Carbon taxes will do nothing for revenues or climate, but will hurt job and economic growth
Guest post by Paul Driessen
Average planetary temperatures haven’t budged in 16 years. Hurricanes and strong tornadoes are at or near their lowest ebb in decades. Global sea ice is back to normal, Arctic ice is nearly normal, and the Antarctic icepack continues to grow. The rate of sea level rise remains what it was in 1900.
And yet, President Obama and many politicians, newscasters and alarmist scientists continue to insist that carbon dioxide emissions are changing Earth’s climate, and we need to take immediate action to prevent storms like Hurricane Sandy and avert catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer models and alleged “scientific consensus.” Not surprisingly, polls show public support for controlling CO2 output and taxing hydrocarbon use – to “ensure climate security” and “save vital federal programs” from budgetary axes.
As the liberal lobby Think Progress put it, people “overwhelmingly” prefer a carbon tax on “big polluters” versus cuts in favorite programs “like education, Social Security, Medicare and environmental protection.”
Five-alarm climate claims, skewed polling questions and phony taxes-versus-grandma budget alternatives will almost always ensure support for carbon taxes – especially among Bigger Government and Ban Fossil Fuels constituencies. More rational analysis reveals that dreams of hundred-billion-dollar windfalls from slapping regressive new taxes on job creation and economic growth are nothing more than dangerous tax revenue hallucinations. They would bring intense pain for no climate or economic gain.
Employing Energy Information Administration data, a recent Heritage Foundation study by economists David Kreutzer and Nicolas Loris found that a tax starting at $25-per-ton of CO2 emitted and increasing by 5% per year would cut a family of four’s income by $1,400 annually, raise their utility bills by $500 a year, and increase gasoline fill-ups by up to 50 cents per gallon. That’s $2,000 a year chopped from their budget for food, vacations, home and car payments and repairs, college and retirement savings, dental and medical care, and overall quality of life.
Even “millionaire” families making $200,000 a year would find such a hit painful. While the poorest families might get some offsetting tax relief, most would get nothing – nor would employers.
Carbon taxes would thus increase the likelihood that many breadwinners will end up unemployed, since the tax would raise business energy costs dramatically, force companies to trim hours and/or employees, and result in an aggregate loss of at least 1 million jobs by 2016, Heritage notes. That would bring more home foreclosures, greater stress, reduced nutrition, and more strokes and heart attacks, especially for older workers whose odds of finding new employment are increasingly bleak.
No small businesses or energy-intensive manufacturing companies would get a rebate for their soaring carbon taxes. Nor would any mall, hospital, school, church, synagogue or charity group.
Hydrocarbons provide over 83% of all the energy that powers America. A carbon tax would put a hefty surcharge on everything we make, grow, ship, eat and do. It would put the federal government in control of, not just one-sixth of our economy as under Obamacare, but 100% of our economy and lives. It would make the United States increasingly less productive, less competitive globally, less able to provide opportunities for our children.
But it gets worse, because this tax on America’s energy and productivity is not being promoted in a vacuum. It would be imposed on top of countless other job and economy strangling actions.
President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has already issued 2,071 new rules and dispensed a regulatory burden of over $353 billion per year – equal to all wealth generated annually by Virginia’s private sector. It is now preparing still more rules, the most crushing of which would regulate the same CO2 emissions that some in Congress want to tax, from both moving and stationary sources. Most, if not all of its punitive rules, are based on exaggerated risks, fear mongering, junk science, and illusory health, welfare, “environmental justice” and “sustainability” benefits.
Other agencies are inflicting still more rules, and more crushing paperwork burdens. Obamacare alone will add 127,602,371 more hours per year to the federal paperwork burden for American businesses and families. That’s enough time to carve 1,039 Mount Rushmore monuments, says the Washington Examiner. Even at $25 per hour, that’s $32 billion a year. On top of that, there are the Dodd-Frank financial requirements and myriad other costly, time-consuming, economy-sapping, job-killing rules.
