Chris Bosh: The Carbon Tax of the Miami Heat
by Marvin Smith
When I search Google for “Chris Bosh is a…” the autofill feature suggests I complete the phrase with “a dinosaur,” or more specifically, “a velociraptor”. Notwithstanding my usual confidence in Google’s expertise on all things Bosh, I beg to differ with auto fill. I say he’s a carbon tax.
I came to this conclusion while explaining the value of a price on carbon to my uninitiated friends. To accomplish my goal of making the concepts of environmental economics, negative externalities, and Pigovian taxes somewhat palatable, I often use analogies. This is part of a loftier ambition to make environmental issues more relatable to my friends by comparing them to pop culture. Luckily, our shared appreciation of the National Basketball Association (NBA) provided a decent starting point, leading to the following conclusion: Chris Bosh is to the Miami Heat what a carbon tax is to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
As you may know, Bosh is the meme-generating, photobombing, power forward for the Miami Heat known for his light-hearted antics as much as his basketball prowess. A carbon tax is a tax on CO2 emissions generated from fossil fuel combustion; the idea being that companies (and individuals) should pay for the environmental damage they are causing via pollution arising from production/energy usage (from power plants, cars, electicity, etc.) The revenue from a carbon tax could be returned to taxpayers via a reduction in payroll taxes or as a stipend (revenue neutral options); or a portion of the revenue could be used for R&D and subsidies for the development of cleaner technologies.
So how is Chris Bosh similar to a carbon tax?
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Illustration: Josh Mecouth
Marvin Smith is a Stakeholder Engagement Analyst at Future 500, a global non-profit specializing in stakeholder engagement and building bridges between parties at odds –corporations and NGOs, the political right and left, and others – to advance systemic solutions to urgent sustainability challenges.
