A carbon tax would work — — if we started getting serious about our survival 20 years ago. Barring the invention of a time machine, we must take a more drastic approach to the problem.
Firstly, we have to demand that “EVERY” politician in any leadership position, but especially in the house, come clean about how our government is funded. It isn’t from tax or bond revenue and there is a lot more room to spend, especially for something as important as this. The US dollar is a public utility that is available to Congress to use in shaping the economy at no cost. There is no “national debt” that we have to pay or even reduce. It is a mostly inconsequential accounting entity that represents all currency spent into the economy and not yet clawed back by taxation.
Our starting point “MUST” be from the position that we can afford anything that physically exists and is for sale priced in dollars. When we try to purchase more than is for sale, or potentially for sale, too quickly we will encounter inflation, but not before. There is no reason not to employ every American, and immigrants where necessary, in combatting climate change. While Republicans, and most Dems, will be quick to ask how we pay for the survival of our species we should be just as quick to remind them how absurd the question is and to remind them that the question was never uttered in relation to endless war and corporate welfare or bailouts.
Most of America is going to be watching their legislators much closer and expecting much more from them. The government has access to the very best scientists and it should utilize them in “Manhatten Project” style effort while also bringing whatever resources they need to bear on this problem. It is, after all, our children’s and grandchildren’s survival we are dealing with, not some petty political squabble between the parties. The bright side is that if we do survive this we will come out the other side with new technologies and jobs for everyone with a more vibrant economy than we saw after WWII.
If climate change denying Republicans are as patriotic as they claim they will tell their base to sit down and shut up while the adults fix the problem mostly caused by their ignorant fealty to a false ideology that most cognizant minds could have predicted to fail from the beginning. “IF” they let us fix this we “might’ leave the guillotines in storage. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
