Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Wall Street Journal thinks skeptics should embrace a carbon tax as a kind of insurance policy, against the possibility we are wrong about climate change. But what about risks arising from the neglected monitoring of real problems?
Why Climate Skeptics Should Support a Carbon Tax
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Even if you’re skeptical, you should probably still back a carbon tax. When you consider the range of things that could happen, odds are the country will still be better off.
Here’s why.
It’s an insurance policy. How certain are you that human-caused global warming is not causing irreversible harm? Let’s say 90%. That means you accept that there’s a 10% risk of serious economic damage. That’s enough to merit some sort of insurance policy. After all, attacks by unfriendly countries and terrorists are also pretty unlikely, but the U.S. still takes extensive and costly precautions against them.
Adopting a carbon tax now, especially if its revenues are used to reduce other, growth-damaging taxes, is a pretty cheap insurance policy. It is a much lighter burden on growth than command-and-control regulations or green-energy subsidies. It can also be implemented gradually so that the growth effect isn’t felt for a long time.
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Read more (paywalled): http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/10/03/why-climate-skeptics-should-support-a-carbon-tax/
My objection to this line of reasoning is there is simply no compelling evidence that global warming would be a serious problem, even if climate sensitivity is high. A few degrees of warming would not threaten food supplies – at worst farm belts would move a few hundred miles towards polar regions. Some important food production regions, such as the Canadian prairies, would become more productive.
There is also no evidence the economically harmful effect of a carbon tax could be mitigated – as the WSJ itself slyly suggests, with its comment that the tax could be implemented “gradually”, to delay the impact on growth. Punishing businesses which use a lot of energy, and refunding the money to less profitable businesses, is effectively an attack on entrepreneurial success. Under a revenue neutral carbon tax, the undeserving get a slice of the income of the productive.
There are real problems which we probably actually should be taking some kind of “insurance” against – climate change, despite the hype and desperate failed attempts to find genuine “climate refugees”, simply doesn’t qualify as a real problem.
The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor (seen above) was a near catastrophe which should have served as a wakeup call. Without warning, the people of Chelyabinsk, Russia had a half megaton explosion occur almost directly overhead. Thankfully a long way overhead, or the damage and loss of life would have been severe.
Other recent meteor events, though smaller, are in some ways even scarier – the 2002 Eastern Mediterranean Event, if it had struck a few hours later, over India or Pakistan, could have triggered a nuclear exchange if it was mistaken for a first strike – at the time of the event, India and Pakistan were on the brink of war.
Skywatching for dangerous meteors probably receives at most a few million dollars every year.
Other neglected issues should also be serious concerns. The 2004 Indonesian Tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people. Better early warning systems, such as those which guard Japanese coasts, would have saved many of those lives. The 2011 Japanese Tsunami killed around 15,894 people, and triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster – but many lives were saved thanks to sophisticated and well functioning early warning systems.
One day frittering our resources on non issues like climate, while being complacent about a real dangers, will cost us.
Just off the coast of the US North West, there is a looming megaquake. When the 600 mile Cascadia fault triggers, maybe tomorrow, likely in the next thousand years, it will deliver large tsunamis which devastate hundreds of square miles of populated US territory over a long length of coastline, and will likely kill a very large number of Americans – unless American politicians stop spending all their time obsessing about climate, and start to take Earthquakes and Tsunamis as seriously as Japan does.
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Yep. Ghost Skeptics Should Back a Ghostbuster Tax, Just in Case. Sounds reasonable.
see: Skeptics Go Ghost Hunting For The First Time by BuzzFeedVideo
Actually, a patently obvious approach for those fearful of AGW is to proceed poste haste with the development of fail safe modular nuclear power. No tax needed. Just redirect funds from the AGW scam to companies such as Nucor and Babcock & Wilcox who have real systems in development. This would be useful whether AGW is false or not. The WSJ is victim to Progressive infection of the media. Only the OP-EDs and letters are worth reading; the news section and editorials are corrupted.
It’s been the goal all along – an energy use tax. CO2 has nothing to do with it other than being a subterfuge for its introduction.
“It can also be implemented gradually so that the growth effect isn’t felt for a long time.”
So much for urgency, eh? If there is no rush, let’s wait and see.
At least they admit that their tax is going to negatively affect growth rates. Most true believers claim the opposite.
