Senators Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer will outline the legislation on Thursday morning. They are even going to let that wacky 350.org activist Bill McKibben speak. Sheesh.
Billed as “major” and “comprehensive” legislation, it will have a carbon tax. Here is the statement from Sanders’ office (bold mine):
Sanders, Boxer to Introduce Major Climate Change Legislation
February 12, 2013
WASHINGTON, Feb 12 – Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) will hold a news conference on Thursday, Feb. 14 to announce comprehensive legislation on climate change. Boxer is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Sanders serves on the environment committee and also is a member of the Senate energy committee.
Under the legislation, a fee on carbon pollution emissions would fund historic investments in energy efficiency and sustainable energy technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. The proposal also would provide rebates to consumers to offset any efforts by oil, coal or gas companies to raise prices.
Environment and consumer leaders set to participate include Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org; Mike Brune, executive director of Sierra Club; Tara McGuiness, executive director of the Center for American Progress Action Fund; Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen’s energy director; and David Bradley, National Community Action Foundation executive director.
Who:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
Bill McKibben, 350.org founder
Mike Brune, Sierra Club executive director
Tara McGuiness, CAP Action Fund executive director
Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen’s Energy Program director
David Bradley, National Community Action Foundation executive director
What: News conference on climate change legislation
When: 11 a.m., Thursday, Feb. 14
Where: SD-406, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing room
Source here
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“OMG – this will be chucked out, right? The Senate knows – please – that a carbon tax doesn’t work. I thought people are waking up to this foolishness, not still falling for it. Please kick it out”
It’s less about climate and more about “making this a better world”?
Bill Clinton visited Norway yesterday and had some meetings on high levels. And he might have convinced them or each other that they are saving the World with international socialism?
To those who say this proposed bill is “DOA”:
Congressional approval is no longer needed!
Executive orders are the “New Normal”. Congress is now obsolete (Once upon a time they used to work on “budgets” or something).
A quarter century of eco-fascist brainwashing in the media and schools has sealed our ‘collective’ fate. Through the looking glass we go…
Obama says he will use executive action on climate if needed
http://reut.rs/VRFzGq
“But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy,”
Dead giveaway that this is just a tax grab:
If the end-consumers have no incentive to reduce consumption, the quantities consumed will remain unchanged. They will regardless of “rebates”. Energy consumption isn’t that flexible; especially in a country already in recession.
For many in Australia, the “rebates” arrive a long time after the expenditure. Combined with other taxes, it’s created a toxic business climate. There is even less private investment in stuff that matters than there was previously. Australians have a knack for squeezing blood out of subsidy stones. Massive wastelands of PV solar; dangerously-installed home insulation; cash handouts; … while taxes rise to pay “compensation” to those who built on historic flood plains; and whose houses got swept away as nature goes through its cycles. Cycles known for over a century.
In Germany, where heavy users of energy (industrial) are exempt; the measures have resulted in no significant reduction in CO2. Consumers without exemption have gone broke if their business is too small, or they have shifted energy consumption to the untaxed; e.g. returning to heating using smog-producing wood. Unfinanced subsidies ensure national indebtedness until at least 2025; paying for “production” from inefficient and ineffective producers; whose “production plant” will be FUBER by the end of that period.
Rhys Jaggar, “I”m sure you can sell the electorate a programme that ‘costs a fortune, destroys jobs, does nothing to affect climate variability and is based on fraudulent science’, can’t you?” Unfortunately, this has been done In Australia and the EU, I hoped that sanity might prevail in the US, but it’s by no means certain.
The Greens-supported Australian Labor Party government is likely to be thrashed in the September election, but the incoming government is still somewhat in thrall to the CAGW story. Mosher assumed at Climate Etc that decision-makers would seek suitable evidence and advice re CAGW, but unfortunately they’ve bought it as being politically expedient, and will back it until it bites them in the bum, by which time even more damage will have been inflicted on the community.
