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.
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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.
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We who live with carbon taxes, and has done so for more than 20 years, know that the more you pay in tax the less consumer you become amongst everything else. That’s why the lefties wanted the tax to begin with, to try and influence consumer behavior so that we all consume less, their belief being consumerism is a child of capitalism and capitalism they believe is satan or something of equal note.
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Of course the carbon tax alone didn’t work therefor every citizen in the EU now pays carbon tax, energy tax, energy transmission tax, extra carbon tax on fossil fuel, various emission taxes on private vehicles to heavy trucks, extra tax for nuclear energy (the eco-lefties are the only ones who does not want to recycle the so called spent fuel rods so the taxes here is for longest term storage possible), extra taxes on hydro power generated energy (since hydro power destroys the local flora and fauna the lefties says), and of course theirs value added tax, VAT, on every tax-step on the way to the consumer; who, of course, pays for it all…
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There’s always a tax reason or three for why it often is more expensive to go by train rather than flight in EU…
This sounds like one of those
STOP THE WORLD I WANT TO GET OFF!!!
Moments
James Bull
America, don’t be fooled, this isn’t about science or the climate – it’s about POLITICS. It’s about taxing energy. you can’t fight with science because that doesn’t matter any more. You must fight it with politics, in Australia the public derailed a political leader and went nuts on an opposition. The opposition leader was deposed. At the next election the new opposition leader went to the people on a platform of no carbon tax (as did “no carbon tax under the government I lead” Julia) and beat the progressives, however didn’t get enough votes to hold an absolute majority. Independents played kingmaker and put the progressives back in power. The rest is history. However the people have not forgotten their betrayal and the next election is now nearly upon us. Carbon taxes have wiped progressives from the map in all states bar one and will take down the federal government in September. I suggest the democrats take a look at the political legacy of the carbon tax in Oz before they settle in their shiny new scheme. In Oz carbon taxes have taken down 7 governments so far, 6 of them progressive.
The moral of my story is that by acting we very nearly did stop our carbon tax, we even took down a party leader – it was only Julia’s lie and two turncoat independents in conservative seats that in the end derailed the will of the people, but we will have our day on 14 September.
Go nuts on the democrats, tell them you will not vote for anyone that supports a carbon tax in state or federal election and do it enmasse. Wipe them out in the states then take them out in your next federal election. You have a republican congress, get the democrats themselves to haul the president into line -an offer of electoral oblivion aught to do it well.
Richard Verney notes: “there has never been runaway global warming” There was just a 0.5C drop from January’s rather high global average temperature ( see http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ ) in the first two weeks of February ( see http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+002 and click on 14,000 ) Is runaway global cooling on the way? The theory by the purveyors of warmalarming is that the modest increase in global average warmth from newly minted atmospheric CO2 will create fresh new water vapor that will amplify that warmth.
But anyone looking at those charts who has a lick of common sense will understand that the water vapor changes including clouds that modulate that global average temperature are the driving force for both the short and long run. The short run is obvious from the graph. In the long run the CO2 warming causes very modest warming that is lost in the noise. The globally averaged warming from doubling CO2 is much less than the black body response (1C) from the radiative flux change (3.7 W/m2) because of the unevenness of the flux.
OT note: John Daly’s website gives me this: “This Account Has Been Suspended”
you can’t hit a moving target…..
The truly rich can move……the only people left to pay those taxes will be the ones that can’t afford to move
Richard says: “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…”
Sadly, no. It’s a list of, sometimes, baseless assertions which will cause anyone possessing a reasonable degeree of common sense to dismiss the rest of the article as being a bigoted diatribe by some far-right, tea-bagger character who is blatantly stating false claims about climate to advance his own political worldview.
I think that first paragraph sums up quite well what could be called being in denial of climate change. It is neither informed, nor helpful. Except possibly to those wishing colour anyone who does not does accept AGW as a right wing nutter.
Not helpful and well below the standard of articles posted on WUWT.
Greg Goodman says:
February 18, 2013 at 5:42 am
Hmmmn. Please, in your hate-filled extremist diatribe reply to Richard … please explain exactly what is factually “wrong” about any part of the statement Richard made.
I can understand you not “wanting” other people to hear such facts, but what is factually wrong in the first paragraph?
Has the family (or Jerry Brennan?) had to shut down John Daly’s site? http://www.john-daly.com
The nature of politicians is ever the same, lie to get into office, and pursue whatever one can to increase the power once there. Exempt themselves from the law, and their friends, or give their friends and themselves benefits not extended to the general public, or both.
Such a pity that there was nothing to prevent such…. or was there? Federalist 57 talks of the limits of congress in such a state.