When otherwise serious people want to believe that colder winters are caused by “global warming”, whatever we have, it is not science. Because all of the solutions suggested and demanded by advocates of “global warming” all converge to the same socialistic ones of bigger government, less liberty, less prosperity, lower personal energy use, this is far more an ideological issue than one of science.
Well I’ll be odd man out, except to note the tourist asking the Irishman the way to Dublin, he replied he wouldn’t want to start from here. There’s no particular Moses on the Mount, set in stone commandments as to exactly how we should raise the level of agreed taxes we do and for space we’ll assume that level is given and agreed (clench your fists and hold that thought from here on)
So what would be the pros and cons of dismissing all the other current forms of taxation and replacing them with one universal ‘carbon’ tax? Furthermore we give the CO2 alarmists their due and the tax is really a CO2E (equivalent) levied at the mine or well head on a per ton basis of CO2 emitted at it’s most efficient conversion to electricity. ie if burning a ton of a particular brown coal produced twice as much CO2 than some black coal elsewhere to produce the same amount of electricity, then a ton of brown coal is taxed twice as much and so on for gas and oil.
I put it to you that unlike many of the current forms of taxation that has some real plusses. Administratively simple to collect, unavoidable (bye bye leeching tax accountants and lawyers), doesn’t tax thrift, endeavour or entrepreneurship as you only pay as you consume, it’s perfectly neutral as we don’t care what you consume it on- privately/business/religious/political/etc and it is equitable in the sense it’s the rich that consume so much more of it with their private jets, etc. One thing it would do is favour more human physical labour than our current system does as it increases the relative price of capital and that mightn’t be a bad thing looking around at the waistlines.
Personally I think it has a lot to commend it compared with say trying to define income, the period in which it’s earned and administratively how to collect it in a timely fashion and so on. Is your objection to such a CO2E tax simply based on some particular prejudice you have against Greenies for suggesting it, or simply you’re familiar with the science of muddling through with the mish mash of incrementalism you’ve inherited?
Major problem: “dismissing all the other current forms of taxation”. Fantasyland, that is.
If a carbon tax would replace the mish mash, you might have a point. I don’t believe anyone is proposing that.
I have made this exact point many times. I would pay a carbon tax if *ALL* other taxes were replaced by it. The cost saving alone in collecting taxes would be reduced significantly. My tax bill would be drastically shrink as I don’t consume much.
However, the levels of tax take would still be the same. Looking at the break down of where my taxes went in the last tax year hear in Australia, by far the largest chuck of that tax went to welfare, and I don’t see individuals and corporates will be giving that away any time soon.
observa (eye roll) a “carbon” tax:
1. Cripples productivity.
2. Promotes inefficiency.
1 + 2 = the socialist utopia of serfdom for most with privileges for the ones with the guns.
3. Has no measurable benefit.
Thus,
the cost outweighs the imagined benefit 100:0!
If the “eliminate all other taxes” were likely to ever happen, shifting from an income to a sales tax would be a lot better.
No other taxes will be replaced, for long.
but, but –
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/10/03/to-avoid-the-worst-climate-impacts-obama-tells-leo-dicaprio-were-really-in-a-race-against-time/?utm_term=.5e66c6c45df1
Hey Leo buys it … and the elites can’t get the rest of us into the socialist club fast enough
The WSJ should know better than to fall for the phony insurance scam. Climate thugs are offering the sort of insurance that was properly called a “shakedown racket’ back in the day.
The silly thing is that even if one believes that CO2 emissions drive temperature upwards, a carbon tax does nothing to solve that problem.
Carbon taxes do not result in the reduction of CO2 on a global basis, merely a relocation of where the CO2 is emitted. That being the case, carbon taxes do not act as an insurance policy and merely results in making everything more expensive for the consumer whilst achieving nothing in return
The same is so with wind and solar. These do not result in the reduction of CO2 due to the fact that they produce intermittent non despatchable power such that backup from conventional fossil fuel generation is required.
To date, the alarmists have not put forward any proposal that results in the reduction of CO2 emissions. Carbon capture would, but that is not presently feasible and the reduction in efficiency may wipe out any gain brought about by carbon capture.
The best proposal by far would be to simply plant some trees, or to turn scrub land into grassland.
By the same argument, should we also throw a few people into a volcano?
Only naked virgins, you know, just to be sure.
/grin
“Only naked virgins, you know, just to be sure.” Dollars to donuts I bet shamans insisted that they were the only ones qualified to “prepare” virgin females for sacrifice … the night before the ceremony.
