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**PRO CASE**

Resolved: The United States Federal Government should adopt a carbon tax.
Observation 1.
Because this resolution brings into question whether the United States
should price carbon or not, the framework for this debate follows
governmental obligations, and according to
Goodin, Robert. Fellow of philosophy at Australian National University, 1990 (The Utilitarian Response)
Governments obligations are to provide the most good to the greatest
number of their citizens

As a result, the main voter for this debate round is Utilitarianism, if


we as the Proposition prove that a carbon tax will maximize equality
of wellbeing, well take todays ballot.

Contention 1 Economy
Sub point A: Social Cost
Fossil fuel consumption carries a serious negative externality, which in
economic terms means that the social costs of a collective burning of fossil
fuels exceed the personal costs. Put simply, polluting is too cheap and the
carbon market is failing. A carbon tax can correct this problem.
Thomas Hebling of the International Monetary Fund explained in May 2012,
Hebling, T. (2012) [Advisor in the IMFs Research Department]. IMF Finance & Development.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/basics/external.htm. Accessed 1 January 2016

In the case of pollutionthe traditional example of a negative


externalitya polluter makes decisions based only on the direct
cost of and profit opportunity from production and does not
consider the indirect costs to those harmed by the pollution. The
indirect costs include decreased quality of life, say in the case of a
home owner near a smokestack; higher health care costs; and forgone
production opportunities, for example, when pollution harms activities
such as tourism. Since the indirect costs are not borne by the
producer, and therefore not passed on to the end user of the goods
produced by the polluter, the social or total costs of production are
larger than the private costs.
Further, he recalls, Neoclassical economists long ago recognized that the
inefficiencies associated with technical externalities constitute a form of

market failure. Private marketbased decision making fails to yield


efficient outcomes from a general welfare perspective. These
economists recommended government intervention to correct for
the effects of externalities. In The Economics of Welfare, British
economist Arthur Pigou suggested that governments tax polluters
an amount equivalent to the cost of the harm to others. Such a tax
would yield the market outcome that would have prevailed with
adequate internalization of all costs by polluters. By the same logic,
governments should subsidize those who generate positive externalities, in
the amount that others benefit.
Studies demonstrate that consumers react to changing carbon prices.
Dr Alex Bowen, Principal Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute
on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics
wrote in December 2011,
Bowen, A. (2011). [Principal Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate
Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science and
The Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy] "The case for carbon pricing." Policy
Brief, Grantham Research. http://environmentportal.in/files/file/the%20case%20for
%20carbon%20pricing.pdf. Accessed 1 January 2016

Carbon pricing only works as a policy instrument if it succeeds in


reducing the demand for greenhouse-gas-intensive activities. The
evidence suggests that it is likely to do so, particularly over the
longer run and when price changes are expected to persist, because
demand does respond to prices. For example, energy demand has been
found to be responsive to changes in energy prices. Indeed, two recent
studies suggest that energy demand is more sensitive to prices than many
earlier estimates indicated. Agnolucci (2009) investigated an
investigation of the energy demand from the British and German
industrial sectors and found a long-run price elasticity of demand of
-0.64 (i.e. a 10% rise in price, other things being equal, leads in the
long run to a fall in energy demand of 6.4%). Adeyemi and Hunt (2007)
analysed industrial energy demand across the members of the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and found some
support for the hypothesis that the response of energy demand to a price
change is asymmetric: it depends whether the price increases or decreases.
They estimated that the price elasticity of demand for a price increase above
its previous maximum is -0.5; for a price increase below its previous
maximum it is -0.6; and for a price decrease it is -0.3. That is consistent
with the hypothesis put forward by Gately and Huntington (2002)
and Huntington (2006) that price increases induce technological
improvements designed to economize on the now more expensive
energy inputs; if the price falls subsequently, the producer does not
usually find it profitable to return to using its previous technology,

so energy demand does not increase as much as it fell in the first


place.
Which leads me to, Sub Point B: Benefits
A CARBON TAX ENCOURAGES LOW OR NO CARBON EMISSION ENERGY
SOURCES-The New York Times'15
[Editorial Board; Editorial: The Case for a Carbon Tax; The New York Times, 7 June
2015; page 10L]

A carbon tax would raise the price of fossil fuels, with more taxes
collected on fuels that generate more emissions, like coal. This tax
would reduce demand for high-carbon emission fuels and increase
demand for lower-emisson fuels like solar, wind, nuclear and
hydroelectric who would face lower taxes or no taxes. To be
effective, the tax should also be applied to imported goods from
countries that do not assess a similar levy on the use of fossil fuels.

