Sweden a Bad Example for US on Carbon Tax

Although I agree with some of the message of this article on why gas prices should stay high to help the economy. I take issue with using Sweden as a model for the US to follow.

Is there a model for a carbon tax? Yes, Sweden has had one since 1991. While it has not been perfectly implemented, the Nordic nation of 9.2 million people has seen a 9 percent drop in carbon dioxide emissions – more than required under the Kyoto treaty – while maintaining a healthy economy and becoming a "clean tech" leader. A German environmental group finds Sweden has done the most of all countries to protect the climate. It also helps that the country relies on nuclear and hydro power for all its electricity.

The US has 301 million people living in it and has a landmass that is quite a bit larger then the California sized Sweden. It would be fairly easy to implement a system that taxes carbon emissions when so few people are affected by it. Also with a landmass so small there is hardly any need for interstate trucking or huge railroad networks. If you think about it the Swedes hardly have much of a need for a domestic airline industry as well. A "carbon tax" would decimate these industries in the US because there is no alternative to filling up a train or a truck with non-carbon emission producing forms of energy just yet.

This tax would hurt just about every American since all of these industries would just jack up their prices to cover these new taxes. If you thought food was expensive now wait until the railroad or truck that ships the food to your supermarket gets taxed merely for for the act of moving.

However I think the idea of a Green Marshall Plan where the government throws billions of dollars into green research is the way to go. The government should create a GARPA (Green Advanced Research Projects Agency) and fund it to the hilt and draw the best scientists from all over the world to work in Seattle or someplace and have them concentrate on reducing the need for fossil fuels and provide plans to reduce carbon emissions.

Also there should be a plan in place to replace every coal fired power plant in the US with a nuclear power plant. We should have like 70% of our energy provided by nuclear power by 2020 or some other arbitrary date. That should cut emissions by millions of tons per year. Environmentalists that stand in the way of nuclear power are actually part of the global warming problem since they are just encouraging coal plants to continue on.