Revista de Ciencia Política https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp <p><strong>Revista de Ciencia Política</strong> <strong>(RCP)</strong></p> <p>Clarivate Analytics. Journal Citation Reports © Impact factor (2022): <strong>1.4.</strong> Ranking (2022): <strong>122/187 </strong>(Political Science) ISSN: 0718-090X</p> es-ES <p>COPYRIGHT NOTE</p> <p> All the contents of this electronic edition are distributed under the Creative Commons license of “Attribution-Co-sharing 4.0 International” (CC-BY-SA). Any total or partial reproduction of the material must cite its origin.</p> <p>The rights of the published images belong to their authors, who grant Revista de Ciencia Política the license to use them. The management of the permits and the authorization of publication of the images (or of any material) that contains copyright and its consequent reproduction rights in this publication is the sole responsibility of the authors of the articles.</p> rcpeditores@uc.cl (Revista de Ciencia Política) rcpeditores@uc.cl (Equipo de soporte, Revista de Ciencia Política) Mon, 21 Oct 2024 15:00:16 +0000 OJS 3.2.1.4 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 The Promises and Pitfalls of Taxing Carbon https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp/article/view/84186 <p>Carbon taxes are an important part of the policy toolbox for addressing climate change. Some economists, like William Nordhaus, have gone so far as to claim that “raising the price of carbon is a necessary and sufficient step for tackling global warming” (Nordhaus 2008, p. 22). Others have expressed skepticism about the efficacy of carbon taxes, at least as they have been configured so far (Green, 2021). Nevertheless, there is broad agreement—especially amongst economists—that carbon taxes are a critical policy instrument for disincentivizing unsustainable behavior and making green alternatives more attractive (Mintz-Woo, 2022; Mintz-Woo, 2024).</p> Ross Mittiga, Kian Mintz-Woo, Yogi Hale Hendlin Copyright (c) 2024 Ross Mittiga, Kian Mintz-Woo, Yogi Hale Hendlin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp/article/view/84186 Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 A Social Contract Cas e for a Carbon Tax: Ending Aviation Exceptionalism https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp/article/view/83152 <p>The social contract tradition’s promise of facilitating just interaction among large groups of strangers remains as salient as ever. Kant in particular recognised that economic activity imposes costs on large and unspecifiable groups of people who cannot be asked in advance for their consent; he concluded that in order to engage in economic activity while dealing ethically with everyone, we require the state and the rule of law to set out the norms under which we can engage in other-affec­ting activity like commerce. In response to the challenge of coordinating the welter of anonymous interactions that modern economic life consists in, contract theory offers the social conventions of money and law.</p> <p>However imperfectly these conventions operate in practice, people rely on them to orient themselves in the world. Carbon taxes have been touted by economists for decades as the most efficient way to send appropriate signals to people about their emissions behavior. The widely underappreciated fact that most fuel for interna­tional air travel remains untaxed—and is thus effectively subsidized relative to the rest of the economy—provides an especially vivid illustration of the necessity for appropriate social conventions to provide the conditions under which economic activity can be undertaken with less injustice.</p> <p>In this paper, I explain why people seeking to flourish together fairly in the im­perfect world we share today ought to support a universal carbon tax with no exception for international aviation. The argument proceeds in four steps. First, I provide a free-standing analysis of emissions behavior at the individual moral level. Second, I offer a picture of ideal and non-ideal coordination based mostly on Kantian social contract theory. Third, I argue that in a non-ideal context, moral signals about right relation offer a coordinating fulcrum around which meaningful if only partly coordinated action is possible. Fourth, I apply these conclusions to the case of aviation exceptionalism, focusing especially on instances of incomplete, overlapping, partly coordinated climate actions. I conclude that these arguments together amount to a case for reversing the Chicago Convention and applying a universal carbon tax that does not exclude international flights, ending aviation exceptionalism.</p> Elisabeth Ellis Copyright (c) 2024 Elisabeth Ellis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp/article/view/83152 Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Why not a Carbon Tax? https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp/article/view/83404 <p>If the world is to overcome the threat of climate change, a price must be set on car­bon. A carbon tax is a means of creating a carbon price, and it is an ideal tax in that, unlike most taxes, it promotes economic efficiency. Yet many countries have no carbon tax. The reason is that there are strong political interests opposed to taxing carbon. I shall argue that these interests need to be appeased by fully compensa­ting anyone who would otherwise be harmed by a carbon tax. This includes the owners and workers in the fossil fuel industries. If a carbon tax is to be successful, it needs to be introduced alongside an appropriate system of compensation. Some of the compensation will need to be paid out of public debt, and this will be feasi­ble for many countries only if they are supported by a new financial institution: a World Climate Bank.</p> John Broome Copyright (c) 2024 John Broome https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp/article/view/83404 Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 Incorporating Equitable Carbon Access into Carbon Taxes https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp/article/view/83154 <p>As climate change mitigation measures, carbon taxes ought to assign the burdens associated with decarbonization equitably and should at least aim to avoid perpe­tuating wide inequities in carbon access. While several popular carbon taxation schemes incorporate “feebate” or other redistribute adjustments designed to offset the regressive impacts of rising energy costs, seeking to neutralize the burden-sha­ring inequity of such policies, they can also contribute to inequities in carbon ac­cess, which constitute a second kind of inequity that offsetting schemes may not neutralize. Attention to resource-sharing principles that capture this latter equi­ty objective suggests a comparison between downstream rationing schemes that allocate carbon access among persons and at the point of consumption, thereby instantiating resource-sharing equity, and the carbon pricing schemes that require extensive modifications in order to approximate such equity ideals. In this paper, I compare the two for purposes of focusing on this neglected second equity concern in the design of carbon pricing schemes like carbon taxes as well as on incorpora­ting other justice-related advantages of downstream rationing into such a scheme.</p> Steve Vanderheiden Copyright (c) 2024 Steve Vanderheiden https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 https://revistaaisthesis.uc.cl/index.php/rcp/article/view/83154 Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000