The only difference with the shamans of climate fraud these days is that they’re screwing everybody.
The stark fact is that the best policy is adaption.
This works whether warming is natural or manmade. Policies of Mitigation, at best only works if warming is manmade.
Adaption works if warming is beneficial since adaption will be targeted and thus if there is no harm from the warming there will be no adaption. Mitigation in this scenario (assuming mitigation works) is counter productive in this scenario.
Why would one wish to act in a manner that might deprive one of benefit? The evidence strongly suggests that warming and more CO2 are both a good thing and beneficial to bio diversity and life in general on this planet. Why try and prevent this from happening?
Policies of mitigation are really stupid given the risk that they will not work, and given that they may deprive us of a real and significant benefit. I do not consider the evidence suggests that CO2 drives temperature but if by some happy chance it does, then the world is in a win win scenario.
I adapted to climate change when I migrated from the UK to Australia. I adapted by buying sunscreen, shorts, t-shirts, flip-flops and a hat and on really hot and humid days I spend a day at a Westfield mall. lol
I think skeptics should work towards reducing energy dependence of carbon based fuels so that there is petrol-chemical feed stocks left for the future to be used for plastics. Whether or not a carbon tax should be used is questionable.
We don’t need to. Technology is going to reduce fossil fuel usage much faster than any government expects. Between 3D printing reducing the need for transport, and VR reducing the need to travel, the amount of fuel we need is going to collapse over the next 20-30 years.
Long before oil begins to run out, there will be other, better methods for creating plastics feed stocks.
Dear NYT readers –
Would you buy an insurance policy if you thought that the risk of real damage was remote, and the policy would be extremely unlikely to pay out even if the worry was well-founded?
Uh, WSJ not NYT. WSJ’s make beehives; NYT’s make lice.
What tax can’t be justified on the basis of ‘in case you are wrong?
Let’s hook up Greg Ip to an IV drip with 10% poison and verify his “growth effect” theory.
One thing he definitely got wrong: “… if its revenues are used to reduce other, growth-damaging taxes …”
Wrong Greg …. ALL taxes are ” growth-damaging taxes”! Zero taxes = maximum growth, (if we were all angels no federal government would be required anyway). 100% taxes = zero growth. Anyone who claims that adding taxes will stimulate growth is a fraud. The only economic parameter government should be focused on is how to maximize revenue … not how to “control” global climate … not how to exact its own twisted interpretation of “fairness” either…
Please no more Obama video’s, thanks.
Buy an insurance policy that doesn’t cover what it says and is based on false or unproven assumptions about risks and the uses and effects of premiums paid? The WSJ thinks it’s good business.
As always, the climate hustle has it backwards. The burden of proof for both the hypothesis and for any actions is on them, not on the skeptics.
Atheists should go to church, in case Jesus was real. It’s easy to do and the consequences of being wrong are immeasurable.
I’m pretty sure there’s no God. But I am certain that if there is, He will not look kindly upon those who represent Him as the insane, sadistic psychopath depicted in the Bible, or as responsible for the vile spiritual protection racket that is Christianity.
It really is fascinating how atheists are so ignorant regarding the Bible and Christianity.
It’s almost as if they are afraid to know anything about the thing they hate, just in case they find out they are wrong.
“Even if you’re skeptical, you should probably still back a carbon tax.”
Nonsense! Should we tax young children for every baby tooth they loose, just in case their adult teeth don’t grow in? It’s the same logic.
A carbon tax is ethically and scientifically wrong, and thus is supported by scoundrels and imbeciles.
A carbon tax is a tax on EVERYTHING and EVERYONE, with a few exceptions*. Almost everything we make or grow requires primary energy. Everyone consumes primary energy to heat their homes, have food to eat, and to just live. Fully 86% of global primary energy is from fossil fuels, and less than 2% is from renewable, despites trillions of dollars per year in wasted subsidies.
Fossil fuels keep most of us and our families from freezing and starving to death.
* A carbon tax does favour venues that have plenty of hydro power – in Canada, that is Newfoundland, Manitoba, BC, and (surprise!) Quebec. A carbon tax unfairly discriminates against those venues that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas to generate electricity, like Alberta and Saskatchewan.
This is why the Prime Minister of Canada has implemented a carbon tax, because it preferentially harms those hardworking people who dislike him anyway. He is a spoiled child, with hardly any work experience and reportedly limited intellect.
