I support James Hansen’s Carbon Tax with a 100% dividend returned to citizens. I do not NOT support Cap and trade.

This is Jim Hansen’s Carbon approach:

A “carbon tax with 100 percent dividend” is needed to reverse the growth of atmospheric CO2. The tax, applied to oil, and gas at the well-head or off-shore unload, and coal at the mine, or port of entry, is the fairest and most effective way to reduce emissions and transition to the post-fossil-fuel-era. It would assure that unconventional fossil fuels, such as oil shale and tar sands, stay in the ground, unless an economic method of capturing their CO2 emissions is developed.

The entire tax should be returned to the public, equal shares on a per capita basis (half shares for children up to a maximum of two child-shares per family), deposited monthly in bank accounts. No bureaucracy is needed.

A tax should be called a tax. The public can understand this and will accept a tax if it is clearly explained and if 100 percent of the money is returned to the public. Not one dime should go to Washington for politicians to pick winners. No lobbyists need be employed.

The public will take steps to reduce their emissions because they will continually be reminded of the matter by the monthly dividend and by rising fossil fuel costs. It must be clearly explained to the public that the tax rate will continue to increase in the future.

When fuel prices decline, the tax should increase, to retain the incentive for transitioning to the post-fossil-fuel-era. The effect of reduced fossil fuel demand will be lower fossil fuel prices, making the tax a larger and larger portion of energy costs (for fossil fuels only). Thus the country will stop hemorrhaging its wealth to oil-producing nations.

Tax and dividend is progressive. A person with several large cars and a large house will have a tax greatly exceeding the dividend. A family reducing its carbon footprint to less than average will make money. Everyone will have an incentive to reduce their carbon footprint. The dividend will stimulate the economy, spur innovation, and provide money that allows people to purchase low-carbon products and a low-carbon lifestyle.

A carbon tax is honest, clear and effective. It will increase energy prices, but low and middle income people, especially, will find ways to reduce carbon emissions so as to come out ahead. The rate of infrastructure replacement, thus economic activity, can be modulated by how fast the carbon tax rate increases. Effects will permeate society. Food requiring lots of carbon emissions to produce and transport will become more expensive and vice versa, encouraging support of nearby farms as opposed to imports from half way around the world.

Beware of alternative approaches, such as ‘percent emission reduction goals’ and ‘cap and trade’. These are subterfuges designed to allow business-as-usual to continue, under a pretense of action, a greenwashing. Hordes of lobbyists will argue for these approaches, which assure their continued employment. The ineffectiveness of ‘goals’ and ‘caps’ is made blatantly obvious by the fact that the countries promoting them are planning to build more coal-fired power plants.

If the United States accedes to the ineffectual ‘goals’ and ‘caps’ approach, a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol approach, it will practically guarantee disastrous climate change. Instead it should persuasively argue that other countries also adopt tax and dividend. The countries agreeing to this approach will also agree that imports from a country that does not apply a comparable carbon tax will be taxed at the port of entry. That import tax will be a strong incentive for all countries to participate.

A carbon tax is necessary but not sufficient. By itself a carbon tax cannot solve the energy problem and allow rapid coal phase-out. There also must be better efficiency standards in building codes, for vehicles, and in appliances and electronics. Profit incentives for utilities must be changed, so as to encourage efficiency as opposed to selling as much energy as possible. These are only examples of the many things to be done. But all of these things will be done easier and more effectively in the presence of a carbon tax.

Indeed, a carbon tax is essential. It is the tool that will impact people’s decisions and lifestyle choices for the short-term, middle-term and long-term, allowing the world to move as gracefully as possible to the post-fossil-fuel-era. In this way we will leave in the ground the hardest to extract fossil fuels as we move rapidly to clean energy sources of the future."

The above idea is one I support -- and it is James Hansen's idea. It needs to go into effect with the Obama stimulus plan, but maybe it will be a separate tax budget item, everyone can see.

Done right, you could get most of a $1000 a month back for a two child family. To start with, and as the tax rises, so does the dividend to you. Tax return for the middle class? A lot better than a rebate, and you can change your fuel to tax-free biofuel, add solar and wind to get further off the fossil fuel grid and watch as fossil carbon vanishes. You would get the dividend until our emissions were reduced to levels that allow CO2 draw-down to safe levels