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A Four-E Policy: Energy, Employment, Equality and the Environment

David Gordon Wilson

The underlying principle of the proposed policy is to produce gradually increasing incentives for all parties in the US (and in other countries with appropriate inputs) to produce more “green” energy and less harmful pollution and to consume less fossil fuel. These incentives would come from fees put on fossil fuels and on easily measured (or fairly estimated) emissions. The fees would start at a low level and would be incrementally increased until a committee of Congress decides that the fee levels had reached an appropriate level. The fees would be entirely returned to legal adult (say aged 17 and over) residents of the US in monthly rebates transferred to their bank accounts or, for poorer people, distributed in debit cards. Thus the policy would be progressive, whereas taxation of fossil fuels and of emissions is regressive. The rebates would be included in the evaluation of the cost of living so that there would be virtually no direct inflationary effects.