“Congress can pass no law which does not equally affect itself, its friends, and the whole of society’.
We’ve had taxation without representation before. When they tax the air we breathe, the food we eat, the travel on highways our taxes pay for, the right to create jobs, the right to work, the ability to exercise our rights to speak and assemble.. *hehs* Well, they even tax us when we have the temerity to die and get out from under the taxes they’ve levied, then tax our children further for our death.
It seems the nature of politics.. expanding infinitely out into realm where they are no longer the servants of the people, but their masters, pretend benefactors who choose to steal by tax, which is no less enforced by force than any other robbery.
****
Greg Goodman says:
February 18, 2013 at 1:06 am
There was a massive loss of Arctic ice coverage that was accelerating from 1997 to 2007.
****
There is nothing more visually “impressive”, but of less practical importance, than how much arctic sea-ice there is. Less arctic sea-ice actually means more available sunlight & biological productivity. Grade-school biology.
richard verney says: @ur momisugly February 18, 2013 at 2:00 am
….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).
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Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organizatio explained that:
Aside for the fact this shows that sovereignty of nations has been a target for years, another key concept is Interdependence. Several years ago Al Gore let the cat out of the bag while presenting a national award to a Colorado FFA member. Gore asked the student what his/her life plans were. Upon hearing that the FFA member wanted to continue on in production agriculture, Gore reportedly replied that the young person should develop other plans because our production agriculture is being shifted out of the U.S. to the Third World.” The plan is to have different areas responsible for different things. Africa and South America for example would be responsible for food production, China and India for manufacturing, the US for technical inovation…. In trying to find an additional old link to that I ran across this.
This can all be traced back to the Club of Rome.
These quotes are lifted from The Green Agenda and Mankind at the Turning Point: Interdependence is Totalitarian Unfortunately the links within those articles to the original documents are now dead.
Just in case you think the hamstringing of the US economy is a fluke, read this from Al Gore’s book.
His buddy Bill Clinton is of course responsible for the rise of China.
None of the economic disasters in the EU and USA are a fluke. They were planned and executed with malice aforethought and the planners have profited handsomely.
I would also suggest reading the books from Clinton’s Mentor, Carroll Quigley or at least these excerpts.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Banks/Tragedy_Hope_excerpt.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/New_World_Order/Anglo_American_Estab.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/New_World_Order/Naked_Capitalist.html
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Wall_Street_Rise_Hitler.html
Can they really think that those companies are going to pay that tax out of their own pockets? People need to realize that any tax on ANY “big pollutes/companies” – as a class – will be passed on to their customers. ***
That means you and me.
Why? Two reasons: Because they aren’t going to impact their profits if they don’t have to, so passing it on (like a VAT) is the way to go. Also if they ALL get the tax, there is no disadvantage in passing on the tax, since all their competitors are in the same boat – and almost certainly passing the tax on. The tax will be paid by the first level of buyer who cannot pass it on to anyone else. With “big polluters” that usually means the public/consumer.
So, the reality is that the “big companies” become tax collectors. It is a way of taxing US, the little people, but making us feel good that the “big companies” are being punished.
I brought this up to Ralph Nader 34 years ago (regarding the proposed “Windfall Profits Tax.”
His response was, “Next question?”
. . . . *** in about 2007, China finally began to do something about pollution. One feature of their new laws was to place a heavy new tax on manufacturers who used a lot of energy. That tax was simply passed on to my small company in Illinois. Those Chinese companies were not going to pay it, not if they could help it.
We were buying investment castings from China, and that was one of the industries getting hit with the new tax. On our next invoice the price per piece was 19% higher. (Of course, they raised it even on parts that were shipped before the tax came into effect.)
And what did WE do? We had to eat it, because we had a contract to sell our tools at a set price, and we could not pass it on. But we did renegotiate at our first opportunity. But we did end up eating part of it.
The increase that our customer agreed to WAS passed on to the consumer.
So, the next time anyone talks about punitive taxes on “big” companies/polluters, ask them what they think the big companies are going to do with that tax. Ask them WHO is really going to pay that tax.
Steve Garcia
Latitude says:
February 18, 2013 at 5:30 am
you can’t hit a moving target…..
The truly rich can move……the only people left to pay those taxes will be the ones that can’t afford to move
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The truly rich do not even have to move.
Greg Goodman says:
February 18, 2013 at 5:42 am
Here is one he should have listed. The temperature today is lower than at the height of the Holocene Optimum many thousands of years ago. Until we cross that threshold we are actually cooling.
signed
“a bigoted…right, tea-bagger character” I just stated a blatantly false claim.