Nothing at all suggests that Congress would reverse or modify even one of these laws, regulations and taxes, as part of a carbon tax deal – or that Mr. Obama would refrain from vetoing any attempted change. Nothing whatsoever suggests that Congress, the President or environmentalists will ease their opposition to issuing leases and drilling and fracking permits for more of our vast onshore and offshore oil and gas deposits, which could generate millions of jobs and billions in royalties and tax revenues. Or that they won’t ultimately enact a punitive cap-and-trade law on top of all of this.
Instead of real energy for real jobs and revenues, President Obama wants to redouble spending on “green” energy – extracting billions of dollars from still productive sectors of our economy, and transferring the money to crony corporatists and campaign contributors, whose operations are exempted from endangered species and other laws that are imposed routinely and punitively on oil, mining and other companies.
Meanwhile, federal “discretionary” spending skyrocketed another $129 billion annually in just four years under Obama. That’s comparable to what carbon tax snake oil salesmen claim a $25-per-ton tax would raise each year, several years into a steadily escalating tax, using static analyses that ignore all these “concrete lifesaver” effects.
The CBO Congressional Budget Office says the US economy will grow by a miserly 1.4% for the next several years, and official unemployment will remain stuck at 7.5% (plus extensive involuntary underemployment and people who have given up looking). Washington Post economics analyst Neil Irwin worries that the United States doesn’t just have a $1-trillion budget deficit. Largely because of government restrictions, regulations, red tape and taxes, it also has a $1-trillion “output gap,” between what it is capable of producing and what it actually produces.
To top it off, if Congress and the White House get more money, they will spend more money!
The net result of a carbon tax will not be new federal revenues. It will be more economic strangulation, a more bloated federal bureaucracy, more layoffs, sharply higher unemployment, food stamp and welfare payouts, reduced corporate and personal income tax receipts – and thus reduced federal revenues.
And for what? The Kyoto Protocol is dead. Japan and many other countries are rejecting any new binding emission targets. China, India, other rapidly developing nations, and even Germany and Europe are burning more coal, emitting more carbon dioxide, and sending atmospheric CO2 levels higher.
And yet, average planetary temperatures show no trend up or down, and global hurricane activity stands at a near-record low. There’s no change in big tornadoes, droughts or rains averaged over the USA for the past century. Polar sea ice is down slightly in the Northern Hemisphere, but up in the Southern. And sea levels show no measurable deviation from trends over the last hundred years.
The only thing that will happen if carbon taxes are inflicted on the US economy is that American jobs, economic growth, living standards, health, dreams and lives will be sacrificed for nothing.
We need to stop basing laws and policies on hallucinations – and start basing them on reality.
_____________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
Related articles
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- BREAKING: Carbon Tax bill coming Thursday to Senate (wattsupwiththat.com)
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This is not about science, it’s not about pollution, it’s not about anything other than paying off the deficit ! We have this same BS in Australia soon to be dispatched to the shredder … along with the wanton waste of excessive ‘green’ policies that the country cannot afford. Strange it is that the ‘wanton waste’ always finds a home in some cronies bank account.
Its kind of nice to be in Canada right now, even though the loony greens and libtards in our national media are wailing as if CAGW is real, our Prime Minister is well aware what a debased tax sucking scheme this carbon tax is.
Actually we should point out that, as we are carbon based lifeforms,all taxes are carbon taxes.
I personally recommend a tax on do gooders and the political bureaucrats.
30 lbs of ugly fat each , al madame guillotine , would be a fine contribution.
Do I need sarc?
Good post, Paul. Thanks.
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Streetcred says:
February 17, 2013 at 8:47 pm
. . . paying off the deficit !”
Say what!? The current administration and the President have no intention of “paying off the deficit” nor the current debt – two different things. The scenario is that Americans are supposed to feel guilty about how they have behaved in the past and this justifies the taking of accumulated wealth and its redistribution to favored groups. Justice and fairness will be achieved when all are poor – except the select few. Climate will do as it pleases, as it always has.
