New Approach to Climate Change Surfaces in State Senate Transport Bill

With a successful amendment last week, state Sen. Mike Barrett inserted the issues of climate change and carbon-based taxation into the State Senate version of transportation finance legislation.

“It’s great we’re getting new bridges, subways, roads and rail lines,” Barrett said in Senate debate, “But they’re sure to bring secondary effects along with them.  Transportation generates 27 percent of the country’s greenhouse gases, mostly as emissions of carbon dioxide or CO2. Without a fair way to address the climate change implications of infrastructure use, we subvert much of the progress we make.”

Barrett’s amendment maps a way forward, requiring the Executive Branch to study a possible carbon tax, an alternative system that would charge money to cover the climate change effects of using various fossil fuels, but only in proportion to a given product’s contribution to such effects.

“If you find your way to a fuel use strategy that pollutes less – a car or truck with greater gasoline efficiency, say – you pony up less to the government,” Barrett says. “Conservative economists actually prefer taxes like these because they’re market-based, meaning they leave individuals and organizations with choices.  In this case, the choice is to pollute more, but pay more in offsets, or pollute less, and save in charges. Your decision might go either way, depending on the situation, but the idea is to vary the fee to reflect the total cost, environmental and public health effects included, of every option.” 

“A carbon tax takes getting used to,” Barrett adds, “But the necessary carbon content calculations have already been done by other jurisdictions. The biggest policy question is evaluating and then mitigating any potentially regressive impact on incomes. If a state already has a gas tax, though, shifting over to a carbon tax should be an easy call, because you broaden the product base and spread the impact for the same amount of money.”

Barrett’s amendment builds on legislation he submitted earlier in the year with state Rep. Tom Conroy (D-Wayland).

The Conroy-Barrett bill would create an actual carbon tax system for Massachusetts and is under consideration by the Legislature’s Committee on Revenue. The amendment adopted Saturday would not bypass the process. 

“This new mandate directs the Executive branch to scope out the administration and implementation issues and report back to the relevant committees,” says Barrett.