How unconvinced are you? According to the Stern Report, the cost of continued warming will be 5% or more of the world’s GDP, while the cost of acting will be only 1%. Of course, that only measures tangible goods, so the overall cost will actually be greater.

So, unless I’m crazy (and I admit I’m not an economist by trade or degree), it seems that you need no more than a 1/5 = 20% confidence in the report’s figures before the expected cost of continued warming is greater than the expected cost of acting.

(Yes, that takes into consideration the case where warming will continue with or without human activity. I’ve done the math on this, and it actually cancels out.)

I do not make the case that carbon emissions are causing Global Warming, or even that Global Warming exists even though the evidence is truly convincing. What I think can be agreed upon is that in either case, carbon emissions probably don’t help the enviroment.

Tax Gas, but then cut taxes somewhere else. Maybe income taxes. This way, gas becomes more expensive and as a result, people will have an incentive to use less but they won’t suffer any purchasing power loss. A compromise of sorts, tweaking the market to achieve what everyone wants: Lower carbon emissions without harm to the individual.

I am not convinced of “Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe.” Doubt rises as I move from right to left down that tendentious acronym. If your main support for the harmful effects of a gas tax is to prevent something that I’m not sure exists, we have a problem.

More important, on “Milton Friedman Day,” is my skepticism, noted in the post above, of empowering the government to choose the bad behavior that warrants a tax. I suggest that the government taxes us enough to fund itself but refrains from picking people to punish with extra taxation.