Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan has an idea on how we might combat climate change: raise taxes on carbon and petrol.  The idea, as Sullivan puts it, is to create a shift toward development of non-cabon energy:

It hopes that a carbon-hostile tax would prompt a technological breakthrough to solve the problem. And it’s easily reversible if needs be. It’s the kind of green policy that is neither in denial nor in hysteria, and it’s a rough balance between the planet’s needs and humanity’s. Think of it as innovation over regulation – a way to manage the contradictions of conservatism and environmentalism after all.

I’m skeptical that this would even work, never mind contributing to times that are already tough for Americans.

One problem with Andrew’s solution is the financial affect it would have on people.  Consider that when gas prices went above $4 a gallon last year, financial hardship set in for people.  Luckily enough, he seems to have solution for this problem:

If you gave back the tax revenue through a tax refund, you could avoid depressing growth and help cushion the working poor from higher petrol costs.

Okay, so people get a fat check at tax time, but what about the rest of the year?  Electricity and heat bills are some of the highest people have to pay and in certain times of the year, summer and winter for instance, they get higher.  So Andrew proposes causing financial hardship for the rest of the year?  And for how long?  Infrastructure of new electricity and heat sources is nowhere near widespread enough right now.  This tax would have to last for years, perhaps decades, before any noticeable change would occur.  I’m not sure if Andrew thinks that alternative energy will suddenly become widespread within a couple years, but if he does, he’s mistaken.  The situation is getting better by the year, but alternatives are far, far away for overtaking conventional energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas.  Meanwhile, people would suffer much higher energy bills all year around, but particularly in the winter and summer.  Soon people will be demanding the end of this tax.

Which comes to my second problem with Andrew’s article, his insistence that this tax would combat the growth of government:

You need no new bureaucracy to do this – and you’d help drive green decision-making away from top-down government towards more bottom-up human-level calculations.

Except that historically, all new technology is expensive, and where it can be used varies depending on region.  Wind energy, for example, is effective only in certain places.  Typically, it works best off shore, and in the middle of the country.  For further example, see the map to the left.  The other biggie that’s talked about, solar energy, has similar restrictions (see the map to the right).  The biggest installation right now is in the Mojave Desert, because areas receiving more sunlight are going to be more effective in producing energy.  Still, the sun shines everywhere, so solar energy is one type of energy that could be produced anywhere.  But I’m a little skeptical of too much development in some regions, such as the Northeast, which is densely populated.

But ignorning the restrictions imposed by climate, lets return to cost of energy.  Prices for both wind and solar have dropped significantly in recent years, but they still costs thousands of dollars.  I’m not sure about solar, but I know maintenance costs for wind are fairly cheap, so the big money is in construction.   Well, the draw will be where the money is, and you can see where that  is on the maps.  So, what about the rest of the country?  For solar, the only large array east of the Mississippi that I can find is in Pennsylvania.  Wind power is a little better, with current plants in New York, Maine, and Iowa.

The situation as a whole is depressing, but the eastern United States, and particularly the eastern seaboard, has a lot of catch-up to do.  It’s going to take a lot of government incentivizing to get anyone to consider that part of the United States viable for wind, and the Northeast and Midwest viable for solar.  So yes, Andrew is right.  A carbon tax would end a large government regulation program, but a large government subsidy program would go in its place.  That’s hardly limiting the size of government, at least from where I’m sitting.  The subsidizing is likely to happen, anyway, minus a carbon tax, but it would still exist either way.  Lets not even get into the overspending the government is likely to do in a knee-jerk reaction to public furor over their increased energy taxes.

So, there you have it.  A carbon tax would create financial hardship for years, maybe decades, before alternative energy would become widespread, if it ever does.  It would not actually lead to less government, but more government, since subsidies would need to be given to bring the technology to certain areas of the country.  Personally, I think the former problem is the worse of the two, since we’re already in extremely harsh financial conditions.  I simply don’t think a tax would be sustainable for long, even in the best of economic conditions.  The reason is simple politics.  Even if you could initially persuade the American public that this was a good thing, politicians would shy away once constituents started demanding the end of them.  There are not many politicians that are going to tie their chances for re-election on an unpopular tax.  It’s just not going to happen.

The better solution is probably increasing the incentives for development of alternative energy.  If new or existing companies can be persuaded to develop these resources, they might actually do it.  The Department of Energy has spent money on it, as have a large number of state governments.  But what’s being done right now is peanuts compared to what can be done.  It’s not very small government in nature, but in states where it has been implemented (and there are federal tax rebates too), companies and individuals have gone for it, particularly for solar projects.

Between the government providing incentive for doing something and gaining more taxes in the hopes that the public consciousness will be shocked into demanding a switch, the first option is perhaps the safer route, but because the second option is also going to incorporate the first, I’d rather the government create the tax rebate programs now.