T - Carbon Dividend Spec - Michigan 7 2023 CFMP

Spec
1NC
The affirmative must specify the tax rate, the tax base, and how it will be trade law compliant
Metcalf 2009 - Professor, Department of Economics, Tufts Gilbert and David [U Chicago Law], "The Design of a Carbon Tax," 33 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 499
This Paper considers the design of a tax on greenhouse gases ("GHGs"). The purpose of such a tax, which we will generally refer to as a carbon tax, is to internalize externalities associated with anthropogenic climate change. n1 Without a carbon tax, individuals face a distorted set of prices. Activities that result in carbon emissions are relatively too cheap because individuals will not consider the costs the emissions impose on others, including on future generations. A tax forces individuals to consider the full set of consequences from emissions. The theory behind using taxes to internalize externalities dates back seventy years to writings by Pigou, but there is little experience with the design of these taxes and almost none with a "Pigouvian tax" that covers a substantial portion of the economy, as would a carbon tax. n2 There are several existing carbon taxes, but all are comparatively narrow or are otherwise badly designed. n3 There have also been several proposed carbon taxes introduced [*501] into legislation in the United States, but only in skeletal form. n4 Although one can learn from these examples, they do not serve as adequate models for the best possible design of a carbon tax. We consider three central design issues: the tax rate (including distributional issues, the use of the revenues, and tax rate changes); the tax base (including possible offsets or credits); and international trade concerns. Although the theory behind setting the rate is well known -- it should equal the marginal harm from emissions -- there are a number of difficult design considerations. n5 The most significant challenge is the design of a system for ensuring that the rate changes over time as new information becomes available about the costs and benefits of reducing emissions. The central problems in addressing climate change include uncertainty about its effects and uncertainty about the costs of abatement. The best available option is to utilize a crude estimate of the optimal rate and adjust the rate as new information arises. We suggest a delegation or partial delegation of rate-setting authority to an expert agency, which will ensure that the tax rate is reexamined at appropriate intervals and will provide expertise in the relevant parameters for setting the rate. Given the size of the tax and the potential winners and losers from rate changes, full delegation may not be possible, in which case we recommend a number of intermediate regimes. We also discuss the use of the revenues, recommending a revenue neutral and distributionally neutral adjustment to the income or payroll taxes.
Vote negative -- The design of the tax determines the quality of debates – without it the affirmative can no link any argument in the 2AC
Cass 2015 - Senior Fellow @ the Manhattan Institute Oren, "The Carbon-Tax Shell Game," National Affairs no 24, Summer
Simply put, the carbon tax is a shell game. The range of designs, prices, rationales, and claimed benefits varies so widely — even within many individual arguments for the tax — that assessing the actual validity of most discrete proposals becomes nearly impossible. The insubstantial effect on emissions gets obscured by discussions of the fiscal benefits. The negative fiscal effects get offset by claims of environmental efficacy. The tax's simplicity and practicality are touted, even as new complexity is introduced to address each flaw. The same revenues are rhetorically spent to achieve multiple ends, even as the different promises made to each constituency would be rejected by the others.