How many times did President Obama raise climate change in the presidential debates with Mitt Romney?
Did he tell the American people that he would introduce a carbon tax before they voted?
What does he say now?
I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.
What did Julia Gillard say to the Australian people before the last Australian election in 2010?
“There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”.
What did she do after the election?
Pass a carbon tax at a fixed $23/tonne with the help of the Greens and independents who gave her their vote in a hung parliament. At the time the price of CO2 in Europe was about 16 Euros a tonne but it has since plummeted to 3.7 Euros mid Jan and is presently hovering around 5.
(What is it with politicians that they have to push a carbon tax agenda through by not first taking it to the people?)
Tony Abbott has made his prime objective in the September Australian election of scrapping the carbon tax. He is presently at odds of 1.22 to win compared to Julia Gillard at 5.1 on Betfair.
All I can say to the US people is be very careful what you wish for.
Just add this graph and info again from the EIA.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/emissions.cfm
The tax won’t make a difference to the climate or temp because it cannot. Simple kindy maths. Why did you vote in such a dummy for president?
Thomas Paine once wrote, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
Few people would deny the US government has moved from a necessary evil to an intolerable one.
The US Small Business Association estimates that existing government rules, regulations and mandates consume $1.75 TRILLION in compliance costs/yr. That’s just pure evil.
Sure, SOME business rules and regulations are required to assure businesses run smoothly and reasonable environmental standards are complied, but too many destroy economies and stifle growth.
I bet if these $1.75 TRILLION compliance costs were reduced to $750 billion, the only effect would be increases in: GDP, job creation, new companies, new jobs, quality of life and living standards; how terrible….
Now BHO wants to add Carbon Taxes to the mix AND continue blowing money on alternative energy subsidies/projects that produce electricity 800% more expensively than conventional gas-turbine generators.
LEFTISTS will eventually impoverish us all with their kindness….. Hey, they know what’s best for the masses and it’s for out own good….
Yeah, right…
It’s all about strangling America.
What are called libs now (very different than a true liberal like Pat Moynahan D-NY) seem to have a sense of guilt that requires them try to strangle us.
Once things get bad enough, they may change their views.
MIT IAP Course on LANR-CF Dr. Mitchell Swartz 1/28/2012 Part 1
Dont need oil for energy. Down with the carbon tax!!!! No more gov wind subsidies…
I wouldn’t worry too much.
After the September elections in Oz disembowel the Left leaning political parties the Democrats won’t dare follow the same line.
Obama won’t care as he’s in his second term, but the Congress critters will be watching Oz very closely with an eye to their re-election prospects.
Well Obama’s latest proposal; or dictate (your choice) is he wants to spend billions of dollars on “preschools”.
The funny thing is that the vast majority of children, come into this world with a built in preschool; well the technical term for those institutions, is PARENTS !
Well yes, sadly (and I mean that) a lot of kids, basically don’t have parents. I guess Obama himself never had any parents. Well he had a grandmother.
I only had one parent, so I do know that gig.
But in many countries like the USA, real actual physical parents choose to not be parents; so they palm the job off to pseudo parents; they don’t want the bother of educating their own offspring.
So under Obama’s newest dictatorial edict, the US taxpayers will treach all these unwanted kids, whicle their biological parents go and play golf. I wonder who raises the two Obama girls while “daddy” is off playing golf with Tiger Woods. It’s a shame; they look like a couple of nice children, and they deserve better.
There is nothing in the US Constitution, about the government (any government) having ANY role in educating children.
But then of course, the Marxists believe in getting a hold of the children, and brain washing them, while they are still malleable.
If you let Obama educate, YOUR children, then you thoroughly deserve the little monsters, you have created.
