[AnthonyMouse]

The way you implement a carbon tax is by refunding all of the money to the citizens. The average poor person comes out ahead, because they have less living space requiring less heating and drive a smaller (more efficient) car or take public transit, so they already use less carbon than average and the dividend is more than they pay in tax. Also, some of the tax is paid by corporations but all of the dividend goes to individuals. Nobody starves.

But it causes electric cars that avoid the carbon tax to have a market advantage over gasoline powered cars, so more people buy those. It causes non-carbon power generation methods to have a market advantage, so more people build those. As the infrastructure gets built to replace carbon, the amount of the dividend declines, but only because people are paying less in carbon tax because everyone is burning less carbon.

[Dma54rhs]

But Americans already pay absurdly low prices for energy compared to us Europeans who are not exactly wealthier. The problem with Americans wanting to "copy" us is that they don't want to understand you have to pay noo, Bill Gates only paying exactly cut it.

[throwaway3699]

Agree this is the way forward, but I don't believe for a second the Democrats would implement it this way. It just isn't political leaders' style to help the poor in America.

[jcranmer]

As I recall, this refund provision has been a part of every Democratic proposal on the matter put forward so far.

[prewett]

California's PG&E is doing this. I got a number of carbon credit refunds this past year.