Politics is more a question of timing than a question of reason. So i suppose these experienced policymakers consider this moment the right time.
There is no reason for it from the perpsective of effect on CO2 emissions. As Europe has learned you just make goods more expensive, inviting stronger imports of goods, an with them importing their cheaper untaxed energy. And you are happy if trading collapses.
There could be the argument of overall cost reduction for the economy. In the playfield of politics an opponent of carbon tax is mostly fighting against reducing Coal mining and burning, which itself has a bad image and pollutes more than the other fossil fuels.
There are two possilble actions to take:
1) delay – just prolong the process of negotiation until it is more obvious the it doesn’t help the climate and you have reached better image for these “heavy” fossil fuels.
2) attack – show that their argument is wrong.
What i would do: show them you have means to attack their argument (to take away a bit of their impulse), then you can play the delay game seemingly joining them: ,,Your argument is to weak but we support you by being in a constructive dialog”.
And i would do this totally open, no secrecy required.
Machiavelli can be fun after all ..
😉
Mistake, this sentence shuol not be:
And you are happy if trading collapses.
It should be:
And you are happy if carbon trading collapses.
RE: Theo Goodwin says:
February 12, 2013 at 8:33 pm
“What they announce is a press conference. A press conference means nothing. They are hoping for some support. They will not get it. Boxer is throwing crumbs to the Greens. Sanders is a crumb. Let’s hope that McKibben makes a long, heartfelt speech. Nothing hurts these people more than public exposure.”
Amen to that, brother. However the media will not expose. Therefore it is up to us. Listen carefully to their nonsense, and politely and persistantly point out the balderdash. (I may have trouble being polite.)
Well. Fuel in the U.S. is too cheap and – as a logical consequence – the economy is too inefficient.
Tax on carbon and/or on energy would be a good first step towards modernisation.
The U.S. seem got stuck in the 20. century.
Carbon dioxide taxes are a tax on the air you breathe out they do nothing but inhibit business and employ hundreds of thousands of unproductive leeches sucking the life out of a country.
I have great faith in the American people, as Winston Churchill said, ” Americans always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities” Most of your possibilities have been exhausted, thus I look forward to a climate change in public thinking in the very near future and a change back to the values that made your country great. Wayne from OZ
I wonder how many of the speakers at the hearing know (or care):
1) The US only accounts for 16% of global CO2 emissions.
2) US emissions have been declining and are now lower than they were in 1996.
3) If the US were to reduce emissions by 100%, the increase in China alone would fully offset that reduction in seven years at their current growth rate.
Anyone commenting on policy should be aware that nothing the US does affecting only US activities will have any material influence on long term global emissions
“alex says:
February 13, 2013 at 1:40 am”
Was there a tax on horses that “forced” people to “modernise” transport and power technologies? Was there a tax on steam engines to modernise? Wind turbines are so 18th century!
“Al Gore says:
February 12, 2013 at 10:53 pm”
More snake oil. Sellinghis new book…”The Future”, or whatever. Sure, “making a better world”, for whom?
A.D. Everard says:
February 12, 2013 at 7:35 pm
OMG – this will be chucked out, right? The Senate knows – please – that a carbon tax doesn’t work. I thought people are waking up to this foolishness, not still falling for it. Please kick it out.
———————
Of course it will work. Just watch how much money they all make.
cn
No need to worry too much. Per the U.S. Constitution, Bills for raising Revenue must originate in the House of Representatives for one. I’d like to see if they’ll ignore it, like they did with PPACA. I’m not even sure an arbitrary assessment, such as this, can be considered a legitimate tax. Besides, they simply wish to launder the monies.
The only hang up I see is the “fiscal conservative” economists and tax reform advocates whom prefer consumption taxes to income taxes (e.g. Art Laffer); though they only seek it at worst as revenue-neutral, as in replacement of the current income-tax structures in toto.