As long as the ministry of truth(the U.S. media) controls the conversation to the ill imformed low imformation voter this will always be an uphill battle, the government sets the agenda and the media deliberatly ask the wrong questions. I long for a time when the media was for the absolute truth, I think that was a long time ago!
@John robertson
As a fellow Canuck, I share your sentiments near exactly – though when I listen to Peter Kent’s words in support for CAGW, (our Federal Minister of the Environment. and former newsman), despite the appearance of Prime Minister Harper’s good sense and measure, I fear for our near future, and of hidden agendas.
Mayhaps it’s only the necessity of ‘political spin’ to hold out of reach one more populist meme surely to be grasped in bid for power by the too-numerous liberal left and their demogogues, should forthright truths about climate be told outright. Yet I don’t see how the government will be able to climb down from their proclaimed and oft-promoted position in support of ‘saving the climate’, if the US goes to carbon trade, or tax. NAFTA would likely collapse if we produced ‘tax-free’ and sold south. Add to this that our most prosperous (read: indebted) Province (Ontario), is up to it’s neck in bird-blenders and contracts paying x10 going rates for solar panel electricity (all made in Asia, oops – WTO just deemed favouring Canadian jobs in manufacture of same, illegal)
Well, we can hope I guess for some breakthrough of understanding of solar electrical dynamics that will prove correlated, congruent, and orders of magnitude beyond any hallucinatory CO2 climate sensitivity, a breakthrough not repressed by the statist MSM.
And/or also hope for an awakening of that fabled Canadian common-sense and laconic eye on the B.S meter. Because it SHOULD BE, a tough sell to Canadians, the threat of too-much warmth, given where we live (except in Lotus Land, British Columbia that is…and maybe Quebec, where despite the (hockey-friendly) cold there’s nary a ‘national socialist type’ policy they can refuse, it seems, brutal provincial tax and regulatory burden notwithstanding).
Reblogged this on The GOLDEN RULE and commented:
Looks like commonsense to me.
Tim Ball has a recent article at his site, which better explains what we’re up against here in Canada, with Environment Canada (EC).
http://drtimball.com/2013/environment-canadas-ignorance-guarantees-political-climate-science-and-wrong-policy/
King, you say
‘Tony Abbott has made his prime objective’
I honestly hate to say it but I have a sense that is simple political opportunism on his part.
I suspect he will do no such thing after the election.
Nothing at all.
The cynic in me is expressing itself……..We do NOT have any real ‘democracy’.
I have a question to put out there and it is this………….Are manifesto pledges subject to a legitimate expectation?
Hang the lot and start again…
george e. smith says:
February 17, 2013 at 10:53 pm
Getting off topic here somewhat but an increasing numbers of both solo parents and working couples rely heavily on preschool. If little kids can be taught some stuff while Mum and Dad are both out working then surely that is a bonus. Anyways here in NZ that certainly happens and is heavily subsidised. This thought reminds me that my grandma blamed the contraceptive pill on all of modern societies social unheavels. Bless her heart. I also have to say she had no clue how a heavy aircraft flew through the air, even though she flew in them. Similarly I acknowledge that I have no real clue how an iPhone automatically updates information held on an iPad and Mac desktop……
Guest post by Paul Driessen
“Average planetary temperatures haven’t budged in 16 years. Hurricanes and strong tornadoes are at or near their lowest ebb in decades. Global sea ice is back to normal, Arctic ice is nearly normal, and the Antarctic icepack continues to grow. The rate of sea level rise remains what it was in 1900.”
OH NO. I see this is descending into lowest levels of fighting bull with bull. While some of those points are correct. Many are not or are close to deception by omission. Though I agree the carbon tax proposal is a disaster, just adding deceptive and inaccurate claims to counter other deceptive and inaccurate claims is getting no one anywhere.
This kind of fighting bull with bull just turns the whole discussion into a food fight.
