Give Kids the Money From Carbon Taxes

Children’s increasing prominence in efforts to slow climate change has provoked mixed reactions. Many, myself included, laud recent Time Person of the Year Greta Thunberg and her fellow youth activists as heroic leaders. Others consider them disrespectful pawns. Whatever one’s view, it’s clear that the young are going to be a major part of the climate fight moving forward. But there’s one way they could be incorporated that policymakers aren’t currently exploring and that could make a huge difference both for young people and for addressing climate change. We could decide to make children the direct beneficiaries of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs intended to mitigate the crisis.

Four-year-olds wear face masks during California
 wildfires in 2003; similar difficulties are facing
 many Australians, including children, during the present bushfire crisis.

Joining the two may seem arbitrary at first glance, but there’s a compelling moral case for funneling carbon tax revenue to educational and child-benefiting programs, even before one gets to the political payoff. Children are going to suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate change. Reports estimate young children globally are going to suffer nearly 90 percent of the “disease burden” from climate change in terms of life-expectancy years lost, higher rates of disability, resurgence of previously dormant diseases, etc. This says nothing of the everyday impacts on childhood from having, for instance, far fewer days to play outside due to extreme heat and weather—or the effects of crop disturbance, home destruction, mass migration, and resource conflict throughout their lives.

It seems fair and just for children, therefore, to receive funds to help compensate for these damages.

Read the story from The New Republic by Elliott Haspel - “Give Kids the Money From Carbon Taxes.”