CARBON TAXES SHOULD BE COUPLED WITH TAX BREAKS TO MAKE THEM


REVENUE NEUTRAL-Moylan '13
[Andrew; Senior Fellow and Outreach Director at the R Street Institute; How to tax
carbon: conservatives can fight climate change without growing government; The
American Conservative; September-October 2013; page 16]

The first and arguably most important component is absolute, bona


fide revenue neutrality. The federal government is already too large
and expensive. Conservatives routinely oppose efforts by the left to raise
revenue in order to shore up lavish spending and broken entitlement programs. A
carbon tax should no more be used to fund bigger government than
any other tax. Every single dollar raised by a carbon tax must be
devoted to tax reductions elsewhere in the code.
There are alternative carbon-tax proposals that make bogus claims of revenue
neutrality. For example, the so-called "fee and dividend" model pushed by
some climate advocates and members of Congress would levy a fee

on carbon dioxide emissions that then would be returned to citizens


through some sort of flat dividend payment. Such a scheme easily could
prove vulnerable to abuse: one can imagine dividends would be suspended in years
of high deficits or that the program would morph into a slush fund that flows to
progressives' pet projects.
Instead of empowering government to generate a pot of money and relying; on the
beneficence of elected officials to return it to the people, reform must devote every
dime of carbon-tax revenue to reducing other tax rates or abolishing other taxes

altogether. Turning on one revenue stream while turning off others is

how we prevent the price falling the consumers.

Contention 2 Health Benefits


Reigning in the American appetite for fossil fuels is of critical importance for
a number of reasons. First, emissions contribute to respiratory diseases.
Caiazzo from the journal Atmospheric Environment 2015 ,
Caiazzo, F., Ashok, A., Waitz, I. A., Yim, S. H. L., & Barrett, S. R. H. [Laboratory for Aviation
and the Environment, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology] (2013). Air pollution and early deaths in the United States. Part I: Quantifying
the impact of major sectors in 2005. Atmospheric Environment, 79, 198208.
doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2013.05.081

Combustion emissions adversely impact air quality and human


health. A multiscale air quality model is applied to assess the health
impacts of major emissions sectors in United States. Emissions are
classified according to six different sources: electric power generation,
industry, commercial and residential sources, road transportation, marine
transportation and rail transportation. Epidemiological evidence is used to
relate long-term population exposure to sector-induced changes in the
concentrations of PM2.5 and ozone to incidences of premature death. Total
combustion emissions in the U.S. account for about 200,000 (90%
CI: 90,000e362,000) premature deaths per year in the U.S. due to
changes in PM2.5 concentrations, and about 10,000 (90% CI: "1000 to
21,000) deaths due to changes in ozone concentrations. The largest
contributors for both pollutant-related mortalities are road transportation,
causing w53,000 (90% CI: 24,000e95,000) PM2.5-related deaths and w5000
(90% CI: "900 to 11,000) ozonerelated early deaths per year, and power
generation, causing w52,000 (90% CI: 23,000e94,000) PM2.5- related and
w2000 (90% CI: "300 to 4000) ozone-related premature mortalities per year.
Industrial emissions contribute to w41,000 (90% CI: 18,000e74,000) early
deaths from PM2.5 and w2000 (90% CI: 0 e4000) early deaths from ozone.
The results are indicative of the extent to which policy measures could be
undertaken in order to mitigate the impact of specific emissions from
different sectors d in particular black carbon emissions from road
transportation and sulfur dioxide emissions from power generation.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/11/18/new-research-quantifies-healthbenefits-of-reducing-greenhouse-gas-emissions/

A team of scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory


(Berkeley Lab), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
(NIEHS), RAND Corp., and the University of Washington, has calculated

the economic benefit of reduced health impacts from GHG reduction


strategies in the U.S. range between $6 and $14 billion annually in
2020, depending on how the reductions are accomplished. This equates to a
health benefit of between $40 and $93 per metric ton of carbon
dioxide reduction. The team compared ten different strategies each equal to
one U.S. wedge. A wedge is a scenario of activities that reduced CO2 emissions by
150 million metric tons per year in 2020, increasing to 750 million metric tons per
year in 2060. Increasingly implemented in the marketplace over time, the strategies
in each wedge provides greater and greater reductions in carbon emissions
compared to what the emissions would have been without the measure (business as
usual). The wedge concept was originally devised by Stephen Pacala and Robert
Socolow of Princeton University and has become a standard method of analyzing
the impact of mitigation measures on greenhouse gas emission. Jeffery Greenblatt,
a Berkeley Lab author of the health benefits study, contributed to writing the
original wedge paper and several follow-up papers. By 2020, health savings
from an increasing nationally instituted Carbon Tax could range from $6
billion to $14 billion per year, depending on the strategy, the researchers
calculated. If measures were implemented at an accelerated pace, results in
reductions of 300 million metric tons of CO2 per year by 2020, and
the savings would range from $10 to $24 billion. The accelerated case
represents a situation in which extremely aggressive policies aimed at reducing
greenhouse gas emissions were implemented across the U.S.
Because the carbon tax helps our economy, solves our energy crises, and literary
saves lives, we urge a Pro Ballot.

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