’s like cleaning the floor by tossing a clean rug overtop the dirty floor. It give the appearance of fixing the problem without actually getting at the root of the problem.
You may as well cede all political power to China at the same time, because that is what will happen if you give them carbon tax money.
This proposal can’t be taken at face value. He likely doesn’t even believe that his “solution” would solve anything because this “problem” is only an excuse. This isn’t about reducing carbon emissions or helping developing countries, this is about inching ever closer to world government…which is the entire purpose of the whole “global warming catastrophe” hoax in the first place.
This guy isn’t stupid. He knows full well that this plan could never accomplish its stated goal. Giving money to corrupt governments is only going to further enrich the corrupt governments, not cause them to see the error of their ways.
So, if he knows that his proposal will fail at its stated goal, what is he really trying to accomplish here? Enough said.
Harvard, ha, ha, ha.
Why not give the money to the EU, which has a per capita income about that of China. That way they could stop emitting too. Or maybe give it to both the EU AND China.
Oh…. wait a minute….. I just realized….. that was going to be tax the EU among others and give the money to….China.
Oh. Let me think about that for a minute. I need to really think about that. I know it makes sense but somehow it doesn’t feel right….
“former Chief Economist for the IMF” amazing but not surprising.
Old Soviet joke
Brezhnev is standing with an important foreign head of state on Lenin’s tomb reviewing a military parade. As larger and larger missiles roll by he describes their power in terms of “this one can destroy a town, that one can destroy a city, that one can destroy a region” at the end of the parade the visitor sees a group of middle-aged men in rumpled suits wandering almost aimlessly. He asks Brezhnev who they are. Brezhnev responds “these are economists. They can destroy an entire country”
He got publicity didn’t he? I think that was the point.
There are so many ways to fling cash when it’s not yours.
https://newrepublic.com/article/156152/give-kids-money-carbon-taxes
“The author, Professor Kenneth Rogoff, is a person of influence;
as a former senior figure in the IMF, and as a senior economics professor at one of the USA’s most prestigious universities, his economic theories are helping to shape global policy and the economic ideas of America’s next generation of leaders.”
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Nevertheless “The author, Professor Kenneth Rogoff,” is telling utter drivel.
Without a proof for CO₂ being a harmful pollutant that “economics professor at one of the USA’s most prestigious universities”
sledgehammers along about missing duties by the developed West / more money distributed to the less developed parts of the world.
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That kinda good doing didn’t work for 70+ years – why should it work NOW.
– may be he’s up to weaken reality. OK, but not with OPM – that’s undemocratic!