Please find below the
Semi-Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' comments
It's a well-argued pitch for state-by-state environmental tax reform. Since it's such a well-known and commonly advocated idea -- with orgs set up in several states to advance it, and the i732 campaign already in the past -- I feel it should have a higher bar with answers to problems like: what happens when there is federal policy (or are state taxes a barrier to federal pricing policy?)? What of leakage and interstate commerce, and electricity generated in one state and sold in another? What of layering a carbon tax on top of existing regional cap-and-trade schemes? Why sales-tax recycling when state income taxes are more economically distorting?
What happens when it works and the state goes back into the red because it has no revenue from sales tax? Will this be dealt with in the policy - taking a tax away and then bringing it back, without this being clear from the start, is a politically toxic thing to do. Plus I can imagine the years of delay we will have while industries and commentators bog us down in "embedded emissions are so hard to quantify; we need more modelling". While this is not untrue, it will also be a successful delaying tactic, even if we can come up with 'good enough' models in the meantime.
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