carbon free energy source.
However, in this proposal the
tax would act as a Carbon Divi-
dend which would not be paid
straight to government, rather
it would be distributed
amongst the public in the form
of a monthly lump sum, much
like the payments from the
Alaskan Permanent Fund. The
research conducted by the Cli-
mate Leadership Council, pre-
dicted that in the US this would
more than offset the additional
spending due to inflation for
the bottom 70% of earners. You
will be putting more money in
the hands of a majority of the
population, whilst still imple-
menting an intensive transition
away from carbon.
transforming energy markets.
The final pillar of this policy
proposal is that by implement-
ing the tax on imported goods,
citizens of trading partners
would soon realise that they
could be getting a share in this
dividend and lobby their own
governments to do undertake
similar measures – once the
ball is rolling Halstead and the
CLC forecast an international
domino effect, leading to a
worldwide standard levy on
carbon. One of the biggest crit-
icisms of the Australian model
within the country was be-
cause no other nation took up
the policy, but this plan gives
governments around the world
more pressing reasons to
adopt the policy.
This would be accompanied by
a rollback of a lot of environ-
mental regulation that focus on
carbon emissions, to help cut
government spending and
shrink the size of the govern-
ment – something that should
be popular to small govern-
ment Conservatives. These
regulations become unneces-
sary as market forces will drive
businesses and consumers to-
wards cleaner sources of ener-
gy.
Given our need to transition
quickly away from carbon to
meet our 2020 goals, the op-
portunity to legislate free of
European constraints, and the
Conservatives poor public
standing on the standard of liv-
ing and real wage growth, now
seems like the opportune mo-
ment to consider this option.
Theresa May needs to build co-
alitions across government to
survive, and what better way to
win cross party support?
Prior to Brexit this would have
been impossible without Euro-
pean-wide approval, but the ex-
it from the continental political
union gives us a unique oppor-
tunity lead the way forwards in
fighting climate change by pio-
neering a brand new way of
It would prove that she is seri-
ous about climate change and
about improving the lives of
working and middle class peo-
ple who have felt the squeeze
of wages in the last decade,
10