Author Archives: DeniseSiede138

Why Alaska might seriously consider a carbon tax

Alaska isn’t exactly the first state you’d expect to embrace a price on carbon. Yet the state legislature will likely be weighing one after the November elections. When carbon taxes keep getting scrapped by blue states like Washington and Oregon, why would such a plan succeed in Alaska: a red state where oil companies are a major economic lifeline?

Necessity is one explanation. Alaskans have been at the forefront of climate change for decades now, facing melting permafrost, coastal erosion, and rising seas. And dealing with these problems — building new infrastructure and relocating communities, for instance — is expensive. By 2030, climate change could add another $3 to $6 billion in costs to public infrastructure alone. A carbon tax could help pay for the state’s ballooning climate costs.

Last year, Governor Bill Walker, an Independent, established a group to figure out how to address the state’s climate issues. The Climate Change Strategy and Climate Action for Alaska Leadership Team — a group of 20 scientists, policy wonks, indigenous representatives, and oil executives — recently released a draft proposal. Lo and behold, it includes a carbon tax.

The plan is expected to reach Walker’s desk in mid-September, marking the first time the state has seriously considered a price on carbon. The details of the proposal are vague at this point, and it’ll be some time before discussion about the tax really ramps up. The governor isn’t expected to throw his support behind a controversial tax during election season.

The leadership group wants a price on pollution for practical reasons: Alaska doesn’t have a lot of revenue. With just 700,000 people, it’s one of the least populous states in America. And its residents don’t pay income or sales taxes.

If Alaska manages to implement a carbon tax — and that won’t be easy — it could tackle two huge problems at once, says Chris Rose, a member of the leadership team and the founder of the Renewable Energy Alaska Project.

“Maybe a carbon tax can be the tax that we employ to deal with our revenue shortfall and climate change at the same time,” he says.

A solid majority of Alaskans, 63 percent, said they support taxing fossil fuel companies while equally reducing other taxes, according to data released this week from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. That’s not precisely the kind of proposal Rose’s team is cooking up, but it indicates that Alaskans have something of an appetite for a carbon tax.

Rose is also buoyed by the fact that the state’s residents are used to the idea of paying for pollution. Alaskans have to take either their own garbage to the landfill or pay out of pocket for a company pick it up.

“Likewise,” he says, “I don’t think people would have as much objection to paying a fee for emitting carbon dioxide if they really understood that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change.”

Next up for the Climate Change Strategy and Climate Action for Alaska Leadership team? Educating the public about the benefits of a carbon tax. That way, when the Alaska legislature starts considering one, its constituents know what’s at stake.

Taken from:

Why Alaska might seriously consider a carbon tax

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Alaska might seriously consider a carbon tax

Are We Really in a Housing Bubble?

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Are we in yet another housing bubble? The Case-Shiller chart I posted yesterday suggests we probably are: housing prices may not be at their previous 2006 peak, but they’re nonetheless far higher than their historical average.

But wait. What about interest rates? Low interest rates mean lower monthly payments, and that’s what really matters, not absolute prices. This is true enough, but how low are real mortgage rates? That is, mortgage rates adjusted for inflation. This low:

Historically, the average real 30-year fixed mortgage rate is a hair above 4 percent. Right now it’s at 3.5 percent. In other words, mortgage rates aren’t really all that low. This suggest that historically high home prices also mean historically high mortgage payments.

But there are other ways of looking at this. For example, total mortgage debt as a percent of GDP has retreated to 2002 levels and isn’t rising. Mortgage debt service as a percent of household income is low and declining. Both of these are good signs.

On the other hand, these are aggregate numbers that include everyone with a mortgage. It would be better if we could see them just for new buyers, but I don’t know where to find that. And if you look at the price-to-rent ratio, which is usually a good harbinger of housing bubbles, it’s been rising since 2012 and is now at 2004 levels. That’s not so good, and if we get to 2005 levels we should start being scared.

As usual, there are a lot of ways of looking at this, which is why different people will give you firm but very different opinions about home prices. Personally, I think the evidence suggests we’re in another bubble. But I might be wrong.

Jump to original: 

Are We Really in a Housing Bubble?

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Are We Really in a Housing Bubble?