Friday, February 10, 2017

Climate Change is a Big Fat Lie!

It took a while for me to synchronize my personal approach to knowledge with my how I engage with teaching and learning in the classroom.  You know, my commitment to a public-intellectual way of scholarship into the classroom. (I have blogged in plenty about that, like here.)

Thus, in my intro class, I took to them a one-pager, from this recent proposal from a bunch of Republicans who want to tax carbon as the way to deal with climate change.  I wanted students to understand that the academic ideas that we talk about in class has real world applications in various public policy issues like climate change.

Of course, as with most things that I do, there was a structure to the class discussions.  It was clear that students had never been presented such an idea before.  The part about the tax revenue being returned to people as a dividend-check really grabbed their attention.

And then one student said, "but, this cannot work when Trump does not even think that climate change is real."

And that is only the beginning.  The first step is to stop denying climate change.  To recognize and understand that it is for real.

The second step is to acknowledge that this climate change is being caused by human actions.  This will be a huge step for most Republicans to take.  A yuge step.

And then to recognize and understand the role that carbon plays in this process.

And finally to get into a constructive discussion on what to do about carbon.

Now, ask yourself, do you think all these can ever happen with a president and his minions dealing with "alternative facts"?  With 63 million assholes--like this powerful guy--voting for the orange asshole?

So, party like there is no tomorrow, folks!


2 comments:

Ramesh said...

I am intrigued by the Republicans' proposal. These are men of standing, not clowns. Must think about the proposal more.

Carbon tax is obvious. It cannot be avoided - its only a question of when and not if.

But, I cannot understand the logic of the dividend. Why ? The incentive therefore would be to pollute more so that we can get a higher dividend. makes little sense. I think this is pandering to the Republican dislike for taxes of any kind.

You cannot avoid creating a mechansim, market or regulatory that penalises polluters and rewards conservers. Today that is sought to be done through regulation. If you dislike regulation, fine, but why not then propose a carbon credits market - something that those on the right have been propagating for a long time.

Sriram Khé said...

The "dividend" as in the carbon tax revenue is not used to bloat the government but is returned to the people. Of course, businesses will find the carbon tax as a burden and will want to explore non-carbon energy, especially because the carbon tax will continue to increase over time. As the non-carbon use goes up, then the dividend will also decrease ... this is not an incentive to pollute more. Read up the document that I had linked to--you, as a right of center businessman, will immediately sign up for that plan.