Rep. Stark Introduces Carbon Tax Bill
04/26/2007 by Charles Komanoff
California Democrat Fortney “Pete” Stark, the second-most senior member of the House Ways & Means Committee, today introduced legislation to take aim at global warming by taxing the carbon content of fossil fuels.
Rep. Stark, who has represented Fremont, Hayward and other East Bay communities since 1971, said the “Save Our Climate Act” would establish the United States as a global leader in environmental protection and encourage other nations to take similar action to reduce emissions.
The bill would impose a $10 per ton (of carbon) charge on coal, petroleum and natural gas when the fuel is either extracted or imported. The charge would increase by $10 every year until U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have dropped 80 percent from 1990 levels.
Click here for Rep. Stark’s statement. Click here for today’s story in E&E News, Rep. Stark tosses carbon tax proposal into global warming debate. Or read the full text of the story below.
Rep. Stark tosses carbon tax proposal into warming debate
Darren Samuelsohn, E&ENews PM senior reporter
Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) introduced legislation today that aims to curb global warming by taxing the carbon content of fossil fuels.
Stark acknowledged in an interview he faces a tough slog, but he insisted it should be seen as an alternative to the more widely discussed cap-and-trade approach to reducing greenhouse gases.
“Its viability depends on industry’s concern that cap-and-trade becomes a bureaucratic gaming nightmare,” Stark said. “We’ve had some indication from people who are concerned that the cap-and-trade is just too complex and subject to some kind of politically staffed bureaucracy getting involved in it.”
Instead of cap-and-trade, Stark said an energy tax would be easier for government to administer and consumers to understand. It also would not set competition among different sectors of the U.S. economy that is expected if lawmakers move toward a cap-and-trade bill.
“It might very well become the the lesser of some evils,” Stark said.
Stark’s bill would tax coal, petroleum and natural gas at $10 per ton of carbon content when the fuel is either extracted or imported. The tax would increase $10 every year until the Energy Department and Internal Revenue Service determine U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have dropped 80 percent from 1990 levels — a threshold many scientists say could help to avert catastrophic changes to the Earth’s climate.
Endorsements for a carbon tax come from many notables in the energy policy debate, including former Vice President Al Gore, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Christopher Dodd (Conn.). To industry groups and several leading energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., a carbon tax also belongs in the debate over solutions to global warming.
“If your goal is to put a price on carbon for the goal of changing behavior, it’s a lot more transparent,” said Lou Hayden, a senior policy analyst at the American Petroleum Institute. In written comments to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, API said taxes should be considered along with voluntary efforts and cap-and-trade.
‘Right issue, wrong solution’
Stark and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), the bill’s other lead cosponsor, nonetheless face an uphill climb in winning support on Capitol Hill for their proposal.
“I don’t think there’s an interest in a tax, per se,” Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (D-Calif.) Barbara Boxer told reporters last week. “There’s more interest in letting the free market set a price on carbon through cap and trade.”
When asked about a carbon tax during a February interview, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) said “everything was on the table.” But asked today about the Stark legislation, a Rangel spokesman declined comment.
Also declining comment: a spokesman for House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.).
One top environmental group said it would not back the tax approach.
“Right issue, wrong solution,” said Steve Cochran, national climate campaign director at Environmental Defense. “Virtually no proposed tax has ever been simple, transparent nor predictable by the time it become law. ”
Stark said he has spoken with Rangel about the legislation but has won no pledge it will be taken up anytime soon. “There’s not a politician in Washington who likes to say tax out loud in mixed company,” Stark said.
See below for Rep. Stark’s bill.
Click here for API’s comments to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
[...] Carbon Tax Bill Introduced in Congress. Press Release, Rep. Pete Stark, April 26 2007. “U.S. Representative Pete Stark (D-CA), a senior member of the Committee on Ways and Means with jurisdiction over U.S. tax policy, today introduced the Save Our Climate Act (H.R. 2069). This legislation would impose a tax on carbon-based fossil fuels to slow climate change. ‘Predictable, transparent and universal, a carbon tax is a simple solution to a difficult problem. It would drastically reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by providing an economic disincentive for the use of carbon-based fossil fuels and an incentive for the development and use of cleaner alternative energies. The Save Our Climate Act would establish the United States as a global leader in environmental protection and encourage other nations – most of whom have already acknowledged the climate change threat – to take similar action to reduce emissions. I strongly encourage Congress to pass a carbon tax.’ An initial tax of $10 per ton of carbon content will be assessed on coal, petroleum and natural gas when these fossil fuels are initially removed from the ground or imported into the United States. The tax will increase by $10 each year, freezing when a mandated report by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Energy determines that carbon dioxide emissions have decreased by 80 percent from 1990 levels.” Go to the Carbon Tax Center for more information on the bill. [...]
Pingback by Climate Crisis Coalition - Daily News » Daily News — April 27, 2007 @ 9:35 am
He would have a much better chance of passing this if it were a tax shift rather than a tax increase.
Increase the carbon tax by $10 per ton each year. Decrease the Income Tax and Social Security tax enough that the total taxes Americans pay remain the same.
