French Revolution! Carbon tax ruled unconstitutional just two days before taking effect

Vive la France!

I’ll raise a glass of Chateau Margaux to that!

God bless the French for seeing the light of reason. Plant trees. Don’t tax the people to death. Tea Party America!
Que Dieu bénisse les Français pour voir la lumière de la raison. Planter des arbres. Ne pas taxer les gens à la mort. Tea Party America!

Well done France (you have no idea how hard it is for an Englishman to say that).
And a very happy New Year to you Mr Watts and to all your team and readers.

The French are already paying about (USD) $7 per gallon of gas, about 70% of which is already tax. Since it takes roughly 100 gallons to create a ton of CO2, the added tax would hardly be seen. Fill up with 20 gallons and the cost would increase from $140 to $144. This must be a real hard blow right to the center of the forehead of the French alarmists.

Let me get my LOL!!!!!! in here!

Great news, there’s still a 4c per litre carbon tax on diesel and petrol here in Ireland though :\
Off topic, wired’s latest issue has a story about a study of researchers “Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up” that might help explain the AGW heavyweight’s behaviour: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/
“The scientists had these elaborate theories about what was supposed to happen,” Dunbar says. “But the results kept contradicting their theories. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to spend a month on a project and then just discard all their data because the data didn’t make sense.”
Awful to waste a month, but 25-30 years would be unbearable.

OK my bad, if I had of scrolled up I would have seen that it did in fact go through he he

President Nicolas Sarkozy admitted that it was just a tax. He said ” We have taxed labour, we have taxed capital, now is the time to tax energy”. The tax is needed to balance the budget. It was supposed to be agreed on by all countries of the world so that no country was disadvantaged compared to another which did not implement the tax. Global warming, climate change, the IPCC and all the charade.

Merci bien mes amis et bonne année.

I think this is the time for a rerun of the Wattswupwithat song with Al Gore.
I hope everyone realizes why national sovereignty is important. In the future a more centralized EU government would simply bypass local judiciary.

Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L’étendard sanglant est levé
Entendez-vous dans nos campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras.
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes!
Aux armes citoyens
Formez vos bataillons
Marchons, marchons
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons

What’s with the little smiley face at the bottom of the page in the bottom left hand corner? I just noticed it! lol

I think I’m going to buy some French Brie and Champagne to celebrate.

Yes, thank you France. Please accept this proxy application for the majority of our Congress for special education economic sense 1A.

Any French legalists out there who can let us know to what extent the court’s decision was based on the law (as described in the article), and to what extent a response to broader policy concerns hidden under the legal basis for the decision?
That is, was it a black-letter law decision or was it a response to a changing of the zeitgeist covered by legal reasoning?
Forgive my cynicism about Court reasoning; I’ve watched too many courts too long to have any other response.

Anyone remember the third verse of La Marseillaise?
Amour sacré de la Patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs
Liberté, Liberté chérie,
Combats avec tes défenseurs ! (bis)
Sous nos drapeaux que la victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents,
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire !
Vive La France!

I do believe that the ETS, which was basically a carbon tax, was defeated in Australia earlier this month…Vote Quimby

It was indeed VQ. But Kevin Rudd is persisting and it will be brought before the House again in February.
Tony Abbott, new leader of the Opposition severely wounded the beast when he stood up to it and convinced the wavering members of his party to follow when it came to a Senate vote earlier this month. The Greens also voted it down because for them it did not go far enough. So PM Rudd is now caught between a rock and a hard place.
For Round 15 in February Rudd has the option of going towards the Greens but after Copenhagen that would be political suicide so it looks like that he will just try to keep it alive without losing face. This will be a very hard task even though he will have the MSM on his side beating up every extreme weather event and trying to assassinate Tony Abbott’s character.
But what has happened in France will further boost Abbott’s chances. Keep predicting snow for Paris Piers and Vive Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and Vérité!!!!!

Do you realize how fast this news shot across the Atlantic without the help of Reuters and AP?

“There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
de Tocqueville was referring to the US at the time, but thank goodness for France’s Constitutional Council. They have, at least for a time, put a screeching halt to this madness.

Stubborn, arrogant, self-willed, France. Vive liberté, égalité, fraternité!! It is likely that rational scientist Claude Allegre had some influence. Sarko should make him Minister du Environment tomorrow.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388

At last, I can eat cheese again.
And, right from Ricks:

Excellent news!

No matter the nature of the noises politicians (of any country or ideology) make, it has never been about the environment, global warming, or saving the planet. Politicians and environmentalists will always rally round each other, considering the other a conveniently useful fool serving their purpose — for one, getting the industrial infrastructure torn down; for the other, raising taxes. At the moment, it is all about a €4 billion budget shortfall that France needs to fix. And since AGW is the Mother Lode of all potential revenue streams, French citizens still can look forward to getting hit. It’s just going to take a more creative approach, but the politicians will figure out a way to get the money they want.

