MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

V O L 119 | NO. 1 TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM

26 Years Ago

A Conservative Proposition
for Global Warming
In 1990, a Brazilian politician proposed what he presumed
would be a simple way to kick our fossil-fuel habit.

The specter of global warming unites humanity in a common

task. Every time anyone in the world lights a wood stove, or
starts a car, or burns an acre of forest, the atmosphere receives
another dose of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
that threaten catastrophe in decades or centuries to come.
To stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at today’s
levels, the EPA recently estimated that it would be necessary to cut emis
sions of C02 by 50 percent. Unfortunately, such cuts would probably be
impractical, because they would severely constrain economic development.
A more modest target emerged from the Toronto Conference on Climate
Change in 1988. There, the world’s industrialized nations agreed on a goal
of cutting emissions 20 percent by the year 2005. This would not stabilize
levels of greenhouse gases but would at least slow their accumulation.
Since this is a global problem, it makes sense to exact the money needed
from the international community. A levy of ju st $1 per barrel of oil-
equivalent, or $6 per ton of coal-equivalent, would generate an income of
$50 billion per year—more than enough to pay for the necessary measures.
The purpose of the carbon tax would not be primarily to discourage
energy consumption, any more than a highway toll is intended to discour
age automobile travel. Rather, the tax would be a fair way to raise the money
needed to fund a transition into an ecologically more benign economy.
Admittedly, a carbon tax may not be politically feasible in many coun
tries right now. But attitudes are rapidly changing as people absorb the
implications of inaction.
Given the high stakes, an internationally agreed-upon tax is not a very
radical step. Cooperation among nations will be based not purely on good
will but also on enlightened self-interest. The sums of money needed to sta
bilize the atmosphere are not really that large: $50 billion represents 0.4
percent of the gross domestic product of the industrialized world. Spending
such a sum to avoid environmental catastrophe seems a prudent—and, in
the most basic sense, conservative—proposition.”

Excerptedfrom “How to Stop Global Warming,”by Jose Goldemberg, B razil’s

secretary ofstate fo r science and technology, in the November 1990 issue o f
Technology Review.

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