Comment by Charles Siegel — April 27, 2007 @ 10:15 am
[...] Carbon Tax Bill Introduced in Congress. Press Release, Rep. Pete Stark, April 26 2007. “U.S. Representative Pete Stark (D-CA), a senior member of the Committee on Ways and Means with jurisdiction over U.S. tax policy, today introduced the Save Our Climate Act (H.R. 2069). This legislation would impose a tax on carbon-based fossil fuels to slow climate change. ‘Predictable, transparent and universal, a carbon tax is a simple solution to a difficult problem. It would drastically reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by providing an economic disincentive for the use of carbon-based fossil fuels and an incentive for the development and use of cleaner alternative energies. The Save Our Climate Act would establish the United States as a global leader in environmental protection and encourage other nations – most of whom have already acknowledged the climate change threat – to take similar action to reduce emissions. I strongly encourage Congress to pass a carbon tax.’ An initial tax of $10 per ton of carbon content will be assessed on coal, petroleum and natural gas when these fossil fuels are initially removed from the ground or imported into the United States. The tax will increase by $10 each year, freezing when a mandated report by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Energy determines that carbon dioxide emissions have decreased by 80 percent from 1990 levels.” Go to the Carbon Tax Center for more information on the bill. [...]
Pingback by Climate Crisis Coalition - Daily News » Weekend Summary — April 29, 2007 @ 9:49 am
Tax on GHG emissions is a good idea, if the program is designed well. * $10 per ton of Carbon is too small to bring any substantial change. * And how about greenhouse gases other than CO2?
Comment by qeriz — May 9, 2007 @ 12:23 pm
I agree that $10/ton is too low, but with an annual escalation the numbers get to be respectable in a few years. I also agree that greenhouse gases should be addressed as well. Still, Rep. Stark’s bill is a good start.
Comment by Bill — May 10, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
I haven’t seen any more recent postings, so here is a link to a story on carbon taxes and the global poor.
Comment by Evan — May 21, 2007 @ 7:58 am
Global Warming Rerun
The following quote is regarding the potential catastrophic and
undeniable global climate change; "The evidence in support of these
predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that
meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it." This was a quote
from an article in Newsweek about climate change. The article ran in
April, 1975. But it’s not about global warming, it’s about global
cooling. Remember global cooling? For those of us old enough to
remember the only question was whether we were going to freeze to
death before we starved to death. Change global cooling to global
warming and they could reprint the article today. Back on Jan 2, 1939,
the Times claimed the earth is getting warmer. On Feb. 24, 1895 the
Times published, “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again”.
The story has changed from cooling to warming back to cooling and now
warming again. It’s changed so many times the news media now use the
more flexible term of “global change” in stead of “global warming”.
The latest predictions claim that global warming might well trigger
another ice age. I guess this way they are covered no matter which way
the temperature goes.
I believe that if there is a cause of this hyped up phenomenon called
"global warming" it has more to do the increase in technology
regarding thermometers rather than the carbon emissions created by
man. Sound too simple to be true, hear me out. I started attending
Devry, a computer science school, in 1982. One of the classes required
that I write a paper about a device that would be improved by using
new digital technology computer chips other than computers. I chose
the device of digital thermometers that were replacing mercury type
thermometers in weather stations. I remember the fear at the time was
the more accurate digital thermometers were going to give us a false
sense of security because the more accurate thermometers would make it
appear that the temperatures around the world would be getting warmer
when in fact the temperatures were cooling.
Digital thermometers were implemented over a period of time, mostly in
the 1980’s. They still continue to upgrade stations throughout the
world to this day. Not only are the new thermometers more accurate but
they are electronically read and stored rather than manually read by
humans. Oddly enough if you look at the charts that show global
warming, the rise in temperature started the same year that the
digital thermometers started replacing mercury type thermometers. This
trend of "global warming" seems to increase as the more accurate
thermometers are installed around the world.
In an attempt to compensate, climatologists have altered all the
historical data sets not once, not twice, but five times in an attempt
to offset the more accurate temperature readings. This means that by
their own admissions they have rewritten history 5 times. In all the
articles about global warming have you ever heard anything about this?
Has technology affected climate data? I have looked for articles
supporting this fact, but most of the global cooling articles seem to
have disappeared since we didn’t die by 1985 as predicted in the
Newsweek Article. Thank god for the Internet. I found a referenced
article by NOAA . In order to use the altered data sets to support the
increase in temperature in the 1980’s they have to reference the
supporting article written by Quayle, R.G., D.R. Easterling, T.R.
Karl, and P.Y. Hughes, 1991: Effects of recent thermometer changes in
the cooperative station network, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. Thou a bit
dry reading it’s very revealing. Here is part of the abstract written
in November 1991. Which can be found at
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991BAMS…72.1718Q:
"During the past five years, the National Weather Service (NWS) has
replaced over half of its liquid-in-glass maximum and minimum
thermometers in wooden Cotton Region Shelters (CRSS) with
thermistor-based Maximum-Minimum Temperature Systems (MMTSS) housed in
smaller plastic shelters. Analyses of data from 424 (of the 3300) MMTS
stations and 675 CRS stations show that a mean daily minimum
temperature change of roughly +0.3°C, a mean daily maximum temperature
change of 0.4°C, and a change in average temperature of 0.1°C were
introduced as a result of the new instrumentation. The change of 0.7°C
in daily temperature range is particularly significant for climate
change studies that use this element as an independent variable.
