Continued Climate Change Thoughts...

the question that really interests me is since climate change is such a large-scale issue, what are some of the things that should be happening politically, and I have done my best to answer this myself a little more clearly. I propose is much larger action. I believe that the government should be taking a much larger role in regulating carbon emissions. One way I see this happening is through a carbon tax where the government taxes carbon emissions based on how much an individual, or a company emits. I also suggest that the government places a carbon cap which will limit the amount of emissions produced by companies. This to me seems to be a no brainer in the most idealistic of ways; it generates money and controls our carbon footprint. Many may argue that just a cap alone or a tax alone should be sufficient but a cap is much more effective in controlling big companies while a tax will add incentive to individuals to reduce their emissions. This may finally even the playing field for renewable energy. Currently, there is no incentive to switch to clean energy sources because things like solar panels and electric cars are expensive and inconvenient to switch to, not to mention the monopoly dirty energy has in our society. It is time these companies pay for their waste. And the money made off of these carbon taxes? The government can allocate these unused funds towards public clean energy movements. While the smaller proposals are not off track, I believe these things need to be tackled from a top down approach. If the government begins changing policy this will trickle down incentives to avoid any additional fees and in turn start implementing these small scale changes, maybe in a different way, but with more impacting outcomes.