It also allows us to have comparative debates about carbon tax proposals
Marron* and Morris** 2016- *director of economic policy initiatives and an Institute fellow at the Urban Institute **senior fellow and policy director for the Climate and Energy Economics Project at the Brookings Institution Donald and Adele, "How to use carbon tax revenues," Feb, www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2016/02/23-carbon-tax-revenue/howtousecarbontaxrevenuemarronmorris.pdf?la=en
Carbon taxes are a promising way to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases while avoiding unnecessary costs.1 One key design element of such taxes is how governments use their potentially considerable revenue. Budget discussions often organize them into the three familiar pillars of fiscal policy: new spending, tax cuts, or lower borrowing. From a broader policy perspective, however, it is useful to organize them into four alternative policy goals: (1) offsetting the new burdens that a carbon tax places on consumers, producers, communities, and the broader economy; (2) supporting further efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; (3) ameliorating the harms of climate disruption; and (4) funding public priorities unrelated to climate.2 Each approach reflects a coherent but distinct perspective on how best to use revenues from taxes imposed to achieve climate policy goals. We believe carbon tax discussions will be most productive if policymakers, advocates, analysts, and members of the public recognize this breadth of perspectives and develop strategies for using carbon tax revenues that deliver important social benefits while building the necessary political consensus for implementing and maintaining well-designed carbon taxes. Doing so requires an appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
2NC – Debates comparing taxes good
Specification is necessary to rigorous debates and aff and neg innovation
Burke et al 2016 -Center Fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment (FSI), and Assistant Professor of Earth System Science @ Stanford M. Burke, M. Craxton, C. D. Kolstad,* C. Onda, H. Allcott, E. Baker, L. Barrage, R. Carson, K. Gillingham, J. Graf -Zivin, M. Greenstone, S. Hallegatte, W. M. Hanemann, G. Heal, S. Hsiang, B. Jones, D. L. Kelly, R. Kopp, M. Kotchen, R. Mendelsohn, K. Meng, G. Metcalf, J. Moreno-Cruz, R. Pindyck, S. Rose, I. Rudik,20 J. Stock, R. S. J. Tol, "Opportunities for advances in climate change economics," Apr 15, Science Vol 352 Iss 6253, p. 292-293
IMPROVING POLICY DESIGN. Political resistance to carbon pricing in many jurisdictions, as well as the emergence of a piecemeal approach to domestic and international climate policy-making, means that it is insufficient to study merely how to price the climate externality in a “first-best” world with no other economic distortions. Although many existing “second-best” policies, such as efficiency standards and support for renewables, are cost-ineffective relative to carbon pricing (14), they continue to be implemented for political, distributional, or other reasons. Research must consider practical dimensions of optimally designing and implementing such policies. First, more rigorous ex post empirical analysis of energy and environmental policies will be critical (15). Policies such as carbon pricing schemes, tradable obligations, fuel taxes, renewable portfolio standards, and energy efficiency standards are already in use in different countries and will become more common as countries try to operationalize their pledges in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. But there is often little empirical evidence on individual- or market-level responses to these policies. Existing evidence suggests that behavioral responses to a given policy can drive a wedge between ex ante engineering estimates of program costs and benefits and ex post estimates of true costs and benefits (16). More evidence with rigorous analysis is sorely needed on a range of mitigation and adaptation policies. In the long term, the costs of addressing climate change using current technologies could be very large, which makes technological progress critical. A large body of work on the rate and direction of innovation exists, but research is needed on what combinations of R&D and climate policies shape innovation and difusion of low-carbon technologies (17).
2NC – Tax Base
The tax base is key to upstream v downstream debates
Metcalf 2009 - Professor, Department of Economics, Tufts Gilbert and David [U Chicago Law], "The Design of a Carbon Tax," 33 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 499
With respect to the tax base, we show that collecting the tax upstream would make it possible to accurately and cheaply cover 80% of U.S. emissions by collecting the tax at fewer than 3000 points, and that it would be possible to cover close to 90% of U.S. emissions at a modest additional cost. n6 As the base gets broader, the collection costs increase; the tradeoff between the increased collection costs and the benefits of a broader base determines the optimal tax base. The main problem presented by upstream collection is that a tax credit or offset must be given for fossil fuels that are not combusted. For example, if the tax is imposed at the refinery and some distillates are sequestered into products such as asphalt, the tax will be too broad. We discuss how such a credit system would be designed.