Unfortunately anna v has hit the real problem here. This is about money and taxation is the opiate of governments. It’s interesting that the reaction of the French government revolves around where they will make up the 4 billion euros this tax would have brought in!
Mailman

The wealthy elite think they can slip through our fingers. We are everywhere. We are the world wide web. Nothing slips through our web. In the immortal words of George Carlin , not they anymore they but, “We Got Them By The Balls”.
YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS – George Carlin

Bad news for Sarko. €4.1Billion short!!! Try standing THAT one on a box for the cameras!
But, seriously. He should have a word with his mate Gordo.
Mr. “Flat Earth” Brown and little Ed Milipede conjured up £6 Billion (they haven’t got) to throw on the table for the “poor” at Copenhagen. Another €4.1 Billion for our “colleagues” in France – surely, no problem!
And there are plenty of precedents for the UK taxpayer bailing out France, believe me!
Meanwhile, much MUCH more on our favourite Railway Engineer and his little business undertakings on:-
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2009/12/pachauri-teri-europe-enigma-part-1.html
Keep following the money!

An Englishman I may be but I love France and the attitude of their people to their Government.
Even though we occasionallly get caught up in the politics with the ports being shut et al.
Their healthy disrespect for officialdom is to be admired………unlike the sheep in my own country.
Brainwashed Brits simply can’t get their heads around that fact that AGW is a scam.
They think we must be doing “something” to the climate therefore “something” must be done…..try explaining about even part of what we know.
They have been brainwashed into believeing that the BBC are the arbiters of truth and justice, everything you say has to be balanced aginast the BBC.
It beggars belief.

And don’t expect the French to be more open to a CO2 tax in the weeks ahead as temperatures of -10°C are forecast for Paris next week. Sacré bleu!

Mom2girls
“[snip per P Gosselin’s attention]”
What are you? Some kind of …..?
You’re bluntly implying an offensive ethnic slur that should have been deleted. It’s not at all funny.
There are other similar ethnic slurs used for Mexicans, Jews, Chinese, etc. that also would not be tolerated in this forum. The one above, plainly implled, should have had no place here.
I hope you are not teaching your two girls such things.
MODERATOR – ARE YOU ASLEEP!
Reply: Actually I was at the movies, being brainwashed by another fall from Eden movie, but this shall now be rectified. ~ ctm

I swear, not even a year ago things were looking utterly hopeless. But now, things are getting more awesome, and seemingly by the minute!
John in NZ (23:49:02) : “I view this as a great victory for sanity. Short lived though it may be.”
Why do you say that?

Don’t celebrate victory yet: the french government said that it will present a new law on 20th January. Even if this carbon tax is very unpopular in France, Sarkozy is very stubborn and he will do everything he can in order to impose this tax.

Strangely, the Beeb has reported the ruling.
“The tax was aimed at encouraging consumers to use less oil, gas and coal. It would have meant a rise in the price of fuel for cars, domestic heating and factories.
But it did not apply to the heavy industries and power firms included in the EU’s emissions trading scheme.
Most electricity in France – excluded from the carbon tax – is nuclear-generated.
According to France’s Le Monde newspaper, the tax would have generated about 4.3bn euros (£3.8bn) of revenue annually.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8434505.stm

Small correction: Deustch-Welle –> Deutsche Welle

Methinks people here are opening their bottles of champagne too early…
The Problem:
“The Council found that these enabling provisions were unconstitutional on two grounds: that the exemptions contained within the provisions for a carbon levy vitiated the primary declared purpose of the levy, to combat carbon emissions and hence “global warming”; and that the exemptions would cause the levy to fall disproportionately on gasoline and heating oils and not on other carbon emissions, thereby breaching the principle that taxation should be evenly and fairly borne.”
The Reaction (by the brainwashing MSM & brainwashed public):
“The tax must be even and fair!”
The Solution:
“Tax ALL carbon emissions – tax ALL forms of human life – NO tax exemptions…”
And BTW – this technique of hegelian dialect is being used in a democracy constantly…

Sadly there is no written constitution in the UK.
The government opposition is too weak to try the French gambit.

“France’s Constitutional Council has struck down a carbon tax that was planned to take effect on January 1st. The council, which ensures the constitutionality of French legislation, said too many polluters were exempted in the measure and the tax burden was not fairly distributed.”
Magic. Absolutely magic. What riles me no end about the proposals to tackle climate change and the vested interests here and there that grab themselves exemptions. If carbon is a threat then laws taxing carbon emissions *must* be applied evenly or they are nothing more than a redistribution of wealth by force that is either socialist or corporatist depending on the direction the money goes. It cannot be founded on science if polluters get exemptions.

