Another Take on the New Zealand Carbon Tax

TomPaine.com takes another look at the New Zealand Carbon Tax, arguing that it is a good way of rewarding environmentally sound businesses and shifting the tax burden away from small businesses and on to large polluters. This seems to me like an alternative approach to polluter-pays clean up laws (like, say, for MTBE) that our Congress has been reluctant to pass. The writer of the TP piece sees that way the tax is structured as similar to a carbon market, where companies can buy allowances for pollution, but also where the total sum of allowances is capped. This comparison is drawn mainly because a company in New Zealand, under the new law, can renegotiate its Carbon Tax rate with the government if it can show that it is actually maintaining environmentally sustainable practices.