Green taxes, quotas and equality: Preserving social justice whilst averting climate change

Authors

  • Paula Casal Pompeu Fabra University (Spain).

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.6.4318

Keywords:

climate change, carbon quotas and taxes, regressive taxes, inequality, green fiscal reform

Abstract

The need for green fiscal reform is urgent in the face of climate change. Some oppose it, however, arguing that such reforms disproportionately burden poorer individuals whose emissions are far smaller than those of wealthier individuals. Defusing these criticisms, this paper argues that this is not an inevitable feature of green fiscal reform. We should adopt a more scientific attitude not only towards climate change but towards testing fiscal proposals to mitigate it, and avoid dividing, with rushed assumptions, responsible voters who care about both equality and climate change.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Paula Casal, Pompeu Fabra University (Spain).

ICREA Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (Spain). She is an associate editor of Politics, Philosophy and Economics , editor of Law, Ethics and Philosophy and president of Academics Stand Against Poverty and of the Great Ape Project-Spain.

References

Casal, P. (2007). Why sufficiency is not enough. Ethics, 117, 296–326. doi: 10.1086/510692

Cramton, P., & Stoft, S. (2010). Price is a better climate commitment. The Economists’ Voice, 7(1). doi: 10.2202/1553-3832.1718

Fellows, J. A. (1994). Consumption taxes. A view of future tax reform in America. The CPA Journal, 64. Retrieved from http://links.uv.es/UkECf59

Frank, R., & Cook, P. J. (1995). The winner-take-all society. New York: Free Press.

Galle, B. (2011). Is cap and trade fair to the poor? George Washington Law Review, 79, 33–110.

Gibbs, T., & Retallack, S. (2006). TradingUp: Reforming the European Union’s emissions trading scheme. London: IPPR.

Goodin, R. (1994). Selling Environmental Indulgencies. Kyklos, 47(4), 573–596.

Hanemann, M., Labandeira, X., & Loureiro, M. (2011). Climate change, energy, and social preferences on policies. Climate Research, 48(2–3), 343–348. doi: 10.3354/cr00994

Hansen, J. (2009). Storms of my grandchildren. London: Bloomsbury.

House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee. (2008). Personal carbon trading. Fifth report of session 2007-08. London: The Stationery Office Limited. Retrieved from http://links.uv.es/Lzqd9XA

McCaffery, E. (1992). Tax policy under a hybrid income-consumption tax. Texas Law Review, 70, 1149–1181.

Pearce, D. (1995). World without end. London: Earthscan.

Piketty, Th. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First century. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Poterba, J. M. (1991). Is the gasoline tax regressive? National Bureau of Economic Research. Tax Policy and the Economy, 5, 145–164. doi: 10.3386/w3578

Sandel, M. (2012). What money can’t buy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Seidman, L. (1999). The USA tax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Sterner, T. (2012). Distributional effects of taxing transport fuel. Energy Policy, 41, 75–83. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2010.03.012

Tiezzi, S. (2005). The welfare effects and the distributive impact of carbon taxation on Italian households. Energy Policy, 33, 1597–1612. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2004.01.016

Toynbee, P. (2006, December 15). This eclectic radicalism marries green politics with social justice. The Guardian, p. 37.

Wier, M., Birr-Pedersen, K., Klinge Jacobsen, H., & Klok, J. (2005). Are CO2 taxes regressive? Ecological Economics, 52(2), 239–251. doi: 10.1016/ j.ecolecon.2004.08.005

Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2009). The spirit level. Why more equal societies almost always do better. London: Penguin.

Downloads

Published

2016-04-15

How to Cite

Casal, P. (2016). Green taxes, quotas and equality: Preserving social justice whilst averting climate change. Metode Science Studies Journal, (6), 73–79. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.6.4318
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    1135
  • PDF
    376

Issue

Science grid: The public understanding of science (2016)

Section

Living with climate change. The challenge of a new cultural change

License

All the documents in the OJS platform are open access and property of their respective authors.

Authors publishing in the journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors keep the rights and guarantee Metode Science Studies Journal the right to be the first publication of the document, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship and publication in the journal.
  2. Authors are allowed and encouraged to spread their work through electronic means using personal or institutional websites (institutional open archives, personal websites or professional and academic networks profiles) once the text has been published.

Metrics

Similar Articles

<< < > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.