A few years down the line, when we are in the depths of a severe case of climate change (the sort you get on the downswing of a climate cycle), do you think they will be encouraging the generation of CO2 with a carbon debit scheme or do you expect by then they will have worked out that CO2 is not the culprit?

volauvent (02:17:52) :
Unfortunately all of you are wrong.
The tax has been cancelled because there was too many people and companies exempted. So a new project could be even more dangerous for the french industry and for the consumers. And the government could hardly definitively cancel the tax because of the previous positions of Mr Sarkozy on the subject.
You may be right. But the momentum is shifting away from AGW alarmism. It gives extra time to re-evaluate the scientific basis of global warming hysteria.

It is important to have a Constitution. Its meant to protect the citizens against the elected politicians every day foolishness.
But who could predict it would be neccessary to protect humans against AGW ( Al Gore Warming ) ?
I think Anthony needs to post the sequence of Donald Duck in 1952, when he found the helmet that made him King Of America. And the only thing he wanted to own was the air.
A sigh for a cent, a cough for a dollar. ( Or something like that) Oh that Donal Duck. He was truly a visionaire.

It is Pierre-Gilles de Gennes　professor’s indeed home country.
May the Physics be with you.

I don’t want to foodfight here, but Galen’s statement is far from accurate.
Actually it was the Brits, Canadians, Irish, Poles, French, Russians, Dutch, etc., etc. and the US that beat the Germans. LB’s point has merit.
I’m American and I do find the post WWII military-venture track record of the US a bit sub-par. Mind you not because of the men and women in uniform, but because of the lousy Washington internal politics.
I think all this French bashing is ridiculous. Look, they at least got it right on this particular CO2 issue. Give em credit when due and leave the insults out.

For those who think that it will give some time to raise scientific arguments in order to kill definitively the tax, I mention that a new project could be ready to be voted in january, the 20th.
The french government has been completely trapped by this decision; the main argument of the council is that industry under the european emissions quotas market would not be exempted. So if the government wants a tax (and it will be very hard for Mr Sarkozy to abandon) they will have to tax the cement, steel , chemical industry; at 17 euros per ton, it would kill these activities within 5 years.
The battle will be very hard in the next months.

Australia signed Kyoto because we were ahead of Kyoto Targets and the [snip] as major players were talking trade blocades, fines and so on.
[snip]

Too early to rejoyce. A modified version of the bill will go to Parliament on 20 January.
The French State is in desperate need of funds and it will not give up on this one. To give some background, for any of you who read a bit of French, a forum thread about all the taxes created or increased since N. Sarkozy came to power :
https://www.liberaux.org/index.php?showtopic=35383
We also relay the best of WUWT :
https://www.liberaux.org/index.php?showtopic=29890

Hi
I am French.
There are a few mistakes in this article:
“the tax was steep: 14 euros per ton of carbon dioxide (USD $20).”
17euros, not 14 (you get it right later in the article).
“France’s Constitutional Council says the country’s proposed carbon tax is illegal. ”
No, they clearly say the tax is legal, only the way it was put into action here was not: too many industries are exempted therefore therefore it is unconstitional for the two following reasons
*The tax’s goal is to reduce emissions but because of the exemptions it will not therefore it goes against our “environment chart”
*So many exemptions go against any kind of fairness (“égalité devant l’impot”).
“The government now has to find a way to come up with about 4.1 billion euros in revenue that was expected from the tax.”
The government wasn’t gonna earn any money with this carbon tax, it was supposed to be compensated by a lowering of the income tax.

@ Peter of Sydney (00:55:01) :
Whilst I agree with your observations regarding the media and internet censorship, I believe these points actually reinforce rather than detract from my argument.
We have the facts, there is no requirement for us to be defeatist. The alarmist argument, being devoid of any logic is slowly retreating up it’s own anal cavity. Lets all help it along, which brings me to:
@Michael (00:39:09) :
Where do I sign up!

I have not seen a comment on this aspect. The EU has made it clear that they were taking action on taxing carbon in order to be leaders. As Gordon Brown has stated very eloquently, the probelm is so serious that someone needs to lead. Yes, it is short term pain, but it is for long term gain. The EU was prepared to withstand the short term pain, because if they led the rest of the world will follow.
What Copenhagen has made abundantly clear is that the rest of the developing world is definitely NOT going to follow. As to the rest of the developed world, they are, to say the very least, very hesitant. Australia has shown it’s reluctance; as has Obama with his eye on the US Senate. Canada is not pressing for a carbon tax.
I am sure it is too much to hope for, but maybe it is just possible that the French will realize that no nation outside the EU is going to follow an EU lead on a carbon tax, and abandon this stupidity altogether.

