Could Palin Pick Spotlight “Alaska Dividend” Solution to Climate Crisis?

[Joanne98]

John McCain's pick for vice-president isn't shaping up as a win for Teddy Roosevelt-style conservation. A list of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's positions on key environmental issues posted by the folks at Grist includes these anti-green stances:

Opposed a statewide ballot initiative to prohibit or restrict new mining operations that could affect salmon in the state's streams and rivers.
Has pushed to build a natural-gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope
Sued the Interior Department over its decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species
Has proposed eliminating Alaska's gas tax

Has pushed to open Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling
But the Grist list also includes this:


Got the state legislature to pass a bill to provide each Alaskan $1,200 to help with energy costs
Which naturally brings to mind the Alaska Permanent Fund, the 49th State's long-established program that annually sends every Alaska resident an identical check drawn from the state’s North Slope oil royalties.

As we have long pointed out, the Alaska Permanent Fund offers a proven, straightforward model for distributing federal (or state) carbon tax revenues in progressive fashion: returning those revenues equally to all U.S. residents.

With carbon tax revenues distributed through pro rata dividends, the vast majority of poorer households, and a majority of middle-income families as well, would get back more in the dividends than they would pay in the tax. (For a federal carbon tax, the dividend checks should be provided at least quarterly and perhaps even monthly to keep households ahead of the budget treadmill.) This would cushion the impact of higher prices from carbon pricing while retaining the incentives for businesses, institutions and individuals to transist rapidly to a low-carbon economy.


This Labor Day weekend and beyond, the media will doubtless focus on Gov. Palin's impact on McCain's election chances. Let's hope that a few enterprising reporters will use the selection of a candidate from the Last Frontier State as an occasion to focus on the "Alaska Dividend" as an equitable and politically palatable way of packaging a revenue-neutral national carbon tax.

http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2008/08/29/could-palin-pick-spotlight-alaska-dividend-solution-to-climate-crisis/