The barriers to a carbon fee and dividend policy
In his article ( There’s a simple way to green the economy – and it involves cash prizes for all, 5 January), Henry D Jacoby gives a brilliant analysis of the benefits of a carbon fee and dividend (or climate income) carbon-pricing policy and why there are some psychological barriers to its wider adoption. Citizens’ Climate Lobby is an international grassroots environmental group which has been encouraging politicians to consider adopting carbon fee and dividend (CF&D) since 2007.
CF&D has been adopted in Canada and Switzerland – although the latter does not currently tax fuel for energy while it moves towards the development of more renewable energy systems. Canadians could have replaced its implementer, Justin Trudeau, last year and ditched the policy. They didn’t.
Our government acknowledged the merits of the tax in its recent carbon-pricing report, but there is a psychological barrier, as Jacoby points out: the Treasury doesn’t like hypothecated taxes or dividends. We at Citizens’ Climate Lobby UK are working hard to change their mind. Do take a look at our website and consider supporting us. Catherine Dawson Citizens’ Climate Lobby UK
• Henry D Jacoby makes a good case for a carbon tax as a powerful tool in weaning our economies off fossil energy. But that implies that the oil will still flow in order to be taxed – and when, as it must, the flow finally stops, the tax also stops. The flaw in his argument is the implicit assumption that the climate crisis can be solved within a continuing market economy, by simply changing more rapidly ( but not totally) to renewable energy. If this existential threat to our species (and the rest of the biosphere) is to be defeated, we cannot continue in a system where “most personal and business decisions are driven by price”. Indeed, I dispute that statement even in today’s society.
I further dispute that no one really likes paying taxes. As a pensioner, my income is well below the median. Yet I happily accept that out of it, I make my contribution to all the collective things that make life much more than mere existence, for all my fellow citizens as well as myself. I am sure I am not alone in this. Of course, specific items of expenditure, such as nuclear weapons, are a different matter, but that does not affect the principle.Frank JacksonHarlow, Essex
of the month and the European council president, Charles Michel, describing mass inoculation as a “gigantic challenge”.
The European commission has agreed to buy 160m doses of the USmade vaccine, which has been shown in clinical trials to be 94% effective and should prove easier to deliver since it does not have to be kept as cold as the Pfizer jab.
Separately, Germany said on Wednesday it would not follow the UK by delaying the second dose of the Pfizer jab to ensure more people were protected sooner, with the health minister, Jens Spahn, saying it would be better to observe the manufacturers’ recommendations.
“My impression is it makes a lot of sense, especially with sensitive issues where trust and reliability are important, to stick to the approval,” Spahn said, adding that Germany would also avoid switching between vaccines to speed up vaccination.
The EU began vaccinating on 27 December, but progress has so far been agonisingly slow: the US and UK have already vaccinated 1%-2% of their populations, while Israel is at 16%. Europe’s best performer, Germany, has managed barely 0.4%, while the Netherlands did not start until Wednesday.
Both the commission and national governments have come under heavy fire for the disappointing pace of the bloc’s vaccine rollout, while tensions within the union have also increased, echoing those early in the pandemic over the sharing of medical equipment.
The EU’s executive has pointed out it that has secured more than 2bn doses from six different manufacturers for the bloc’s 450 million inhabitants, saying the problem is not so much that it failed to order enough vaccines, but that manufacturers are being slow to produce them, and countries slow to administer them.
“I don’t think that the issue is really the number of vaccines – it is the fact that we are at the beginning of a rollout,” said the commission spokesman Eric Mamer. “We’re all judging this as if this campaign is over; in fact, it is just starting.”
Mamer also defended the decision to place orders for a basket of different vaccines, some of which are not yet available. “We always knew it would be a complex operation. This is why the commission was so adamant that it was important we sign contracts with different companies,” he said.
The US, which approved the Moderna shot on 19 December, and the UK, which this week added the Oxford/ AstraZeneca jab to its vaccine armoury, gained a head start by using emergency approvals that offer governments fewer guarantees – and leave manufacturers less exposed in terms of liability in case of problems – than the EMA’s conditional marketing authorisation.
Mainly, however, Europe has suffered from a combination of a dearth of supplies – with BioNTech unable to deliver the 12.5m doses it promised by the end of December due to supply chain issues – and delivery problems in individual member states.
Some governments have underestimated the logistical problems of administering a vaccine such as the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, which must be stored at –70C, in environments such as care homes, while others – such as the vaccine-sceptical France – have opted for caution, with a lengthy individual consent process for each patient.
The delay is fast becoming a domestic political issue in several countries. France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel have come under attack from opposition politicians and health professionals, and tensions look set to continue rising as lockdowns tighten across the continent.
With the future leadership of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union to be decided next week and a general election looming in the autumn, the German debate is particularly heated. The tabloid Bild blamed the “vaccine debacle” on the centrist chancellor’s push for a joint European procurement process.
Her party’s junior coalition partner, the Social Democratic party, meanwhile, has set its sights on Spahn, with the finance minister, Olaf Scholz, sending the conservative politician a list of 24 questions about the government’s handling of procurement.
Berlin has also come in for wider European criticism over its decision to reach a bilateral deal with BioNTech for an additional 30 million doses, while Paris has been accused in Germany of insisting that the EU buy less of the German firm’s vaccine in favour of one being developed by France’s Sanofi.
On Tuesday, France’s European affairs minister, Clément Beaune, rejected the accusation as “unacceptable and false”, saying it was “absurd to play countries and laboratories off against each other”.