Green Daily

There's clearly some merit in the commentary here, though I'm not sure how well the "law of unintended consequences" has been thought through.

Let's take a CO2 intensive industry like . . . steel. What would be the likely impact of a "carbon tax" on the production of steel in industrialized nations? Well, impact one (due to the tax) would be higher prices for steel produced in industrialized nations. What would happen next? Not to hard to see that over time, as industries purchased more and more (cheaper) steel from less industrialized nations (that didn't have a carbon tax) that less and less steel would be manufactured in nations that had the carbon tax. Where would the production of steel migrate to? Unsurprisingly, nations that don't have the carbon tax (China, India, Brazil). The problem is, that developing nations such as the aforementioned are notorious polluters that use energy inefficiently. For example, on average, a ton of steel produced in the good 'ole USA creates, as a by-product, approximately 0.6 tons of CO2. In China, however, that same ton of steel produced results in 1.8-2.0 tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere (which says nothing of particulate matter, of which China's steel industry is even worse relative to its competition). So, over time (and by time, I mean, 2-5 years, not 15-20) less and less steel would get produced in nations that are relatively lower polluters, and more and more steel would get produced in nations that are among the worst polluters. Given that global warming and pollution are a global, not local problem, how exactly, does a carbon tax in industrialized nations (when developing countries aren't participating) help solve the problem at hand -- global warming?

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