A recent blog post on Sightline, an environmental blog in the Northwest, celebrated the gusher of dependable revenue to Washington State flowing from a steep carbon tax. The post showcases just why a carbon tax is a dangerous policy. As we at IER have been warning for years, the advocates of a carbon tax are fooling themselves if they think it will be calibrated to the “optimal” level reflecting the “negative externality” of greenhouse gas emissions. And in this debate the most foolish of all are the handful of vocal conservatives claiming that a new carbon tax will be used to cut other taxes. We have to wonder whether such pundits are actually reading what the environmentalists have in mind—with the blog post from Washington State being just a typical example. The activists have already spent the money, decades into the future; there are no plans for offsetting tax cuts.
