Some people need to scrape together cash to buy enough gas to get to work.  Poor people spend a disproportionate amount of their income on necessities like fuel for an aging inefficient vehicle, electricity or natural gas to heat a cheaply-constructed home, and factory-farmed food created with cheap nitrogen fertilizer.<p>All of those necessities get more expensive with a carbon tax, so we need a way to cushion the impact on those who struggle to pay for the basics.<p>While the impact of global warming does impact the global poor quite heavily (think of places like Bangladesh) it doesn&#x27;t really hurt the poor in developed places much more than the rich in developed places.  I was a lot less worried about El Niño when I rented an apartment, for example.