Fact Pack

Carbon dioxide is the key contributor to global climate change. Rising global temperatures are expected to raise sea levels and change precipitation and other local climate conditions. Changing regional climates could alter forests, crop yields, and water supplies as well as harm birds, fish, and entire ecosystems. It could also threaten human health due to increased heat waves and the spread of infectious diseases. Storms are likely to become more intense and evaporation will be faster during dry periods, so both floods and droughts would increase. Deserts may expand into existing range lands, and the character of some of our national parks would be permanently altered. 

• Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap solar energy that would normally be radiated back into space, causing average global temperatures to rise.
• Electricity generation is our nation’s single largest source of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
• According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, traditional power plants are responsible for more than one-third of the emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief gas contributing to global warming.
• Fossil fuels are the third most heavily subsidized economic sector after road transportation and agriculture. Our current tax system actually encourages energy producers to pollute. (Environmental Grantmakers Association)
• Seventy-six percent of the energy consumed in the United States is produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. (Pew Center on Global Climate Change)
• Fossil fuel combustion accounts for 98.5% of man-made carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. (Pew Center on Global Climate Change)
• Cars, sport-utility vehicles, and other light trucks emit 20% of the nation’s CO2 pollution. (Sierra Club)
• If U.S. autos were a country, they would be the world’s fifth largest contributor to global warming, emitting more CO2 than all sources in Great Britain combined. (Sierra Club)
• Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere have increased by more than 30 percent during the last 100 years. Roughly half this increase has occurred during the last 35 years. (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• Current projections forecast a doubling of the long-lasting atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by 2100. (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• The global sea level has risen by 4-10 inches over the past 100 years and much of the rise is consistent with an increase in global temperatures as sea water expands and glaciers melt. (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
• According to John Houghton, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, no more than ten of at least 3,000 international climate scientists reject the idea that greenhouse gas emissions are causing the planet to warm. (Source: New Scientist, April 6, 2001)
• Seven of the ten warmest years in the 20th century occurred in the 1990s – 1998 was the hottest year since reliable instrumental temperature measurements began.(Sierra Club)
• Warming in the 20th century is greater than at any time during the past 400-600 years. (Sierra Club)
• Statistics indicate that extreme weather events – droughts and floods – have increased in the U.S. since the 1970s. This spike is so pronounced that it is likely caused by something other than natural variability in weather patterns. (U.S. National Climate Data Center)
• The costs of environmental damage and human health risks associated with pollution are not reflected in current energy prices. This induces consumers to use more energy than they might were they required to pay the full social costs associated with energy consumption.
• The combustion of fossil fuels imposes costs, or externalities, on society in the form of environmental degradation and human health risks associated with resulting carbon dioxide emissions. Free markets are incapable of incorporating all of the relevant social costs of economic activity into the pricing structure.
• Carbon taxes are designed to correct this market failure by enabling the price of goods and services to more accurately reflect the full social and environmental costs associated with their production. A carbon tax is economically efficient because it targets the externality – carbon emissions – directly.
• “Tax shifting” – recycling revenues from an energy tax back into the economy through cuts in other taxes – has little or no detrimental effect on the economy. To the contrary, these initiatives have been proven to boost employment, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and help promote a cleaner environment. (Center for a Sustainable Economy)
• Carbon taxes have been implemented successfully in a number of European nations including: Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland, and Norway.
• Both great Britain and the European Union are considering implementing a wide-ranging carbon tax which would recycle revenues through cuts in payroll or income taxes. (Center for a Sustainable Economy)
• Some 2,500 economists, including eight Nobel laureates, have endorsed tax shifting as a response to global climate change. (Northwest Environment Watch)
• As a result of Executive Orders from the state governors, Vermont and Maryland are studying the merits and feasibility of implementing a wide range of green taxes including a carbon tax.
• A 1997 report by the California Air Review Board recommended that a carbon tax be imposed on vehicular emissions in the state. (1997 Global Climate Change Report: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions Strategies for California)
• A bill to impose a carbon tax on energy producers and consumers, with a corresponding reduction in income and business taxes, was introduced in the 1997-1998 session of the Minnesota state legislature. HF 1190 was scuttled by powerful energy interests in the state despite numerous reports suggesting that the bill would have economically benefited the large majority of the state’s individuals and businesses.