Climate Dividend
How it works, in under two minutes:
“The biggest thing we do is put in place a carbon price.”
Mike Cannon-Brookes,
CEO, Atlassian, 7th Nov 2018.
One price on carbon
A rising fee on every ton of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.
Dividends for everyone!
Money raised is returned to Aussie households directly each month.
Border adjustments
To protect our businesses, carbon-intensive imports cost more.
Simple regulation
Regulations and emissions subsidies can be simplified or removed.
“We need to adequately price carbon in our economic decision making.”
Michael Chen, Executive Director,
Head of ESG at Westpac Institutional Bank
10 July 2019
Why we want a dividend
It’s efficient, fair and lets every Australian get involved. 🇦🇺
Efficiency
Putting a price on carbon is cheap and hard to corrupt.
Popularity
The dividend is revenue-neutral, so it doesn’t increase taxes.
Fairness
The average Aussie will be better off under the climate dividend.
Choice
Everyone can make choices about how they spend their dividend.
Policy FAQs
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Other policies like emissions trading, subsidising technology, or paying firms to reduce their pollution end up being more expensive to implement overall, and are easier to corrupt.
This fact has been well established in economic theory for almost a century. In technical terms, the carbon dividend is a Pigovian tax on a negative externality.
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A: Yeah, you’re right, Aussies generally don’t like more taxes.
The climate dividend however works well because it directly shares the revenue with individuals, so most sides of politics can find something good to say about it.
In other countries where price and dividend was correctly implemented, non-partisan support was much easier.
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A: The average Aussie will be financially better off.
It’s really that simple. In the 2018 paper by Holden and Dixon, the benefits were found to be the highest for households in the lowest income bracket. Only households with well above average income would be negatively affected by the scheme.
We like when things are fair in Australia. 🥰 🇦🇺
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A: Check out our info for policy nerds page, it has a (carbon) tonne-load more information with data and stats.
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A: Carbon taxes go straight into general government revenue.
The climate dividend however goes straight into Australian pockets, which allows families to make decisions about where they spend.
The benefits of a clear, legislated market signal for business means we can all gently re-tool towards a post-fossil-fuel economy.
