At the 131st annual Fulton Prize Debate held on May 2 in Gasson 305, Louis Gleason IV ’23 earned top speaker honors and won the Fulton Medal.
The topic for the debate was, “Resolved: The U.S. Federal Government should enact an economy-wide carbon tax.”
In the debate, Christopher Cheek, ’25 and Caleb Wachsmuth, ’24 advocated for the affirmative side and Joyce Hua ’25 and Louis Gleason, ’23 defended the negative position.
The affirmative argued that enacting an economy-wide carbon tax was necessary to reduce carbon emissions to levels consistent with the pledges made by the United States as part of the Paris Climate Agreement. The subsidies and tax credits for clean energy provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, the affirmative claimed, were not sufficient to achieve compliance with the Paris Agreement.
Failure by the United States to meet its climate commitments, the affirmative argued, would erode support by other countries to reduce their emissions. That would lead to dangerous levels of global warming making the earth uninhabitable.
To reduce carbon emission, the affirmative advocated a plan to implement a $40 dollar per ton tax on carbon emission which increased annually at 5 percent above the inflation rate. The revenue from the tax would be rebated as a dividend to all U.S. households.
To promote global compliance, the affirmative plan also adopted a border carbon adjustment (BCA) tax imposed on foreign goods imported to the U.S. if they were manufactured in states who did not take equivalent action to reduce their carbon emissions. The affirmative argued that other states like China and India would implement policies to reduce their emissions to avoid having to pay the BCA.
In response, the negative argued imposing a carbon adjustment tax would undermine international cooperation to solve for climate change by antagonizing China, India, and Brazil. Instead of following the U.S. lead, the negative argued, polluting countries would form their own trading blocs to avoid paying the BCA.
The negative also argued that the carbon tax would fail. It cited studies claiming demand for carbon-based goods is inelastic and argued that producers would just pass on the higher costs to consumers without decreasing their reliance on fossil fuels.
This year’s judges were five distinguished Fulton alumni, including Dilip Paliath,’93 (family magistrate for the Baltimore County Circuit Court), Joshua Marmol, ’99 (Legal and International Sales Executive at GET Group Passport ID), Dominic Cameratta, ’01(CFO, Cameratta Companies), Joseph Bowden, ’05 (Premium Guard, Inc,), and Brendan Benedict, ’12 (private practice attorney, Washington, DC).
In a 4-1 decision, the judges voted for the negative and awarded the Fulton Medal (for top speaker) to Louis Gleason and the Gargan Medal (for second best speaker) to Christopher Cheek.