Well-known allotropes include graphite, diamond, amorphous carbon, and fullerenes. The atoms of carbon can bond together in diverse ways, resulting in various allotropes of carbon. It is the second most abundant element in the human body by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen. Carbon's abundance, its unique diversity of organic compounds, and its unusual ability to form polymers at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, enables this element to serve as a common element of all known life. Ĭarbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity. Three isotopes occur naturally, 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is a radionuclide, decaying with a half-life of about 5,730 years. Carbon makes up about 0.025 percent of Earth's crust. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent-its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. Then that would mean that more of that burden would be felt by the firms instead of the consumers.−4, −3, −2, −1, 0, +1, +2, +3, +4 (a mildly acidic oxide)Ĭarbon (from Latin carbo 'coal') is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. “What we would expect,” Knittel says, “is as you started taxing gasoline or natural gas, more and more alternatives would come around-more EVs, more heat pumps, more ways to switch from gasoline and natural gas and coal. In this way, a carbon price creates economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions and embrace clean energy sources. Firms would be motivated to buy materials from suppliers who can charge less because they emit less CO 2. ![]() Companies that can offer lower-carbon products will be able to charge less because they won’t need to pay the tax, drawing customers away from their more polluting competitors. Economists predict that, over time, polluting companies will face pressure from their customers to eliminate the extra cost of their CO 2 emissions, Knittel says. The point of a carbon price, though, is to shift the entire market away from emitting CO 2. When I go to replace my furnace, now an electric heat pump is going to look more attractive because I'll get to keep a bigger chunk of that dividend check each year.” “When I go to buy a new car, because gasoline is more expensive I might buy a more efficient car so I can keep a bigger portion of that check,” Knittel says. Then the dividend goes right into their pockets. So, if they avoid buying CO 2-emitting products like gasoline, they avoid the tax. This strategy also gives those who can avoid emitting CO 2 a financial motive to do so, Knittel says: They’re going to get the dividend from the government no matter what they do. Returning the tax revenue to consumers gives them money to pay for electricity or gasoline that the tax may have made more expensive. One way to do this is to give the tax money back to the people through what’s called a dividend, an approach already being tested in places like British Columbia. However, Knittel says, there are ways to structure a carbon tax so that it is equitable and does not place an undue burden on consumers. Drivers have had few alternatives to pumping gasoline to power their cars, though electric vehicles are becoming a more mainstream technology. Most people don’t have a choice about where they get the electricity for their homes, for example. This is especially true in places where demand is inflexible-an economist’s way of describing a situation in which people have few buying alternatives. ![]() In the short term, companies probably would pass on the cost of a tax, which means people would pay higher prices, says Knittel. “Part of the goal of carbon taxes is to have prices better reflect the social costs of those products.” Such a plan could charge companies a fee for every ton of CO 2 they produce, which creates an incentive for them to switch to non-CO 2-emitting energy sources like wind and solar.īut what’s to prevent those companies from continuing to burn fossil fuels and simply passing on the cost of the carbon tax to their customers? And if they do, then what would incentivize the polluters to use lower-carbon fuels? ![]() Schultz Professor of Applied Economics at MIT. “When I put a gallon of gas in my car, it's leading to 20 pounds of CO 2 that go into the atmosphere that no one pays for,” says Christopher R. They could, but companies will still face pressure to clean up their greenhouse gas emissions-and there are ways to relieve the burden for their customers.Ī carbon tax is an economic tool that would put a price on emitting carbon dioxide (CO 2) into the air.
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