Regards, Allan
Notes:
The following numbers are from the 2015 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, for the year 2014:
http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review-2015/bp-statistical-review-of-world-energy-2015-primary-energy-section.pdf
Global Primary Energy Consumption by Fuel is:
86% Fossil Fuel (Oil, Coal and Natural Gas),
4% Nuclear,
7% Hydro,
and 2% Renewables.
That 2% for Renewables is vastly exaggerated, and would be less than 1% if intermittent wind and solar power were not forced into the electrical grid ahead of much cheaper and more reliable conventional power.
It’s OK. He’s just bringing forward the day the West secedes from Canada.
You can’t have a conservative West ruled over in perpetuity by a liberal East and remain one nation for long. I’d vote for anyone who promises to build a wall across Manitoba.
Since about 1960, transfer payments from Alberta to the rest of Canada have cost us about $1 million per Alberta family, including nominal interest. (Reference: Mansell and Schlenker)
Alberta has carried the Canadian economy for many decades, and now that Alberta is in financial difficulty, Canada is too.
For many decades, Quebec destroyed its economy with separatist nonsense – and transfer payments made that affordable for them.
Ontario destroyed its manufacturing economy with foolish green energy policies that are not green and produce little useful energy – and Ontario is now on the transfer payments dole.
Alberta is now copying Ontario’s disastrous energy policies – policies that are so utterly dysfunctional that any child could prove they cannot work.
We are being governed by doctrinaire socialists that have a track record of being wrong about almost everything. Our economic situation will get much worse.
In all fairness, the headline of this post is not fair. The position is an op-ed written by one reporter. It is not a position adopted by the editorial board as the official voice of the newspaper. Mr. Ip is fair game for condemnation for having written something gobsmackingly stupid. The Was Street Journal did nothing one ayw or the other.
They permitted it to be printed. So they are responsible.
Most newspapers print op eds from a variety of sources. The Wall Street Journal has printed a number of op-eds by Obama and his administration. I don’t think any one thinks they represent the Journal’s editorial policy.
The threat of IS (ISIS, ISIL, or what ever it’s called) is presently the greatest threat to any western country in today’s world.
Anyone who dismisses this REAL ‘global threat’ are the real deniers.
If fanatics associated with IS (or whatever) are directly or indirectly associated with some major world wide organization, then a tax on that major worldwide organizations’ adherents would also be a reasonable insurance policy.
Edit the op-ed to replace carbon with ‘ISIS related adherents’ (and skeptics with progressives), then sit back and see what happens to the associated “logic” that it would be a good idea.
That is the most idiotic reasoning I’ve ever seen. We maintain a military because IF we didn’t, we most certainly WOULD be invaded by a hostile foreign power.
Maintenance of the military has zero to do with the probability that someone will invade/attack us. The comparison thus not only falls flat, but is immediately seen as false.
If you wanted what another country has, the fact that they have or don’t have a military makes no difference in whether you decide to invade them?
What color is the sky in your world?
On the contrary, he’s saying the probability is 100%, so he doesn’t define it as a probability at all. I disagree with his definition, of course.
The IPCC and their cabal,has been wrong for decades,yet still Wall Street wants to capitulate anyway.
COWARDS!
The problem with Wall Street is that they are not qualified to give advice about the best method of reducing atmospheric CO2, therefore they simply kick the problem down the road, to be solved by utility companies,
who will (probably mostly) behave in predictable (and stupid) ways. Anyone familiar with the new energy technology of molten salt nuclear reactors, is aware that we are on the cusp of commercialization of same, by a variety of organizations and governments. This will occur decades before any need to massively reduce carbon, if indeed there will ever be such a time. I would suggest that those who wish to massively reduce atmospheric CO2 start worrying about the consequences should they succeed. They are, after all, installing energy generators whose effect on CO2 reduction cannot be controlled or turned off. . Reduction might or might not have much effect on global warming, but it most certainly will have an effect on this planet’s ability to grow enough food to feed the population.
The best insurance for any global disaster is a strong global economy unfettered by economic shackles imposed to mitigate one possible problem.
Actually the tsunami is a great example. The Indonesia tsunami was similar in severity the the Japanese tsunami but more impactive because it was a developing economy that did not trust offers of immediate aid thereby worsening the following effects of disease and loss of human resources. Japan was able to protect its people while global interests helped protect its economy.
Well-said, Jeff.
Yes