In a move sure to set off a tirade from Joe Romm, we have this story from the BBC:
French government backs down on carbon tax plan
The French government has signalled that it is dropping a plan for a tax on domestic carbon dioxide emissions.
Jean-Francois Cope, parliamentary leader of the governing UMP party, was quoted as saying the tax “would be Europe-wide or not (exist) at all”.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon told parliament that the government should focus on policies that increased France’s economic competitiveness.
France had been rethinking the tax after a court rejected it last year.
The Constitutional Council said there were too many exemptions for polluters in the tax plan, and that a minority of consumers would bear the burden.
But President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government had still been planning to push through a revised version of the measure later this year.
more at the BBC here
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I never thought I’d be praising the work of French courts.
“Environmental agencies expressed dismay on Tuesday, while the head of the French business federation Medef expressed relief.
The European Commission said earlier this month that it was planning an EU-wide minimum tax on carbon as part of the EU’s green energy agenda – though the UK opposes such a move. ”
The economic crisis (which is continuing unabated) will hopefully derail all such nonsense, but we in the US shoul expect the current POTUS to stop at nothing. To him, I am afraid, the greater the economic crisis, the more people will turn to goverment. I truly do not think this administration cares at all about the “science” of CAGW, but only about the poptential revune to empower the goverment as the individual becomes smaller.
BTW, can anyone comment on this, as I have not seen it discussed…. According to this…
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2009/12/sea-level-decrease-over-last-6-years.html
The argos system not only shows no warming, but no sea level rise for the past six years. if this is true how do the AGW proponents insist sea level rise is accelerating?
“Prime Minister Francois Fillon told parliament that the government should focus on policies that increased France’s economic competitiveness.”
Looks like Captain Obvious stopped by Prime Minister Francois Fillon’s office and explained the downside of a carbon tax.
What about the French leftists? From what I’ve heard they trounced Sarkosy’s more conservative parties and may have given the French leader second thougts on increasing taxes on all motor fuels.
Haven’t the French done enough to reduce DANGEROUS EVIL CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS by switching to nuclear power? They deserve a break. Tell China and India to cut down on their emissions instead!
The giving up on carbon tax perhaps has something to to with Monday’s story from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8579232.stm
France always does what’s best for France – even though it’s deep-routed in Europe it stil does exactly what it wants. It’s infuriating on one level, as you feel they just ignore everyone else even though they are one of the cornerstones of Europe, but you also admire them for doing what’s best for their citizens. We in the UK do what’s best for Europe despite the fact that half the population want to leave it! A CO2 tax is about to hit car sales here – it’s been called the ‘showroom tax’ and will mean almost a whopping £1000 tax on cars that are the highest emitters of CO2. It’s insane. Unfortunately, we have limp politicans who just see warming as a way of coining something more out of the taxpayer.
“would be Europe-wide or not (exist) at all”.
Is the key message for those familiar with the way the EU works. France doesn’t want to impose election suicide, so it passes the buck to the EU. They’ll happily legislate to impose domestic carbon taxes, probably as part of the new 30% reduction targets. French government can then honestly say they didn’t want to do it, but the EU made them.
That will be not at all then.
It has been all over bar the shouting since the 19th of November.
Some, particularly those on the left of center it would seem, are just a little slow on the uptake.
AGW is a fraud. Forcing honest people to hand over money on false pretenses is mafia style racketeering.
Using fear to coerce large populations to make unpopular political decisions is called terrorism.
Go ahead and role out cap and trade!
Errr, why does the post include an image of a lot of steam billowing from a chimney. ?
At least the Beeb link has an image of cars, well, er, being driven, and so emitting some invisible CO2,
but they had to get one car carrying a pedal cycle didn’t they…
The dominos are starting to Fall.
So goes France, so likely goes Europe (the furthest along the carbon regulating path), so goes the world.
AGW advocates, bend over and kiss your…..goodbye.
It ain’t going to happen — and whether you know it or not — it’s a good thing to.