I should add to my above comment:
That is why I laugh every time the “Tax the rich” manta is trotted out. The only ones who ever pay tax are WAGE EARNERS aka the middle class. The rich don’t pay a dime.
It is the typical political sleight of hand. WAGES are taxed at between 10% – 39.6% while non exempt but qualified dividends are taxed at 0% or 15% maximum rate. Capital gains are taxed at a max of 20% for long term and a max of 39.6% for the gamblers.
Of course the US government has to be aware of the dividends and the buying of selling of the corporate stock before they can tax it…. Welcome to the Cayman Islands.
Sometimes it’s just hard to explain stupid. Like those who claim that oil companies are rich, for example. These are publicly traded companies with open books and who operate in a very competitive arena. You might wonder where all those riches? They don’t show up in dividends
or in executive salaries large enough to have any effect on prices, which are set by the market, not by executives. Taxes against oil companies are taxes against their customers, who provide
the only money they have. Companies do not print currency. You would think these facts would be easily understood. Even windfall profits end up in the hands of ordinary folks, either as investors or retiree/teacher/etc investment funds, etc. The fact that people can be conned into believing that they are only taxing the wealthy by taxing companies is an indication of just how much ignorance pervades our society. The US citizenry is defenseless against these political cons,
thanks to a corrupt and/or incompetent media and educational and political system. Embarrassingly illogical is the fact that most of these warmist “good citizens” also supposedly firmly believe that legal trials must ensure that both sides of the case at hand must not only be heard, but represented by competent advocates. Go figure. As I said, stupid is hard to explain.
I haven’t been a participant in WUWT discussions, but I have shared many WUWT entries on my facebook page, and I typically debate the climate change topic on the skeptics’ side; so it’s ironic that I’m stepping in here for the first time in support of a carbon tax! I would categorize myself as a lukewarmer.
The aspect of the debate that frustrates me the most is that truth typically takes a backseat to politics. It’s OK to scare people with half-truths, if we save the planet, right? Maybe not. I think an accurate understanding of our situation allows us to take the most appropriate action, so my approach tends to be more of a holistic evaluation of ALL pros and cons.
So here are my ideas about a Carbon Tax. Hydrocarbons as primary energy source for humanity will eventually be replaced by solar energy. A properly-designed carbon tax can make this inevitable transition less disruptive, because it can be imposed slowly and only as needed to truly mitigate environmental concerns. My position (when debating both sides) is that there is a ton of uncertainty, and so the precautionary principle absolutely applies. Personally, I don’t think that global warming will be as strong or have the consequences that the alarmists say. But I confess that I could be wrong.
Here is how I would design the tax. (No one has asked me to design one!) First, the tax would only be imposed on the largest emitters of CO2 (notice I didn’t say “polluters”.) I have no specific threshold to throw out there, but the point wouldn’t be to slam the brakes on our economy; (the point would be to install brakes.)
Second, any revenue gained via this tax should be offset by a reduction of business tax rates.
Third and perhaps most importantly, all imports should be subject to a carbon tax. People rightfully point out that any unilateral action on the part of the USA to reduce CO2 emission is useless in the face of increasing emissions from India and China. This carbon import tax would allow us to begin to address this.
What government really does: make life more expensive.
Greg Goodman says:
February 18, 2013 at 1:06 am
…..
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
Interesting graphics you reference – perhaps you would explain the difference with this which shows a drop in ACE
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/accumulated_cyclone_energy.asp?basin=gl
“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.”
So the choices are “Cake or Death” – does anyone feel the same as me, how long must we put up with these imbeciles? To lighten things up a bit may I recommend the following from Eddie Izzard put together with the usual Lego figures. The context is the rather club-like, desperate to please culture within the Church of England versus other, more, rigid religions. Enjoy, as they say, and take a break for a few minutes from the holier than thou green taliban.
Dr Tim Ball has been awarded a Queen’s Jubilee Medal for service to Canada and it’s citizen’s.
Reblogged this on World Chaos.
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Anthony, et al.
I would not underestimate the efforts the progressives are putting forward to put this agenda in place. There is a full court press going with massive funding behind the effort.
For example the “machine” has a video that is being played in churches and probably other locations with the propaganda exaggerating global warming.
I was wondering if there is a comparable skeptic video that simply gives the facts in a way that the common audience can become informed without all the complex arguments.
Without a comparable effort from the skeptics we will lose. With the mainstream media, university environment, and government push, including the Academies public opinion, will be molded as it has on other issues.
The facts are on our side, but there is a need to better get out the message or we wil get run over. WUWT is great and provides a resource for the more informed, but it is not getting into the schools or the media enough in my opinion to stop the train.