Purpose
- Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
- Explores and develops market-based solutions.
Summary
The Project’s goal is to inform and engage Americans in support of a carbon tax as the preferred market-friendly policy solution to the danger of catastrophic climate change. The Institute’s Carbon Tax Project responds both to the national need for market-friendly policy leadership on climate change, as well as the pressing need for policy organizations to more effectively engage the public in support of their ideas. Specifically, the Project will sponsor and promote research by eminent scholars to help develop an efficient and market-driven carbon tax policy, and will also help the policy proposal gain political, economic and popular legitimacy within the national climate change debate.
Description
The Prometheus Institute has developed a brand-new special Carbon Tax Project website, utilizing cutting-edge "Web 2.0" interactive technology, innovative branding, attractive graphics and creative media including videos and "podcasts" as well as traditional publications promoting the carbon tax. The Institute expects the website to become one of the most popular climate change resources on the web, and to be instrumental in effectively disseminating the carbon tax policy proposal to the broader public.
The Institute is currently working to secure expert contributions in the form of research and other publications emphasizing the market-friendly aspects of the carbon tax. This work will also be featured on the new website.
The Institute has given the Project the slogan "Pay Your Air Share" in order to emphasize the market-friendly aspects of the proposal, which will be instrumental in gaining political support among the pro-market community for the carbon tax. The Project website has unveiled the new Pay Your Air Share logo, including stylish Pay Your Air Share merchandise, all giving activists and supporters of any age the ability to advocate for the carbon tax in their own lives.
On behalf of everyone at the Institute, I'd like to thank the Walker Foundation for their support. We are very excited to debut our new website and other features.
Matt Harrison
Executive Director
Purpose
Currently, most of the advocacy on behalf of climate change legislation is unfortunately led by organizations with little concern for the effects of their proposals on free markets and economic growth. Proposals like mandatory limits on emissions and demands for radical changes in energy generation, automobile standards, transportation mechanisms and other private industries threaten to cause grave harm to America's dynamic free market system.
Unless policy organizations respond with effective market-friendly proposals to help combat the future effects of catastrophic climate change, the Institute believes, the popular rush to legislate an ad hoc solution to global warming threats may irreparably harm the dynamic free market system of the United States. The Institute's Carbon Tax Project, unique among all policy organizations, seamlessly integrates carbon trading markets into comprehensive national climate change policy, among other dynamic, market-based features.
Scope
Climate change, by definition, is a global problem. CO2 emissions, the core of the "greenhouse" effect causing climate change, mix in the atmosphere immediately upon release, making the climate change threat an international concern that will have a profound effect on the highly interdependent global economy.
However, while countries may share the contribution to global climate change, they may not equally share the impact. The Carbon Tax Project, to the extent it enhances the political legitimacy of the carbon tax, thus helps the United States:
a) Offer global leadership on the climate change issue by presenting a viable, market-friendly response to carbon emissions, thus encouraging similar market-friendly responses elsewhere in the world, especially among U.S. allies and trading partners
b) Use the funds generated by the tax to prevent against catastrophic climate change affecting the economic infrastructure of the United States
Information Dissemination
With the unveiling of our special Project website we will aggressively market our material to the lay public. Through the use of "Web 2.0" interactive technology, innovative branding, attractive graphics and creative media including videos and "podcasts" as well as traditional publications promoting the carbon tax we will disseminate our material to the masses.
Project Link www.payyourairshare.org
Amount Approved$15,000.00
on 11/27/2007
(Check sent: 12/4/2007)