Just wait and see the UKIP get into power in a few years and then the Eurocrats will have to deal with a British public who dare to make their country great with a libertarian manifesto that everyone in the world will aspire to.
AGW: This is the end all my friends. There is no money for CO2 – toys.
My protest against the French by avoiding French fries has just ended. I also now will resume calling them French fries instead of American fries.
(I like the pic of a smoke stack sending out steam. CO2 is colorless It adds to the drama when greenie weenies use it.)
Why worry? Apparently it worked–what little CO2 reduction mere French mortals accomplished seems to have pulled the earth back from the CO2 “tipping point” since we’ve seen little or no warming in the past 15 years (paraphrasing Phil Jones).
Good work, France! Next time we need to cool the earth, you can legislate it!
(Or did they go too far, considering this past winter?)
Unforntunately we live in the dictatorship called the Europeen union. The Carbon tax may well be dead but to allow the introduction of the money making (at least for the dictators) cap and trade. Allegre (was a minister before the election) appeared on TV here last week to say that CO² global warming was a nonsense and put up a good argument with a greeny-beeny. Whether Sarkozy will want to fight the dictatorship in Brussels/Strasbourg or not we will have to wait and see.
The french like to protest,
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/03/23/bittermann.france.24hr.strike.cnn
Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (13:02:09) :
Just wait and see the UKIP get into power in a few years and then the Eurocrats will have to deal with a British public who dare to make their country great with a libertarian manifesto that everyone in the world will aspire to.
Sorry to introduce a small amount of UK electioneering into this, but UKIP are not particularly libertarian so will do no such thing. The Libertarian Party (LPUK) will, though.
Derek has an excellent point. The white stuff is steam.
Use of pictures tend to alarm the uninformed into believing that the emissions from the stacks is pollution. This normally is a scare tactic used by the CAGW to misrepresent the real world.
The MSM like to confuse the public about CO2 versus pollution.
In processing plants where wet gas scrubbers are employed, the effluent from the stack is steam since water is used to capture the small particles to comply with EPA regulaions. The ones I am familiar with emmit a huge steam plume but the pollution levels are very low unless water vapor is declaired a pollutant.
“A CO2 tax is about to hit car sales here – it’s been called the ’showroom tax’ and will mean almost a whopping £1000 tax on cars that are the highest emitters of CO2.” – The ghost of Big Jim Cooley
The leftist in the Good Ol’ US of A love those type of taxes too. They call them “gas guzzler” or “luxury” taxes. I guess it’s inherent to their cognitive social engineering philosphy. Of course, these taxes mostly hurt the poor working stiff on the assembly line making the cars, which are subject to the tax.
Sometimes these taxes actually get repealed only after the subject industry has been decimated.
“Prime Minister Francois Fillon told parliament that the government should focus on policies that increased France’s economic competitiveness.”
What a concept! Public rage over the lack of economic focus by the political elite has reached a boiling point in both the US and the EU. Politicians ignore it at their electoral peril.
November cannot get here soon enough (for us in the US).
Mais oui. Bien. (That’s about all my french.)
The French generate a majority of their electricity from nuclear, and don’t want to tax CO2. Sounds reasonable to me.
Canada’s British Columbia Carbon Tax is set to increase in July: the climate was too balmy during the Vancouver Olympic Games, likely a proof that the tax was not high enough to prevent warming. LOL
In some ways this is a shame, it would have been interesting and probably educational to watch the French populous display their displeasure at a new tax.
I have to say I do admire our Gauloises smoking, fromage consuming surrender singe neighbours – if they don’t like a law / tax / anything they either [a] ignore it or [b] set fire to something; a most refreshing change from our British way of just sucking it up whilst getting more and more annoyed.
Cheers
Mark
The ghost of Big Jim Cooley (12:41:38) :
“Showroom tax” on cars? The UK is really on the downhill slope as far as owning cars is concerned. And here I am thinking that anything less than 250hp in a small car is underpowered. My little turbo assisted car is underpowered at around 210hp or so and gets to 60mph in a slow 6.1sec.
Carbon? What carbon emissions?