2NC – Trade Law
Design of the BTA determines the leakage debate and CP ground
Metcalf 2009 - Professor, Department of Economics, Tufts Gilbert and David [U Chicago Law], "The Design of a Carbon Tax," 33 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 499
The third design issue relates to trade in carbon-intensive goods. We argue that border tax adjustments for a carbon tax are necessary and appropriate. There is, however, no simple and clearly legal method of implementing a system of border tax adjustments to prevent so-called carbon "leakage," the shifting of production to countries without a carbon pricing mechanism. The key problem is that to set the border tax adjustment, information is needed about the particular production technology and sources of energy used to produce an item. In contrast, border tax adjustments under a value-added tax ("VAT") require only readily available data: for imports, knowledge of the item's price, and for exports, verification of export. n7 The necessary information may be difficult to obtain for a carbon tax. We consider a number of possible options and their legality, recommending a system of presumptive border tax adjustments that allow individual firms to provide evidence of lower emissions. The presumptive border tax can be based on average emissions from the production of like products in either the exporting or importing country. Using information from the exporting country is preferable, but obtaining that information may be more difficult, and using it raises additional trade-related legal issues. n8
2NC – DA Ground
Specification key to aff and neg link innovation
Dotson 2016 -Vice President for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress Greg and Ben Bovarnick, "Carbon Pricing in a Fiscal Context," Jun 29, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2016/06/29/140638/carbon-pricing-in-a-fiscal-context/
These predictions of disaster are exaggerated and are often detached from any specific policy detail. For example, many predictions imply that pricing carbon would have a disastrous effect on the economy, regardless of the amount of value assigned to each ton of pollution; the sources to which the pricing policy applies; the timeline on which the policy is established; the use of any collected revenue; and the ability to adjust or reduce less desirable taxes due to the increased revenue collected. A policy that prices carbon can be crafted in any number of ways—with a wide range of potential effects. Depending on the policy details selected, a price on carbon could either trigger rapid transitions in the energy sector or none at all. It could also raise significant revenue for the federal government or, alternatively, raise none at all. Indeed, during a recent debate in the House of Representatives regarding a resolution denouncing the concept of a carbon tax, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said a carbon tax would have a “devastating impact” on the U.S. economy and would cost the U.S. “more than a million jobs.” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) called a carbon tax a “job-killing scheme.” However, the House resolution in question contained no specific policy details on which to base these harsh critiques. These policy specifications matter a great deal. Increasingly, as governments develop and adopt carbon pricing policies, they are finding acceptable approaches that internalize the costs of pollution. In fact, carbon pollution is already priced in a significant portion of the world without yielding dramatic harm to national economies. In total, about 40 national jurisdictions and over 20 cities, states, and regions on five continents—representing almost one-quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions—have placed a price on carbon. In 2014, 25 percent of the U.S. population lived in a jurisdiction where carbon pollution is currently priced and where nearly 30 percent of the country’s economic activity took place. The price on carbon in California is the highest of any state in the country at almost $13 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent, and yet the California economy is projected to grow at a faster pace than the rest of the United States over the next two years.
2NC – Limits
Design matters – a lack of specification allows shiftiness
Calder 2015 – IMF Consultant Jack, “Administration of a US Carbon Tax” in Implementing a US Carbon Tax¸ Routledge, p. 43
Taxation of US GHG consumption would be more complex still. This is discussed in more detail later under International Considerations. It is important to define policy objectives clearly. If a CT is planned and designed on the basis that its objective is to tax US GHG emissions, and it emerges later that its true objective is to tax non-mobile GHG emissions or US GHG consumption, it may be difficult to re-structure it to meet that revised objective in practice.
Aff - Vagueness = normal means
Vague plan writing is normal means
Rosenbaum 2014 – Prof Emeritus of Political Science @ U of Florida Walter A, Environmental Politics and Policy, 9th Edition, Sage Press, p. 182-3
Goals. In theory, the first step in pollution abatement begins with a determination by Congress of the ultimate objectives to be accomplished through pollution regulation. In practice, these goals are often broadly and vaguely worded. Sometimes, as when Congress decides to press technology by setting pollution standards that it hopes will force industry to develop control technologies not currently available, the goals are deliberately made extremely ambitious as an incentive for vigorous regulatory measures by regulated interests. The principal goals of the CAA are, for example, to protect public health and safety. Vague goals are not as important in defining the operational character of a regulatory program as are the more detailed specifications for the setting of pollution standards, emission controls, and enforcement-the real cutting edges of regulation. Statements of goals, however, may be politically sig nificant as signals to the interests involved in regulation about which pollutants and sources will be given priority and how vigorously Congress intends to implement programs. The CAA goal of establishing national air-quality standards for major pollutants, for instance, was an unmistakable signal that Congress would no longer tolerate the continual delays in controlling air pollution caused by past legislative willingness to let the states create their own air-quality standards. It was also evidence that regulated interests had lost their once-dominant position in the formation of air pollution policy.