Although troublesome for climatologists, there is reason to believe
that this change (relative to older records) represents an improvement
in absolute accuracy. The bias appears to be rather sharp and well
defined".
Read that a couple of times and let that sink in. It says that the
more accurate thermometers are futzing up the way they track changes
in temperatures in a big way. 0.7°C equals 1.3°F, that’s almost
halfway to melting the polar caps. You will read reports about ice
glaciers around the world disappearing from the World Glacier
Monitoring Service. Of the 67,000 glaciers in the world they only used
30 in their report. That’s called cherry picking. If you read through
the report you will find the Hubbard Glacier is not included. The
Hubbard Glacier, which is one of the largest in the world, is actually
growing at an alarming average rate of 104 feet per year. It has
already compromised a dam and is expected to annihilate an entire
fishing village.
What’s the end game? The global warming end game seems to be Grants
and Taxes. That’s right it all comes down to money, who didn’t see
that coming? This is a hay day for weather science grants. Last year
we, the tax payers, shelled out 4 billion tax dollars to study global
warming. Next you are probably going to see carbon offset taxes being
proposed. They will start off taxing the oil companies, because
everyone will be in favor of that. Eventually it will be a tax we all
pay at the pump. If we start questioning this science now, we can
avoid another bogus tax and go back to the original story of freezing
and starving to death.
Where does the data supporting global warming come from? For the most
part it comes from the United Nations. They started this rerun over a
decade ago. The UN was attempting to force the US to pay countries
like Germany and China billions of dollars for carbon offsets through
what is called The Kyoto Protocol, which neither the Clinton or the
Bush administration would sign. The Kyoto Protocol would have mandated
that the US, which has some of the strictest EPA standards in the
world, would not only have to increase our EPA standards at a great
expense to me and you, but we would have to use our tax money to pay
country’s with virtually no EPA standards to continue their industrial
pollution of the world. It was an attempt to redistribute wealth by
the UN plain and simple.
The UN and Al Gore point to the World Meteorological Organization Data
to support its claim of Global Warming. The WMO sounds like a credible
organization, but you will find the WMO is financed and run by our
friends at the UN. Its entire 1,800 climatologists on staff are paid
by the UN. Furthermore all 1,800 scientists seem to agree global
warming is absolute science and we are to blame. Now when is the last
time you have ever seen 1,800 scientists agree on anything? The first
call should have been to the Guiness Book of World Records.
Recently Terry Goddard wrote an article on global warming citing the
organization called “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.
Sounds official and unbiased, that is until you look at who funds the
IPCC. It is run by the World Meteorological Organization, and who
funds the WMO, that’s right, our friends at the UN again. It seems to
me all these organizations that are claiming “global warming” have one
thing in common; they are all funded by the United Nations. Am I the
only one that finds that suspicious?
Now I don’t think for a minute we are all going to freeze to death,
but I do think that our media is being irresponsible. Are we warming
or cooling? Get back to me in a couple hundred years and we will have
some real answers. If the world is warming is man to blame for it, I
doubt it. The earth has been changing and compensating for changes for
millions of years and will continue to do so for millions more, that
we can be sure of. Should we try and cut back on pollution?
Absolutely, no one is against that. But let’s look at who is pointing
the fingers at global warming and what their agenda is before we break
out our wallets for a new tax.
Recently we had another crisis that was going to potentially end life
as we knew it in the modern world. After billions of dollars were
spent we found it to be one of the biggest cons of modern history
known as Y2K. Y2K reminds me of this Carbon Offsets scam, where you
pay money to a company that will supposedly plant trees or something
like that. For example Al Gore said to make himself "carbon neutral"
he bought his "Carbon Offsets" from Generation Investment Management.
Guess who the chairman of GIM is? The one and only Al Gore. He’s
buying carbon offsets from himself! That sounds like a retirement plan
to me.
Comment by Mr. Meester — May 22, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
Representative Stark’s bill is a regressive tax affecting a poor person or a person on a fix income much more than it affects a more affluent person. Not good to my way of thinking. Also, what would the government do with all of the money collected, fritter it away in another stupid war?
A better idea is to return every dime of the money collected to the citizens equally. If you are a carbon hog, you don’t get back as much as you put in. If you are a carbon miser, you get back much more than you paid. Now why didn’t Stark propose that? Perhaps he was thinking about how he would have fun spending our $$!
Comment by Wendell Laposata — May 23, 2007 @ 1:38 pm
Wendell, We agree that the carbon tax should be revenue neutral with the proceeds returned through rebates or offsetting reductions in the payroll tax or another tax. You are correct that carbon hogs will lose out and carbon misers will benefit. See our discussion of softening the impact of carbon taxes.
Comment by Dan — May 23, 2007 @ 6:56 pm