I would say yes, they have:
-enormous houses (Tom Brady has a huge mansion in SoCal-probably over 30,000 sq. feet)
-enormous engined cars (like the V-12 BMWs)
-extensive air travel-they jet around at the drop of a hat
-private luxurious ships
So, should a special “green” tax be placed upon the rich?
To my mind, it would only be fair that those who pollute the most, pay the most.
On the other hand, it’s unlikely they subsist mainly on beans.
The poor are more likely to:
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Live in less energy efficient houses, with the cheapest (read: least efficient) appliances.
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Drive older cars, which get poor gas mileage already. Add to that, that the cars are probably poorly maintained and therefore add more pollution and use more gas.
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Own john boats with 15 hp outboard motors.
An individual rich person contributes more, but ‘the poor’ as a group contribute more.
Always looking for the silver lining, aren’t you?
I think it is clear that the most industrialized (and therefore the richest) nations contribute more to the greenhouse gases than do less developed nations.
This trend could probably be extended to the most consuming individuals in those nations.
Many of these things already have extra taxes associated with them such as luxury taxes and other extra costs. Not all rich people have huge houses or yachts. Warren Buffet for example just has a modest house and no yacht. He does have a plane because he needs it for work but some regular people travel more than he does.
For cars, vehicle size doesn’t have a direct relationship with how ‘green’ it is. I will pit a V-12 luxury car against a poor person’s old car any day or even a gas powered lawn mower in a pollution contest and the latter two would probably be less green.
This tax is a really bad idea because no matter how green the rich person in question really is, they would have to pay it anyway because of a faulty assumption. It would be the same as adding a tax based on imagined but unproved criteria just to confiscate money. I propose a Grey Poupon tax instead. Rich people eat lots of Grey Poupon and people that eat so much Grey Poupon should be taxed extra.
A single “green tax” based on income is a bad idea. Some people who take home $5 million a year live in 2,000 square foot houses and bank $4.5 million of their earnings, while others live in 10,000 square food mansions and blow $4.5 million on heating their pools, jetting across the world, and clubbing seals. There’s just no way you can fairly assume that someone who makes $X per year will necessarily produce X amount of pollution. In addition, a simple tax on income would create no incentive for the rich to cut back on pollution. “Oh well, I’m paying $50,000 to pollute the environment, I might as well get my money’s worth.” Not to mention the fact that you haven’t defined “pollution” or “green.” There are a thousand ways to degrade the environment besides using lots of gas and electricity. It’s just not that simple.
When you say “the rich,” are you referring to rich people as a group? Or are you wondering about their contributions per person? Because there are very few rich people compared to non-rich people. And non-rich people tend to have more children than rich people. It seems logical that non-rich people contribute more overall to emissions, simply due to the massive numbers of non-rich people (not just in the US, but around the world).
If you’re looking for a per-capita calculation, that’s a completely different animal.
Carbon taxes already exist. The more carbon you use, the more you pay.
British Columbia, in Canada has a carbon tax that’s revenue neutral. I love the way it works.
It’s revenue neutral to the provincial treasury, meaning that for every dollar collected in carbon taxes, a dollar of income tax is reduced. This is done as a reaction, so the income tax reductions follow the carbon tax revenues.
In practice, people who want to pay less tax change their consumption patterns (drive less, use less heat in their homes, etc) to pay less carbon tax. In turn, their income tax is automatically reduced due to other people paying the carbon tax and reducing overall income tax.
Generally speaking, developed countries have more ‘carbon efficient’ economies (i.e. better fuel consumpion in vehicles, less carbon intensive power sources, better building insulation), but have much greater consumption (they drive more per year, they take more vacations, they have more possessions, etc). If the first world could consume like the third world and if the third world could adopt the efficiencies of the first world, our carbon footprint would be MUCH smaller.