“The government now has to find a way to come up with about 4.1 billion euros in revenue that was expected from the tax.”
Revenue generation, not climate change. Do all politicians think the people they serve are blind?

Tamara (06:22:37) :
I believe the president has admitted Revenue generation and the French are politically very sophisticated.

Here’s a bit of info that may be worth paying attention to: http://www.abanet.org/environ/calendar/pdf/Copehagen.Flyer.Environ.CME.pdf .
The ABA is hosting a “de-brief” of Copenhagen next week, so we may get some clues regarding future legal maneuverings. From: http://www.abanet.org/environ/
“Join our panel of recognized climate change thought leaders from private practice, government, policy institutes, and industry for a one hour teleconference as we distill what was accomplished during those chaotic two weeks, what critical issues remain unresolved and their potential outcomes, and the impact of Copenhagen on both industry and the US political process. Each of our panelists will have attended COP15, providing the audience a unique perspective and first hand account. Time will be set aside during to the latter part of the teleconference for audience members to obtain answers to their own questions from the panelists.”

I am sure France had already spent the money.
America faces the same when the EPA starts regulating CO2. How do they decide who is worthy and who is unworthy?
will the tax wild animals if they tax livestock? Your cat will require a tax stamp in its collar.

We in Minnesota are already paying carbon taxes starting this year. Now that Global Warming was discovered to be a fraud we should try to sue Al Gore and his cronies for racketeering, and get those laws overturned using the courts.

There is nothing to be lamented about a legal ruling saying that a tax is too limited in its application – remember that in any democratic (or semi-democratic) society the easiest way to pass any tax bill is to make sure it only applies to a portion of the population while you exempt as many powerful players and interest groups as you need for support. They of course will almost always support any tax that applies only to “other people” and not to them – such a tax is even better than a direct government subsidy since it’s hidden.
So what happens when their is a ruling that says a tax is not applied widely enough? All the powerful interests who supported the tax because they had managed to wrangle exemptions for themselves all of a sudden see the tax with new eyes, the eyes of people who will be paying for it. Their support vanishes overnight, and with a widely based tax it quickly becomes impossible to muster majority support.
Not to mention that after the failure of Copenhagen, every industrialist in France now realizes that they will be burdening their own ability to export while China and India are able to produce whatever with no restrictions or extra costs at all. And they cannot do unilateral trade restrictions since they are bound by the E.U.
Odds are that this tax is dead. Perhaps something small and ineffective will be passed in it’s place just to allow Sarkozy to save face, but even that is questionable.

“stephen richards (01:01:43) :
The decision was based on the egalité pârt of the constitution and is very tenuous. It will be re-written and presented to the parlement by Jan 20. ”
Good point, Stephen. The AGW Titanic will be hard to steer out of harm’s way.

Wow, I didn’t realize that the French constitution was superior to the U.S. constitution! If the U.S. constitution had a provision for fair and equitable taxation, the personal income tax would be dead meat!

Congratulations to the France’s Constitutional Council!
I am pleased to see that the spirit of democracy and personal freedom is still alive in France.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel

Again the moderator has fallen asleep [snip]
[someone else took care of responding to your concern before me. Your concerns are one hundred per cent valid and I apologize for any such mistakes. While it’s no excuse, try and realize that moderators plow through scores of posts at a time scanning quickly. Certain types of things may be missed if they are not a common problem. ~ ctm]

This is the second time today.
The first time around I was more polite.
So I hope you can understand my frustration.

Seems the guillotine came from Yorkshire:
http://www.yorkshirehistory.com/gibbet/index.htm

I think all this French bashing is ridiculous.
Yes on a higher level, except that what people like me are responding to is much more about American politics and propaganda memes, where the alleged “Progressives” here are always trying to claim “The French” are just oso sophisticated and so on, and we here in America are therefore inferior and must become more like “The French”.
Most of the “Progressives” here don’t even know that France occupied Viet Nam for about 150 years and were finally ignominiously defeated by Ho Chi Minh, even though the U.S. was strongly backing France. That’s partly how we in America got into Vietnam thereafter. They don’t know about France’s use of Nuclear Energy. Lordy, they don’t know much of anything at all about France, including the Vichy and the French resistance.
So “we” then take to bashing “The French” as a political tactic, too, just to tear down American “Progressives” and to defend the America the “Progressives” here want to destroy. We take them on at the bigoted level of their own fantasy meme and “win” even at that level, that’s all.
It’s still amazing, but the “Progressives” here often only live at the superficial level of these fantasy memes, so it’s easy to defeat them – not that a lot of them notice it much because they just then immediately turn to other fantasy memes and infantile tactics more appropriate for deranged two year olds, but it’s good for one on one interactions with these physical “adults” and because we simply must play the political game too. Otherwise, who in their right mind would want to do it except as a kind of humorous jousting?
And “Progressivism” is still a big force for evil, so we keep “bashing” where appropriate on that low level. A lot of people read this blog. It’s never over.