Hurricanes and tornadoes are totally different phenomena so while tornadoes have been relatively low hurricanes are definitely linked to sea surface temperature (no surprise there) and since recent decades have been warm, total cyclone energy is up.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=xbfqtw&s=6
Both were also high in the 1930s which is why warmist propaganda prefers to focus on the the 50 years.
“Arctic ice is nearly normal”. That’s Bull, sorry. It’s also playing right into the warmista’s propaganda trap of the idea that the average over the very short time for which we have accurate satellite derived measurements somehow represents “normal”.
There was a massive loss of Arctic ice coverage that was accelerating from 1997 to 2007.
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=r7uets&s=6
While that situation has _stabilised_ at a new low, it is absolutely absurd to state that “Arctic ice is nearly normal”.
This proposal of carbon tax needs to be strangled at birth. But presenting a case that is so obviously flawed and factually incorrect assures that it will dismissed outright by anyone who you may hope to convince.
This article just provides ammunition for those wishing to portray climate sceptics as being “in denial”.
It is as stupid politically as it is ill-informed scientifically.
john robertson says:
Actually we should point out that, as we are carbon based lifeforms,all taxes are carbon taxes.
Good point. The corollary of that is that a carbon tax is a tax on life itself.
That is why it appeals to those in power. It is the most global, all encompassing tax ever invented.
john robertson says:
February 17, 2013 at 9:29 pm
I have to call you on this, and I’m extremely surprised that the moderators haven’t already. When alarmists propose that skeptics be executed, we raise a howl:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/27/university-of-graz-responds-to-parncutts-calls-for-death-to-deniers/
An immediate retraction is in order, please.
jones says:
February 18, 2013 at 12:05 am
King, you say
‘Tony Abbott has made his prime objective’
I honestly hate to say it but I have a sense that is simple political opportunism on his part.
I suspect he will do no such thing after the election…. Etc
I think the average American can easily make up their own mind on that question by hearing or reading of how Tony Abbott himself answers it:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-12/abbott-promises-to-repeal-carbon-tax-legislation/3550390
Like the GST which John Howard had the honesty and principle to take to an election BEFORE the vote, in the end it will be the people that will decide whether they want the tax or not – or retain it. But I guess trading in something that you can’t see, can’t feel, can’t touch, can’t smell, can’t eat and can’t drink is always going to more difficult to sell than snake oil.
King of Cool says:
February 17, 2013 at 9:33 pm
“…All I can say to the US people is be very careful what you wish for….”
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Politicians are the same the world over. They only make a good situation, poor, and a bad situation, worse. There only a few landmark situations where politicians have created a better world (eg., US independence, abolishing the slave trade, universal sufferance, the setting up the welfare state – although with regard to the latter they have allowed it to become a bloated cow and not the safety net that it was intended such that the West is sinking under the expense of the monster it has allowed welfare to become).
Cheap energy and low costs of production are vital for any vibrant economic development. Politicians in the West seem hell bent on pricing the West out of the market place. The sun will rise in the East in any event, but there is no need to shorten the days and so dramatically clip the wings of the developed western countries. Our children and grandchildren will not thank us for this.
Unfortunately, not only do politicians not understand simple economics, so too the majority of the general public. In the UK (and this also applies in Europe), we are having a debate about the amount of tax paid by large international companies, such as Starbucks, amazon, e-Bay and the like). The politicians think that these companies ought not to get away with paying little or even no tax in the market place that they are earning billions. What is there not to like about the mantra that they should be made to pay their fair share of tax.
The answer is simple. Every expense that a company is forced to pay is past onto the consumer. If the company has to pay tax (whether this be a carbon tax, a capital tax, an income tax or security/national indemnity tax), it is the consumer who ultimately pays that tax in higher prices for goods and services. So a tax hike on a company is a cost of living increase on the consumer/the general population.
