CARE – Rethinking Climate Policy
Global warming at its current pace will have disastrous effects on worldwide ecosystems, human health and well–being. It is therefore paramount to develop suitable political instruments in order for the EU to reliably fulfill it’s ambitions towards the Paris Agreement. The EU needs to take care of our planet: Implement CARE, the Carbon Abatement, Reasserting Equity Program. The CARE Program incorporates: (1) environmental challenges posed by global warming as addressed in the Paris Agreement, (2) an economic solution, that implements a uniform carbon tax covering all emissions and (3) a social design that reasserts social equity in the form of an equal per capita carbon dividend. The recent position papers by renowned German research institutes Böckler, DIW, FÖS and MCC fail to adequately address these three issues. They are critically assessed in this paper. An answer to our climate crisis needs to encompass these three important dimensions, the environmental, the economic and the social, since it is only in this way that a holistic solution can be found to this central problem of our time. Let Europe lead the way!