On March 31, 2015, the United States promised to reduce its carbon emissions by 26-28 percent of its 2005 levels by 2025. This was done at the United Nations as a way to reduce global carbon emissions.

Five years have passed, but the US government still disagrees on how to meet its goal.

But there is a solution that has been shown to work, and which has lots of support. It’s called a carbon tax.

How does it work?

The idea is simple: charge people to pollute.

A carbon tax adds a fee to carbon-based fuels like coal, oil, and gas.

Because companies will pay the tax, those that still use a lot of carbon-based fuels will need to pay more. Then they will raise prices on their goods.

Since the prices of goods will increase based on the amount of fuel they require, goods that pollute a lot will become more expensive.

How does that help reduce emissions?

It might sound dangerous to raise taxes. However, more expensive goods are actually a good thing.

Choice is the key word.

If high-emissions goods become more expensive and low-emissions goods stay the same, shoppers will naturally choose the less expensive product. So, by raising the cost of high-emissions products, shoppers will tend to buy from businesses that use green energy.

In this way, we give people a way to build a system that prefers clean energy and helps the US meet its goal.

Will it work?

We can see that a carbon tax works by looking at the examples of several countries that already have one.

Sweden, for example, has had a carbon tax since 1990 and has seen huge growth in its green energy businesses since then. The UK created a tax in 2013, and its carbon emissions have already gone down. Australia also created a carbon tax and saw its emissions go down. Two years later, the tax was canceled, and emissions began to go up again almost immediately.

The US can learn from these countries, and create a carbon tax that will both reduce its emissions and help meet its United Nations goal.