This might not be a disaster if it were only 1 rogue company but when it is universal, the consumer cannot shop around to avoid the increase costs, since this increase cost will be accross the board. The Starbucks coffee which costs £2.99 will cost say £3.25, the Big Mac Meal which costs £4.99 will costs £5.60, the cost of everything bought (or sold) on eBay and amazon will be more. Gradually everything the consumer wants will go up in price. In today’s economic environment, it is unlikely that employees will get a corresponding pay rise, and those on benefits are seeing benefits capped. It is the consumer that will be squeezed by any tax rise (or other overhead placed upon business), since ultimately it is the consumer who pays these charges (the company passing them onto their customers).
I can’t understand why politicians want to make our companies uncompetitive, nor why they wish to push up the day to day living expense for the ordinary person who for the main part is already struggling to make ends meet and enjoy a reasonable standard of living. Politicians either do not know or could not care how much misery they inflict on the people they govern and how at the end of the day, everything they do makes matters worse (not better).
Obama is the worst president that the US has ever had. After the next four years what will be left of US industry to provide jobs to pay the essential taxes? All jobs will be in China or India.
We in the UK suffer a double whammy. Firstly the UK Government has introduced a Carbon Price Floor of £16 ($25)/tCO2 from 2013 rising to £30 ($46)/tCO2 by 2030, and note this is based upon 2009 prices which means that the cost will be higher.
In ADDITION there is a top-up component, which for 2013-14 was set at £4.94 ($7.67)/tCO2 and indications are that prices for 2014-15 will be £7.28 ($11.30)/tCO2.
However, it is expected that an announcement this week, because the Market price of carbon has fallen, will indicate that this top-up tax will increase to £10 ($15.52)/tCO2 in 2014-15. It has also been muted that this will double (£20($31)/tCO2) by 2020, all of which means that businesses in the UK will face considerable extra costs for little or no benefit.
Full story http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9150665/UK-carbon-tax-will-leave-British-companies-uncompetitive-warns-Energy-Select-Committee-chairman-Tim-Yeo.html
Note: Todays exchange rate
Greg Goodman says:
February 18, 2013 at 1:06 am
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Greg you are correct to point out that the opening paragraph establishes nothing. But that in itself is material since it goes to the very heart of the problem with climate science, namely we are looking at data which is not fit for purpose, and which is inadequate in length and extent such that no useful conclusions can be extrapolated. Some 30 years, 50 years, 100 years. heck 200 years of data is simply insufficient to extrapolate any meaningful trends and influencing factors when dealing with earth’s climate which has been changing ever since the first day the earth aquired an atmosphere some 4 billiomn years ago.
The opening paragraph of this article whilst proving nothing ought to be suffieicient for anyone possessing a reasonable degeree of commonsence to be sceptical as to whether there truly is a real and urgent problem that requires redress, or whether there is any problem at all such that may be it is better to sit back and see what transpires (at the same time endeavouring to obtain a more complete picture of what is going on and why).
One thing that history establishes is that warm is generally good, life on Earth has flourished in much warmer conditions (indeed even today bio diversity is at its peak in warm wet environments and at its least in cold arid environments), there has never been runaway global warming, and humankind is a master at adaption (indeed adaption is buit into the very DNA of life itself0 There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to conclude that life on Earth, and humanking in particular, would not flourish if planet Earth were 5 or 8 or even 10 degrees C warmer than today.
I agree that the carbon tax needs to be snuffed out before it does any more harm.
Politicians love to create problems. A created problem is a lovely thing to behold for the politically minded; no matter what you do the problem, of it’s own accord, it will go away.. This means while the sheep are in shock and awe of the problem, you can fleece their open wallets; knowing at the end of it they will think it actually went to solving the problem…
This in of itself is quite harmless in the greater scheme of things if the problem is specific or small. But with climate change they have created a monster they cannot afford to slay – they have no option to ride it to the bitter end as the sheep won’t let them get off… The real problem is what it stops being done whilst it sucks up all the oxygen (and money, time, resources, etc).. That’s the real cost of global warming.