What scares the crap out of me most is,too many
comments saying,”this will never get off the ground,
zero chance etc.” Scary,exscary. [:….
Alfred
Forgot my commentary:
This was timed from the SOTU, and this is the opening gambit. We’ll hear about it all year. I’m most worried about the leadup to summer and then all throughout. Like the firearms ‘debate’ we’re having, there’s going to be props because…well…Earth relative to the Sun, and Earth is going to get warmer, seasons and all. I can’t describe how moronic people have become with the technology/telecom revolution. Be ready for tornados, heat, then the always drought drought-map, god forbid big hurricanes hit. Mix in the debt-ceiling again March/April and it’s going to be a exhausting year watching the “news”.
Patrick says:
February 13, 2013 at 1:54 am
“alex says:
February 13, 2013 at 1:40 am”
Was there a tax on horses that “forced” people to “modernise” transport and power technologies? Was there a tax on steam engines to modernise? Wind turbines are so 18th century!
————————–
Why you ask? Of course, there was.
http://www.nas.gov.uk/guides/taxation.asp
This bill will go nowhere. Keep tabs on those who will NOT support it, other than the usual suspects. The next time you tangle with an Alarmist and their insufferable arrogance throw those names in their face. If their overwhelming scientific evidence for CAGW is so strong why are they unable to convince their most likely allies in Congress? All of these years, all of these government “climate scientists” marching in lockstep and all they can round up are a handful of socialists and Barbara Box-o-rocks? Heh.
Even George Harrison at his cynical best, upon discovering he was in a 95% tax bracket, didn’t imagine that governments would have the audacity to actually tax air.
First nice straw man! The “social safety net” has only been talked about being made less generous not eliminated, but that doesn’t stop demagogues from using your straw man. We have the richest poor people in the world. I personally like Franklin’s quote about making people comfortable in their poverty – look it up if you have never read it.
Then there is that whole “it worked in 1946” thing. Most people credit WWII with getting the American economy out of the depression and they would be mostly wrong. Sure all our competitors were destroyed, but the congress of 1946 cut the budget to half of the 1938 level and set the stage for the economy of the 1950’s. Those were real cuts, not “reductions in baseline projected increases” like we hear about these days as though they were something akin to Armageddon. It seems to work whenever it is tried, but the 1946 cuts aren’t even what the TEA party is asking for. Initially just zero out the baseline growth and spend next year exactly what you spend this year (that would be demagogued as a “cut of 7%”). Then consolidate social programs to gain efficiency and make it easier to catch double/triple and quadruple dippers. Streamline the bureaucracy to increase efficiency (Yes this will lead to laid off government workers). We don’t have to spend ourselves into insolvency, and we are already spending more of our GDP than we have at any point in our history.
Can somebody explain how this works practically in terms of passing the legislation?
In UK if the government presents a Bill to the House of Commons, it has a pretty good chance (>90%) of eventually becoming law.
But I know that US arrangements are very different from ours. Please can we have the low-down on its likely path and chances of success. Thanks.
I’m becoming more and more conviced there is no intelligence in Washington.
Sarah says:
February 12, 2013 at 7:51 pm
What causes American “progressives” to believe they can take every failed idea in history and make it work?
They are insane.
That is a definition of a “Progressive.”
Have you not noticed, BTW, that EVERY left-wing title is the reverse of what it really means.
e.g. “The National Socialists” were called Right Wing by Stalin as he didn’t want two Left wing organisations in existence.
“Progressives” try to force us back to living in caves!
“Liberals” are always Totalitarian.
“Democrats” believe that votes are for them not the rest of us!
Time to start writing Congressmen.
Why not?
CodeTech says:
February 13, 2013 at 4:09 am
If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat,
If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman.
Even George Harrison at his cynical best, upon discovering he was in a 95% tax bracket, didn’t imagine that governments would have the audacity to actually tax air.
———————————
They were once wicked enough taxing sunlight. Why not air now?