Carbon tax, is a tax on oil and also everything that is made with or transported with oil. Particularly food production. Oil to run the tractors- to plant and harvest, oil to make the fertilizer, oil to deliver the food. As we have just seen, as oil goes up, so does the price of food, and everything else follows.
This is what government desperately wants now: Inflation. Why? Because they want the value of the bank’s mortgage holdings to go back to 2008 levels so that they do not have to declare the banks insolvent.
It doesn’t matter if the science is right or not.
Citizens should be outraged. The people who worked hard and saved money will find their money evaporated by inflation. The bankers who overextended credit and committed fraud, in the US, England, France and every where else will get away with the biggest scam in history.
I say hurray for any delay of this tax. It buys time to educate the people.

If they want to get people to drive electric cars, then mandate electric cars. Or just mandate electric cars in big cities. Or give big tax rebates for electric cars in big cities.
If they want people to pay for their excesses, then have a luxury tax, not tax air and food, the necessities of life. Come on peasants. We have seen this before.
If they want to tax manufactures.. I would think long and hard about that. We have already exported most of our manufacturing, and pollution, to China. We have no economy left. Don’t you get it? We produce nothing anymore. There is nothing left but the Ponzi stock market and consumption.

Hear that noise? That is the sharpening of my pitchfork.

People in France, Write to your representatives. Send them quotes form this web site. You, and you, and you, can make a change. There was a delay. There is a little more time. Talk to your friends. Turn the tide.

How does that wish e-mail get so widely circulated? Send this to 10 of your friends and your wish will come true.

r (11:15:45) : What business is left then, only Kool Aid manufacturing?… or is it imported from China too?

Hate to rain on the parade but here in the land of OZ our illustrious leaders KRudd and Wrong are not giving up on the ETS. Last night I went looking for mention of anything about the French rejection of the carbon tax in the MSM. All I found was this or a variant of it http://www.smh.com.au/environment/ets-cash-bonus-for-millions-of-families-20091229-lir3.html
So us clever Australians can introduce the Everything Tax Scheme and only the rich will have to pay more rest of us will get a bonus! It seems their logic is that one can increase the cost for the energy sector and they will not pass the cost on. All that extra cash can then be paid to families. Believe that and this also becomes fact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies there really are fairies.

How about a import tariff on China. Then turn around and use that money to help China fix its pollution problem? ( I don’t mean carbon. I mean basic stuff like sulpher dioxide, lead and mercurey, etc.)

cheers. the dominoes are falling more

Speaking as another person living in France and loving the French, I far prefer the carbon tax to any cap and trade scheme to enrich bankers, especially since it will go straight back out towards funding energy-saving initiatives. There’s really nothing unusual about taxing fossil fuels in Europe and 4 centimes per gallon of diesel is virtually nothing so they’ll reintroduce it in some way. However they also have zero percent loans for any home insulation, geothermal heating or similar energy saving project. In about a year I’ll be taking advantage of that thank you very much. A tax is honest but cap and trade just isn’t and the evidence clearly shows that reducing the price of fuel leads to people just wasting it – like buying gas-guzzlers for example.

IndianaBones (23:37:59)
My thanks to you for posting the link to Solomon’s excellent series of articles “The Deniers” featured in the National Post 2-3 years ago.
It was that series of articles that moved me to get off my duff and start doing my own digging for climate information.
To read example after example of what many of the top scientists in a variety of fields related to climate science had to endure even as far back as 1990, was an eye opener to me. It wasn’t a surprise to me when “climategate” unfolded.
I recommend this series highly.

Man in a Shed,
Of course not. Every country needs to have industry. There is no economy without industry.
The US and the UK think that they are now “service” economies. They think that banking is their business. But there are only three reasons to borrow money:
Productive: The use of borrowed funds to purchase something such as a machine that produces more in output than it cost.
Consumptive: The use of borrowed money to purchase something that is consumed (a house, food, vacation, etc.)
Ponzi: The use of borrowed funds to purchase an item with the intent to sell it to someone else at a higher price. At certain times this describes the stock market, commodities, and housing.
Consumption and Ponzi can fall apart and you would still have an economy. If production goes away, you have nothing.
Right now in the US, we have nothing but the Ponzi stock market. How long will that last?
Carbon tax will kill any industry left in the west.
Carbon tax will cause severe inflation on food prices.
Carbon tax will not help the earth because industry and its pollution simply move to China.
Carbon tax increases dependence on the Government for handouts.
Carbon tax uses emotional coercion to suppress opposition.
Carbon tax is to distract you from real pollution problems and economic fraud.

