In an Oval Office interview last Friday with Politico columnist Roger Simon, President Obama likened the Gulf oil disaster’s impact on the national psyche to that of 9/11:
In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.
Unfortunately, judging from the portions of the interview published by Politico over the weekend, we shouldn’t expect this reshaping to include a carbon fee or similar tax on dirty energy.
Obama did stress the environmental costs:
I have no idea what new energy sources are going to be available, what technologies might drive down the price of renewable energies. What we can predict is that the availability of fossil fuel is going to be diminishing; that it’s going to get more expensive to recover; that there are going to be environmental costs that our children, … our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren are going to have to bear.
Yet there was nothing in the Politico interview to match the seeming commitment to legislating a carbon emissions price that the President made in his June 2 energy speech in Pittsburgh, as reported in the New York Times:
If we refuse to take into account the full cost of our fossil fuel addiction — if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and national security costs and true economic costs — we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future. The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months.
Needless to say, it’s a long shot that renewable technologies will ever be able to undercut fossil fuels in price unless at least some of those environmental and security costs are factored into coal and oil prices, as the Christian Science Monitor noted in an editorial published the same day that Politico interviewed the President.
Brian Hecht says
I’ve been all over your website. I can’t find how and where the carbon tax collected will be used. Many in the world now believe the New World Order will be funded by this tax.
Please any info would be useful. Others now say the BP crisis is the very false flag to bring in the faltering religion of Al Gore? Very clever strategy.
One more thing, I understand CO2 is actually a ground hugging gas. Being heavier than air, why is it that it is blamed for everything bad including Photosynthesis?
Naomi Redning (alias) says
I am unsure how you can still make these claims, when the very foundation of the “science” that you are basing this on has been shown and proven to be false, based on numbers that are skewed, and backed with signatories from scientists that have since retracted their support, or have come out and stated that they did not even read them.
It is an insular world that you are providing your data from, and one that is completely unscientific in its very nature. Science is supposed to be an open, free, exchange of data and ideas. Anthropogenic climate change is not based on any of those principles. It is based on fear, misinformation, greed and more scary power and control.
Of all the articles you site here, not once do you site so called “climate-gate”. When it has been mentioned in the corporate media, it is not given the press that it deserves. Before you ask me to give up to half of my income to this so called “carbon trading system”, I deserve to know the complete story.
The very changes that you ask the western world to do, those people who espouse them will not do at all. Al Gore flies on private jets rather than taking first class on scheduled flights. He claims his usage is offset by buying “green” power. However, if there was a true reason for his “fear” he would do everything he could.
The more deeply a person researches the quagmire that is Carbon Trading and Man Made Global Warming, the more it becomes clear that there is no science behind it. It is nothing more than a new way for a few to control many. It is not for the good of mankind or for the good of the world.
Put plainly, I am terrified, and not of climate change, but of the people who are pushing this agenda.
James Handley says
Brian, concerning collection of carbon taxes, please see FAQ # 15, here:
Naomi, concerning the science of climate change and the urgent need to TAX DIRTY ENERGY, see e.g., Nat’l Academy of Sciences Tells Citizen-Lobbyists: First Priority is Economy-Wide Carbon Price. We agree that carbon trading could lead to manipulation and financial instability. See e.g., Kerry-Lieberman “climate” bill is worse than nothing. Our proposal would increase the price of dirty energy relative to cleaner alternatives, but is NOT a way to increase government revenue. See No Tax Increase? How?
Jeffrey Hyman says
Absolutely tax carbon. Tax it at $10 million per milligram of fossil carbon. (Phased in?) Really at this late date we should just shut down every coal power plant tomorrow and allow complete economic collapse chip to fall where it may. Better that than to allow earth to become another Venus & the end of all life forever. 71 months and counting to the point of no return.
Revenue-neutral?
You define revenue-neutral to mean “that little if any of the tax revenues raised by taxing carbon emissions would be retained by government.” By this definition you may as well call the income tax and any and all other tax as revenue-neutral. The government never retains revenue. To me, retaining revenue would mean the government would have a positive balance in its savings account. We are $14 trillion in debt!
A tax is a tax and revenue is revenue and tax, by definition, means revenue to government.
The carbon tax is essential and of primary importance. What to do with the revenue is secondary. Actually, climate crises is so grave that every decision everyone makes will have to be the best possible decisions for greatest possible efficiencies to allow any hope for long term human survival (if that made any sense). “Revenue-neutral tax” is Orwellian language that tells people you’re more interested in gimmicks to sell a bill of goods then in taking wisest most well considered action.
We need to get republicans to join together with democrats in non-partisan way to fight climate change. I think the flat dividend plan will cause republicans to see climate change as something made up to give democrats an excuse for grand new socialist spending program. I would prefer the “tax shifting” over dividends in order to not further alienate the Right.
Would it be so terrible if some of the revenue were retained? What do you think politicians & bureaucrats would pocket the surplus and spend it on hookers and cocaine? Well then the revenue would be all spent then and thereby render the tax as revenue-neutral.
Softening The Impact
There are more humans on earth than the earth can sustain. Some people are going to have to die. Either that or we can all live at bare subsistence level. Whichever is more feasible.
Here is what I think should be done with the revenue.
#1) Use it to pay off all national debt. If there is any remaining revenue left over then
#2) Use the revenue to reduce or eliminate the income tax & any & all other federal & state taxes as fossil fuel industry is squeezed out of existence.
If there is still revenue left over after this then tax is not severely high enough and carbon fuel industry is not being shut down fast enough, but if there is still revenue left over at this point then you might consider
#3) spend it natural ecosystem and forest conservation programs (lost cause really) and/or
#4) spend it on something like a flat dividend to all citizens.
To me, it might make more sense, I think, for the quantity of such a dividend be linked to something like poverty level rather than linked to the quantity of carbon tax revenue.
Anyway, no one with power is serious about this. Even most people who do care about this do not see the urgency and care more about health care and gay marriage. The only life there ever was or ever will be in the omniverse will be wiped out within few centuries.
If you claim to care about the climate and oppose nuclear power you were a hypocrite.
If you oppose a wind farm because it would spoil the view you were Stupid.