University of Guelph professor Ross McKitrick proposes a simple solution to the carbon tax conundrum: Tie taxes to temperatures.He suggests imposing financial penalties on carbon emissions that would be set according to the temperature in the earth’s atmosphere. The penalties could start off small enough to be politically palatable to skeptical voters.
If the skeptics are right and the earth isn’t warming, then the penalties for burning carbon would stay small or maybe even disappear. But if the climate modelers and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct about the atmosphere heating up, then the penalties would quickly, and automatically, rise.
Brett_McS asks in comments:
if we enter a new ice age do we all get tax refunds?
