Carbon Tax Center

Eric Pooley: Will Politicians Keep Talking About Climate Change?

11/6/2012 by Charles Komanoff

Eric Pooley: Will Politicians Keep Talking About Climate Change? (TNR)

McKibben on the ‘Hoax’ That Is Global Warming

07/6/2012 by Charles Komanoff

McKibben on the ‘Hoax’ That Is Global Warming (Daily Beast)

Coal’s Century-Long Grip on Appalachia Loosening

05/30/2012 by Charles Komanoff

Coal’s Century-Long Grip on Appalachia Loosening (NYT)

Steve Coll: ExxonMobil’s Support for a Carbon Tax is Real

05/8/2012 by Charles Komanoff

ExxonMobil “Biographer” Steve Coll: E-M’s Support for a Carbon Tax is Real (NYT)

Cheney Secret Task Force Helped U.S. Inch Toward Energy Independence

03/22/2012 by Charles Komanoff

Cheney Secret Task Force Helped U.S. Inch Toward Energy Independence (NYT)

“Surging Seas” Report Re-Invigorates Climate Concern

03/19/2012 by Charles Komanoff

“Surging Seas” Report Re-Invigorates Climate Concern (Climate Central)

02/6/2012 by Charles Komanoff

Study: Media Drive Climate Concern; Gore Didn’t Polarize Warming (Think Progress)

BC’s Carbon Tax Woos Skeptics

07/25/2011 by Charles Komanoff

BC’s Carbon Tax Woos Skeptics (Economist)

Shocker: NY Times ‘Energy’ Special is More Hot Air

04/6/2011 by Charles Komanoff

What a mess is Can We Do Without the Mideast?, the tedious and simplistic headliner of last week’s New York Times special “Energy” section.

Jeff Stahler, Columbus Dispatch, 2011

Times reporter Clifford Krauss expended three thousand words trying to say what Columbus (OH) Dispatch cartoonist Jeff Stahler conveyed in eight words and a drawing: that for four decades U.S. administrations have postured rather than acted to reduce petroleum consumption and oil imports.

Overlooked entirely was the principal reason U.S. imports remain around 50 percent of consumption: the failure to raise taxes on transportation fuels — gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — and instill incentives to move people and goods less frequently, less inefficiently, and for shorter distances.

Krauss ascribes the singular success in reducing imports — temporarily halving them from 1977 to 1982 — to “the efforts of the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations.” Yet what made auto-efficiency and other fuel-saving standards politically viable while motivating millions of households and businesses to economize on oil was the rise in petroleum prices.

The notion of a carbon tax received its token mention, as did the existence of something called climate change. Otherwise, the article was one dreary cheer for dirty energy including shale gas (a winner, “presuming that the oil and gas industry can answer growing environmental concerns surrounding their hydraulic fracturing practices”), synthetic oil from tar sands (speciously, “if the United States does not import that oil, China will”), and even nukes (astoundingly, “In the aftermath of the Japanese disaster, nuclear power will need to be put on safer footing and expanded.”).

You can’t make this stuff up.

Gallup Poll Finds Americans Yawning Over Climate

03/20/2011 by Charles Komanoff

Gallup Poll Finds Americans Yawning Over Climate (DeSmog Blog)