Carbon taxes can attract a lot of flak. On one hand, some groups hate taxes and are indifferent to climate change—in Canada, various provincial governments actively fought (and ultimately lost) against the federal government’s implementation of a carbon levy. On the other hand, some progressives worry that a carbon tax would hurt lower-income people by costing them more money.
According to new research, however, this doesn’t need to be the case. Noah Scovronick, a researcher at the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health at Emory University and one of the paper’s authors, said that it’s possible to help reduce emissions while also implementing a carbon tax that redistributes wealth to people on the lower side of the socioeconomic spectrum.
