Just as tobacco companies have been obliged to pay the costs of helping people to quit smoking, and BP has had to pay for a large portion of the cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico, it is high time for the “polluter pays” principle to be applied to climate change. Beyond higher taxes on polluters, governments will have to negotiate much higher royalty rates so that less fossil fuel extraction would raise more public revenue to pay for the shift to our postcarbon future (and the steep costs of climate change already upon us). Since corporations can be counted on to resist any new rules that cut into
...more
