Issue Position: Climate Change

Issue Position

Climate change is real. Rising levels of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide and methane, are producing global warming, melting ice, rising sea levels, and more acidic oceans.

The fundamental libertarian principle is non-aggression, not harming others. Climate change is harming the planet, harming other species, and harming human property as well. Thus there are principled reasons for libertarians and all of us to support action on climate change.

The scientific and policy debate about global warming has been politicized by both the left and the right. However a vast left wing conspiracy cannot shrink the Arctic ice cap, just one of many consequences of climate change. As the United States joins other nations to act on climate change, it is time for all of us to base our policy positions on reason and science, proposing market-based actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In past decades, our industrial economy routinely used asbestos, lead, mercury, and other substances then found to be harmful and phased out. The inconvenient truth is that fossil fuels, the foundation of our energy economy, are producing harmful effects that now need to be ended.

To end the harms of greenhouse gas emissions, we should phase in requirements that such emissions be eliminated, sequestered, or reliably offset. For emissions that are not dealt with, there should be a price, a carbon tax, applied uniformly.

A carbon tax should apply to government as well as private industry, and apply to imports from countries without comparable levies.

As a carbon tax is phased in, we should phase out subsidies for other forms of energy and end central planning of energy production and consumption. Let the market determine energy sources once externalities are included in prices.

Finally, for a carbon tax to be supported by fiscal conservatives, it should not increase general government revenues. The fee and dividend approach, which distributes revenues to the people instead, has wide support and would help families pay the higher energy costs expected during our transition to new sources.

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