This new French carbon tax was scheduled to go into law on Jan1, 2010. The tax was steep: 17 euros per ton of carbon dioxide (USD $24.40). In a stunning move, and surely a blow to warmists everywhere, the tax has been found unconstitutional and thrown out. Originally found here (Google Translation).
Lord Monckton was kind enough to assist me in deciphering the meaning of the ruling and writes:
In France, if at least 60 Deputies of the House and 60 Senators appeal to the Constitutional Council, it has the power to pronounce on the constitutionality of a proposed law – in the present case, the 2010 national budget of France, which contained enabling provisions (loi deferee) for a carbon levy. 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 Press release from the French Constitutional Council is here in English (Google Translated) and in original French
Here’s a Deustch-Welle news article on the reversal.
France’s Constitutional Council says the country’s proposed carbon tax is illegal. This is a severe blow to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to fight climate change.
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.
It was estimated that 93 percent of industrial emissions outside of fuel use, including the emissions of more than 1,000 of France’s top polluting industrial sites, would be exempt from the tax, which would have charged 17 euros per ton of emitted carbon dioxide.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has argued the tax is necessary to combat climate change and reduce the country’s dependence on oil.
However, the council’s ruling is a severe blow to both Sarkozy’s environmental plan as well as France’s budget for 2010. 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.
h/t to WUWT reader Dirk H
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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.
Carbon tax will also pave the way for nuclear power into the US.
There is great opposition here in the US to nuclear power. Many people think nuclear power is OK… but not in my back yard.
The other purpose of the great Global Warming agenda is to soften up the Greenies towards Nuclear power… when it is shown that solar and wind will ultimately fail to fulfil the energy needs of the US.
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.
Demesure
>>> the State is broke and taxpayer’s money is urgently needed…
Is the state broke because of the lorry drivers and fishermen?
Or is the state broke because of the bankers and politicians?
Got a pitchfork?
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”.
r (11:15:45) : What business is left then, only Kool Aid manufacturing?… or is it imported from China too?
Yes, it’s imported from China, but be careful, some of it’s laced with melamine!
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
>>>>They will always distort, so you become speechless and defeated. It’s as simple as that.
1 If they use name calling say:
Name calling means that you do not have an argument so you lose automatically.
2 If they use bullying (swearing, threats, etc ) say: bullying means that you do not have an argument so you lose automatically.
3 If they try throwing their credentials around say: Throwing your credentials around means that you do not have an argument so you lose automatically.
4 If they use false statistics. Say you must support those statistics. What are your references? This gives you time to make up some statistics and references of your own. It is better to have the real ones, of course, but the idea here is to get people to have a discourse rather than try to win an argument with things that they have heard somewhere but don’t understand.
I like this one:
5 If people try to make you choose from two unfavorable options: As in… would you rather pay carbon tax now or have all the polar ice caps melted and your house flooded?
Reply: Those are false options. Then talk about other options.
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
You do know that the Federal Reserve is not part of the US Government, right?
Yes, but the Fed was lending to Freddie and Fanny, Government Sponsered Entities, as though F and F were private institutions at the same discount rates, and F and F were creating a gigantic market for bad paper with that “money”, which led to or touched off the World recession.
Darn, I’d just finished off a longer post trying to explain that exact thing and how it amounted to Gov’t con banking, but it got erased when I jiggled my key board too much or something. Anyone can figure it out though, so long as you don’t focus on the blame game and other diversions.
“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.
“Gov’t con banking”, briefly and standing to be corrected:
FF can borrow from Fed. just like every other [private] Bank. FF get pressured by Gov’t, enc., to buy bad paper so that everyone and their Mother can buy houses which evil capitalistic loan originators won’t allow. So capitalistic loan originators say, “Great, we’ll just loan money to everyone possible regardless of risk, because we can sell the debt obligation immediately to FF.” “Plus we don’t get harassed by ACORN like we used to – suits, demonstrations, villification of business, resulting in payoffs to ACORN to desist.” [Obama actually worked for ACORN way back, threatening and even filing at least one such suit. He also taught the Communist, Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”.]
FF execs are political appointees. They can show “profits” by ignoring quality of loans, because they can buy loans with money from Fed costing less than what FF will get in [fantasyland] return from people buying houses. More FF profit = larger exec bonuses, then execs retire.
Everything blows up when buyers can’t pay mortgages. Everyone cries, “But how could we have known this would happen, blame “capitalism”.”
Wrong, blame idea that Gov’t should get everyone and Mother into own house + scammed by FF execs and politicos.
I heard about the basic idea, as also stated in the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, at least once around 1998. I thought, “This can’t work on a large scale, but maybe the lenders can pull it off now and again”, but didn’t know FF were than starting to buy the bad paper. The rest is history, except for the hand waving and exclusive political blame game.
Now the Obama adm., enc., wants to do it again. Why turn your back on a money + political power maker?
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.”
“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
More Orwell
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.
OT, but then again, maybe not.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091230184221.htm
“No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years, New Research Finds”
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?
Sweet. I guess it’s time for me to start calling them “French Fries” again. Maybe I’ll even call them pommes frites!
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:
“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
If you can make it “cool” it might help? I wanted to know if it might somehow work, so I sucked one troll into the trap by saying Joe Wilson’s ~ “that’s a lie” made him the new epitome of “cool”. “Alphie” said something like, ‘it’s not cool if you have to go around begging forgiveness for the whole next day”, at which point I pointed out Obama’s months of apology and weakness.
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.
This is Europe man – when we are given the option to vote we have to keep on voting until we get the right answer.
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.
If anyone needs another reason to scrap Carbon tax or trading schemes then they should probably take a look at this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/6912667/Carousel-frauds-plague-European-carbon-trading-markets.html
I felt particularly numb after reading the possible figure of 90pc of activity in the market being fraudulent.
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.