
Carbon taxes are also a failure waiting to happen. Coincidentally, the new Bill Gates book just came out, and it addresses this topic — badly — in my opinion. I quote Bill; “Working on this book has made me even more conscious of my responsibility to reduce my emissions. Shrinking my carbon footprint is the least that can be expected of someone in my position. In 2020, I started buying sustainable jet fuel, willfully offsetting my family’s aviation emissions in 2021. For our non-aviation emissions, I’m buying offsets through a company that removes carbon dioxide from the air, and installs clean energy upgrades in affordable housing units in Chicago.” Gates has no intention to reduce or stop flying, to stop building giant homes, or to curb his extravagant lifestyle. He has no intention of making any such sacrifices, or directly reducing his carbon footprint. He wants to have his cake and to eat it too, like most of his kind in the one percent. He refuses to set an example that we all can follow. For the few people on the planet that personally acted on Greta Thunberg’s no/fly movement, by taking fewer flights, Bill Gates just wasted all the carbon we saved. No, such people will have to be directly reined in with caps on their personal emissions. There is no way we are going to turn this number around by implementing a tax that will be paid by those that can afford it, but which allows them to continue burning huge amounts of carbon. Who believes ordinary people will make sacrifices, if the rich don’t have to do the same?
The PCC, the Personal Carbon Cap. There is no possibility we are going to address the problem of Global Heating unless we revolutionize our entire way of doing things. Every person on the planet has a carbon footprint and can make that footprint smaller. We are going to have to ration carbon by way of a Personal Carbon Cap, or PCC. Of course, the size of this number cannot be figured out by politicians. I suggest a respected scientific body, such as NASA or NOAA calculate the PCC. Just like a speed limit on the highway, everyone will have to obey that number.