Jct: The good news of ClimateGate starts to spread!

There is one last thing not mentioned about the way the french are governed which is fundamently different to you anglo-saxons.
In France the government leans toward encouragement as opposed to punishment. We get upto 50% rebates on green energy projects directly refunded in our tax payments or by cheque from the tax office. The anglo-saxon way is to beat you around the wallet until you do what we say. I know its defeatist but you will never COMPLETELY stop the AGW faith even if the climate dips violently so what would I choose to be taxed like?. Carbon tax direct. I could not bear to see another con banker gaining from my loss and that is all the anglos want. Obama, brown et al are keeping all their mates in the financial secteur rich. And now I see that brown is trying the climate trick on the brits to get re-elected. “If you don’t vote me in you will wreck our economy”. Exactly the same old tactic. I’ll scare you into committing economic suicide with me in charge.

Governments just don’t all of a sudden simply toss out some MAJOR legislation. On the other hand, since this has vote has occurred there MUST HAVE been support among the politicians to squash this new tax. This means that the occurrence of this is not an accident at all.
If by the end of January they have a new bill in place, then obviously all those exemptions was the issue. However if the bill and legislation drags on for a longer period of time, then this is clearly an attempt by the French government to wait and see what other nations are going to do in regards to carbon trading. This ploy allows the government to stall and wait, yet at the same time remain perfectly politically correct in their stance on AGW.
Green Turtle

HereticFringe, the federal income tax in the US is unconstitutional:
Aaron Russo: America – Freedom To Fascism
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173#

I’m afraid Lord Monckton’s interpretation of the event is uncomplete hence the unjustified cheering.
As a French, I confirm what others have said : the French carbon tax has been repelled temporarily, not because there is too much tax (for the guys at the Conseil Constitutionnel) but because there is NOT ENOUGH tax, in the form of too many exemptions.
So the small agitated guy we put at the head of France will try to revive his tax in a way or another because he has been encouraged by the Council to tax more, not less ! Yeah, don’t worry, our politicians are as disconnected from the base as yours (2/3 of the French are against the carbon tax according to polls, which doesn’t prevent Sarkozy from passing the law because the State is broke and taxpayer’s money is urgently needed).
The thing which may save the day is that Carbozy won’t be able to tax lorry drivers, fishermen… (exempted so far to avoid violent manifestations as they know how to do). If he tax them, there will be very disrupting strikes, especially from truckers and there is no way he will risk that just 5 months from regional elections (quite important here). If he doesn’t, his law will be again rejected because of exemptions now considered unconstitutional.
It’s as if he holds the AGW scam tiger by the tail and has no idea how to let it go. But in France, we have ZERO skeptical media, ALL of them are climate change hysterics, so who knows…

Benoît Rittaud (15:11:35) :
I just say that there is a risk that a french warmist make use of some of the previous comments to say something like…
No, that’s exactly perhaps the main element of their game: trying to get others to limit their speech becuause they will distort the intent>!
They will always distort, so you become speechless and defeated. It’s as simple as that.
The ultimate result of this tactic is the destruction of language, along with Science perhaps falling first, so that all that’s left is brute force. Think about it because that’s how it would work, and how they intend for it to work.

Robert Wykoff (16:05:48) :
I always wondered about the constitutionality of taxes like this in the US.
Actually, having sales tax and income tax is double taxation. It is in direct violation of our US Constituion.

France has made the first step.
The American People must kill the carbon dioxide fraud once and forever. Common sense must prevail.
Bismark: “God protects fools and americans”.

In France the government leans toward encouragement as opposed to punishment.
Same difference. I’m not going to analyze it further, because if you think about it, in both cases “punishment” leads to encouragement”.
The U.S. economy is much larger that that of the French and there’s more to steal per capita, because the GDP of the U.S. is about 40% greater per capita, 12/30 last time I looked. But Obama and his fellow Progressives are working hard to end the “the disparity”.
I’m very happy that you have Nuclear Energy at a rate of 3/1 compared to the U.S.. We should go that way, and so I promise I will never say The French are stupid again. Not that I ever have.
I could not bear to see another con banker gaining from my loss and that is all the anglos want.
Here in the U.S. Obama is in fact working exactly toward that goal as I’ve aready mentioned, you know, “for the equality”. I’m not sure that the French are any better, but maybe “they” are. Note that I’m considering Government to be essentially the same as a “con banker”.

J.Peden
>>>>Note that I’m considering Government to be essentially the same as a “con banker”.
You do know that the Federal Reserve is not part of the US Government, right?
There are actually 12 different Federal Reserve Banks around the country, and they are owned by big private banks.
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/who_owns_the_federal_reserve_bank.html

“r (17:13:35) ”
Yes, you can always defeat these tactics one on one. But as large propaganda memes spread in media, that’s not so easy, especially when the “opposition” spokespeople – Republicans, for example – cede the meaning of language ground to the destructors of meaning [ actually accepting, for example, that certian words such as “I hope he fails” cannot even be applied to Obama] which is one big reason why the Republicans have been taking heat from “neocons” for some time now.
If you’ve got the truth, you can’t cede the ground. That is, just because the words can be distorted to mean what the author didn’t mean doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them, it means the opposite.

I know what you mean, Its like in 1984, by George Orwell:
“The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc {Global Warming), but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”

More Orwell,
“Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.”
And
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
By controlling Wikipedia and editing out the Medieval warm period and Vikings in Greenland. They are behaving like the creeps in 1984.

So much for the idea of keeping politics and science separate…
If the AO stays strongly negative for some years to come, what does that do for the prospects of wind energy in France?

J.Peden
You may be interested in this http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/12/peter-spencer
The MSM in OZ is blind to such things. It reports a hunger strike for Copenhagen but not this. I must say our local rag had a report on Peter Spencer but quickly lost interest. He has the support of the National Party and the Climate Skeptics party.

r, quoting Orwell:
“Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.”
Gees. I was misquoted when I was 5 or 6 years old – even remember where I was when I found out, it was so impressive. The reporter turned something like the school “is always stealing my guns” to “I like to dress up and play like a Cowboy.” Once I defeated the system by concealing one gun in my pants. After they took the other two, I was still in business for a while.

I think this is just the typical European gambit – you make a huge gesture for whatever cause is popular at the time, and then wait for it to be made meaningless. Either you ignore it (like France did with the Kytoto treaty) or you let an unelected court overrule it. You get the credit for making the gesture, but the ill-effects never come about.

Galen Haugh, I speak English because I am an Englishman, and if we had not stood up to Herr Hitler you Americans would have continued to hide from him across the ocean. You may even have gone fascist as well, the tendency has always been there.
The albinoblacksheep website on French military history is laughably inaccurate, I realise this is off topic so mods feel free to snip it but:
Gallic Wars: Gauls were not French, the Franks did not arrive until many hundreds of years later.
Hundred Years War: French ultimately won decisively.
Italian Wars: A loss
Wars of Religion: France started off mostly Catholic and ended mostly Catholic, it was a brutal series of conflicts but the ultiamte goal, to preserve France as a centre of Catholic Christendom was achieved.
Thirty Years War: The French inflict the first serious military defeat on Spain in a century (the Battle of Rocroi), cementing their place as the dominant military power of the continent, a position they would maintain until 1871 despite the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. (Britain was the supreme power (God Save Her Britannic Majesty) but Britain was not and never will be a continental European country. The Treaty of Westphalia which ended the war benefited France by far the most, gaining them the territory of Alsace and causing the majority of western German princely states to come under French domination. The war between France and Spain continued until 1659 when the Treaty of Pyrenees when France gained a swathe of territory in both what is now Rousillon and the Lowlands.
Revolutionary Wars: French invade Lowlands and Italy, are invaded by the Prussians. Ultimately drive off the Prussians and secure Lowlands .Italy is eventually taken with the aid of a certain Corsican upstart.
The Dutch Wars: Initially tied, ultimately the French gained territory although failed to dominate the Dutch.
The Seven Years War and subsidiares: A catastrophic defeat.
The American Revolution. Won because of French intervention, without the French naval blockade and threatened invasion the British could have used their naval superiority to cut off the new USA and land its army where ever it wished. You Americans might want to show some gratitude.
Napoleonic: Loss, but it took an alliance of all the worlds great powers to take them down, and in the words of Wellington himself, it was a close run thing.
Crimean War: France and allies win
Franco-Prussian: Lost
World War One: France loses nearly 5% of its population so the Americans can come in late and claim to have won, when it fact it was a joint effort. Had France not fought so bravely the US would have kept its head firmly up its behind, as is its wont.
World War II: The French capitulate after a series of military defeats against the most terrible modern military power the world has known. The war is ultimatley won thanks to the British and Montgomery’s judicious use of US cannon fodder.

