Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The OECD thinks member governments are not doing enough to impose punitive carbon taxes on citizens.
Governments should make better use of energy taxation to address climate change
14/02/2018 – Taxes are effective at cutting harmful emissions from energy use, but governments could make better use of them. Greater reliance on energy taxation is needed to strengthen efforts to tackle the principal source of both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, according to a new OECD report.
Taxing Energy Use 2018 describes patterns of energy taxation in 42 OECD and G20 countries (representing approximately 80% of global energy use), by fuels and sectors over the 2012-2015 period.
New data shows that energy taxes remain poorly aligned with the negative side effects of energy use. Taxes provide only limited incentives to reduce energy use, improve energy efficiency and drive a shift towards less harmful forms of energy. Emissions trading systems, which are not discussed in this publication, but are included in the OECD’s Effective Carbon Rates, are having little impact on this broad picture.
“Comparing taxes between 2012 and 2015 yields a disconcerting result,” said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. “Efforts have been made, or are underway, in several jurisdictions to apply the ‘polluter-pays’ principle, but on the whole progress towards the more effective use of taxes to cut harmful emissions is slow and piecemeal. Governments should do more and better.”
In 2015, outside of road transport, 81% of emissions were untaxed, according to the report. Tax rates were below the low-end estimate of climate costs (EUR 30/tCO2) for 97% of emissions.
Meaningful tax rate increases have largely been limited to the road sector. Fuel tax reforms in some large low-to-middle income economies have increased the share of emissions taxed above climate costs from 46% in 2012 to 50% in 2015. Encouragingly, some countries are removing lower tax rates on diesel compared to gasoline. However, fuel tax rates remain well below the levels needed to cover non-climate external costs in nearly all countries.
Coal, characterised by high levels of harmful emissions and accounting for almost half of carbon emissions from energy use in the 42 countries, is taxed at the lowest rates or fully untaxed in almost all countries.
While the intense debate on carbon taxation has sparked action in some countries, actual carbon tax rates remain low. Carbon tax coverage increased from 1% to 6% in 2015, but carbon taxes reflect climate costs for just 0.3% of emissions. Excise taxes dominate overall tax rates by far.
“The damage to climate and air quality resulting from fossil fuel combustion can be contained, but the longer action is delayed the more difficult and expensive it becomes to tackle this challenge,” Mr Gurria said. “Aligning energy prices with the costs of climate change and air pollution is a core element of cost-effective policy, and vast improvements are urgently needed. While in some cases compensation for higher energy costs faced by households or firms may be deemed necessary, especially to those more vulnerable, lower tax rates or exemptions are not the way to provide it – targeted transfers should be favoured.”
Further information on Taxing Energy Use, including graphical profiles of energy use and taxation in the 42 countries is available at: http://oe.cd/TEU2018.
An embeddable version of the report is available, together with information about downloadable and print versions of the report.
Register for a 16:00 GMT (11:00 EST) webinar where OECD economists will present Taxing Energy Use and answer questions.
For more information, journalists should contact the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration or the OECD Media Office (+33 1 45 24 97 00).
Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.
The OECD was originally set up to administer the US financed Marshall Plan, the post WW2 reconstruction of Western Europe. The transnational OECD bureaucrats somehow managed to perpetuate their jobs beyond the completion of the Marshall Plan in 1951, and now take credit for US post war growth.
From the OECD website;
… The Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was established in 1948 to run the US-financed Marshall Plan for reconstruction of a continent ravaged by war. By making individual governments recognise the interdependence of their economies, it paved the way for a new era of cooperation that was to change the face of Europe. Encouraged by its success and the prospect of carrying its work forward on a global stage, Canada and the US joined OEEC members in signing the new OECD Convention on 14 December 1960. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was officially born on 30 September 1961, when the Convention entered into force.
Other countries joined in, starting with Japan in 1964. Today, 35 OECD member countries worldwide regularly turn to one another to identify problems, discuss and analyse them, and promote policies to solve them. The track record is striking. The US has seen its national wealth almost triple in the five decades since the OECD was created, calculated in terms of gross domestic product per head of population. Other OECD countries have seen similar, and in some cases even more spectacular, progress.
So, too, have countries that a few decades ago were still only minor players on the world stage. Brazil, India and the People’s Republic of China have emerged as new economic giants. The three of them, with Indonesia and South Africa, are Key Partners of the Organisation and contribute to its work in a sustained and comprehensive manner. Together with them, the OECD brings around its table 39 countries that account for 80% of world trade and investment, giving it a pivotal role in addressing the challenges facing the world economy. …
Read more: http://www.oecd.org/about/history/
Why hasn’t the OECD been decommissioned? Sixty seven years since the official end of the Marshall Plan has surely been enough time to tie up any loose ends. Its not like we’ve got a global shortage of well funded transnational bureaucrats offering obnoxious, out of touch advice on imposing climate taxes.
Why does not the world demand that China cuts its co2 emissions? They have 28% of the total. This fact alone makes nonesen of the “urgent need ” to cut emissions, “before it is too late”. And it is always “almost too late”, with the goal posts being moved every five years or so.
and China will merely say ‘f-off ‘ they only sign up to things now becasue they do not have to do anything and they even get to decide themslves if they even do that.
“and China will merely say ‘f-off”
Yes, that’s why, and everyone knows it, so they don’t ask.
And I thought that OECD stood tor
Overly
Exaggerating
Communist
Dictatorships
Did you ever notice that those countries that declare themselves to be Democartic are really anything but?
Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea DPRK (Not democratic…Dictatorship)
German Democratic Republic (Communist East Germany)
Peoples Democratic Republic of Algeria (Authoritarian Dictatorship)
Democratic Republic of Congo (Authoritarian Dictatorship)
Ditto India, which is either the 2nd or 3rd largest emitter of CO2.
Chinese per capita CO2 emissions were already higher in 2015, than the EU average. At the same time population of China is 2.7 times higher. They have emitted more than twice as much, as the US. So the key is China, they will have to show the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
The problem is USA emissions is at 14t per capita so if you are going to standardize at 7t then USA has a problem. I guess you could follow China’s lead as there are 422 Million people in South America countries adopt them all but leave them in there own special state with none of the normal USA entitlements. I will leave you to work out which countries China has annexed in this fashion :-).
Now I am not a fan of the choice of per capita as a metric it really hurts land restricted countries like Japan which don’t have the space for the green lunatics favoured renewables. You could argue land area as a much fairer metric if you are going to push renewables.
What the CAGW feeds into is the leftist loon idea that every person has a right to the same amount of money, water and energy etc and the whole push behind the taxes etc is just the redistribution mechanism.
“every person has a right to the same amount of money, water and energy etc”
Regardless of whether they bother to work or not.
To the leftist loons if they aren’t working then it is your fault because they don’t have the opportunity not because they don’t want too 🙂
There’s some double accounting going on there on WonkyPedia, