Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, reveals that he has approached the Biden administration about implementing a carbon tax, and it does not sound like it is really receptive.
Carbon tax
The idea of carbon tax is simply to charge a fee for the release of carbon. It can be implemented in many different ways, including as a direct cost to industries based on the estimated emissions due to their operations, or as a consumer-level tax on products known to burn fossil fuels.
Elon Musk has been a proponent of the idea for years.
He believes that the market generally functions properly if the prices, which according to him are merely information at the core, are accurate.
As far as CO2-emitting products are concerned, the prices are not accurate because they do not reflect the extraordinary appearance of carbon emissions in the atmosphere and oceans, which have a huge impact on the environment and the health of the population.
Some studies have amounted to the trillion dollars, which basically amounts to subsidies for the burning of fossil fuels.
As Musk puts it, the market will make the right decisions if you take into account the cost in the prices of fossil fuel products.
Elon Musk Pursues Biden for Carbon Tax
In a new interview with Joe Rogan, Musk reveals that he has approached the new Biden administration about implementing a carbon tax in the US.
Tesla’s CEO said during the podcast:
I spoke to the Biden administration [about implementing a carbon tax] and they were like ‘Well, that seems to be politically difficult.’
It does not sound like the new administration was underway.
Musk added that he told them he believes a strong commitment to the environment ‘is at least half the reason why they were elected’.
A carbon tax on electricity generated from coal and natural gas as well as petrol would obviously be a huge benefit to Tesla by making its solar power systems and electric vehicles more competitive, but the CEO also noted that it will reduce costs at SpaceX increase.
Musk suggested that the carbon tax be applied to the point of consumption, such as taxes on alcohol and tobacco, especially for electricity and petrol, but he also suggested that it should be a non-regressive tax not to affect low-income people .
This is not the first time Musk has approached the federal government with the idea.
In 2017, it was reported that Musk was campaigning for a carbon tax with the then-new Trump administration.
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