Charles,
That is still a win. The people who had the stupid idea may now realize how stupid it was but need to save face. That is why you still need to make a lot of noise. It helps the “unseen hand” that makes things happen. There may not be a big fanfare and victory march, but it is still a victory. The MSM news papers may still have stupid head lines, but no one believes them anymore. Ever hear of the Boy Who Cried Wolf?

You may even have gone fascist as well, the tendency has always been there.
LB, I can’t resist Tom Wolfe’s observation that while intellectuals constantly see fascism hovering on the American horizon, somehow it always seems to land in Europe. Not that there aren’t leftists in our country (and in our present adminstration) who would be entirely comfortable with one-party rule and “hate speech” legislation to shut up those who don’t tow the PC line. No lack of totalitarian-minded types in the UK either – I read the Guardian.
Actually, I was all set to break out the champagne and brie when I read about this too, but ironically, it’s the sober-minded French commenting here that made me realize this is not quite the great victory for common sense we want it to be. We live in interesting times, folks. Politicans are slippy characters, but I really can’t recall when the leaders of the Western democracies were quite as determined to shove extremely unpopular and ruinously expensive taxes and programs down the throats of their unwilling citizens. Demesure’s comment about the possibility of truckers and fishermen fighting back if Sarko tries to ram this thing though is intriguing. I shall be following this story with great interest. I wish you all the best.

Worth reading:
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, by Antony C. Sutton
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2007/02/125049.pdf
A.C. Sutton in an interview:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6987303668075230852#docid=6244851259954264539

I apologise unreservedly for any offense caused, I was unnecessarily innacurate and insulting regarding the US in WWI and WWII. I did so to parallel the albinoblacksheep websites insultingly innaccurate portrayal of French military history, but I realise this may not have been evident.
I do disagree with the statement the US saved British bacon in WWI, the Royal Navy reigned supreme, Germany could never have challenged it on the seas or invaded the British isles. Britain could have withdrawn from the contest and left Europe to its fate. Germany actually wanted to keep Britain out of the war, so they would have accepted peace with Britain. Instead Britain bankrupted itself ans sacrificed countless lives to keep Western Europe free.
[REPLY – Heh. I basically agree. As for WWII, I regard that as a titanic 4-year struggle between Germany and Soviet Russia (with some relatively minor stuff going on around the edges). ~ Evan]

OK, so the Constitutional Council didn’t chuck Sarko’s tax out on the grounds that it was bogus science and in fact endorses the bogus science. That’s unfortunate, but I still count this as a victory for the simple reason that a carbon tax was stopped. The reasons given were apparently “fair” in their own way, though that should be completely irrelevant if the basic science is bogus-I say SHOULD be. Virtually no-one in any position of power anywhere in the world is interested in the actual science, but that’s just the way it goes.
As for other carbon taxes, the French decision draws attention to the possibility that other carbon taxes like the ETS may also be vulnerable on constitutional grounds. In Australia we have, I think, a very interesting dimension to all of this that has has not been picked up on at all in the debate. The ETS is the GST’s (Goods and Services Tax) Big Brother. The GST was only able to be passed in1996 because of the extremely limited awareness of its unconstitutionality among the Australian people (I was unaware of this myself). I am NOT talking about sovereignty issues, though they probably destroy the ETS in their own right. I’m talking about other good stuff. Sn. 256,p.78 of the Constitution explicitly states that no tax should have more than one object of taxation, whereas the GST was a goods AND services tax. The ETS would be a Tax on Everything because what doesn’t involve CO2 or other so-called greenhouse gases? Further, it would discriminate between parts of the country where people have to use more of theses gases, and ignores issues of fairness and popular will. The Constitution also forbids politicians to knowingly lie to the people. Oh, and we have a man called Peter Spencer who’s on hunger strike because he has had the use of his land confiscated under the cover of Kyoto, so you can add the unconstitutionality of no just compensation to the mix. Mr. Spencer’s farm is near Parliament House in Canberra and if Tony Abbott wanted to, he could make a real photo opportunity out of it. Why doesn’t he?

LB: I agree that the “freedom fries” business was stupid. It was about as successful as the WWI drive to rename sauerkraut “liberty cabbage.” Nobody in America uses the term “liberty cabbage” and I’ve never heard anyone, not even diehard hawks, order “freedom fries” with their burger.
As for French toast, well, isn’t it, unlike French fries, an actual French dish? Pain perdu? Whatever you call it, it’s tasty.

inversesquare (23:34:35) :
Thanks for your note and welcome to the fight. Your comments were eloquently put forth and I think we are reaching a “pushback” moment. I’m very much with you on the kids comments – enough is enough with this BS…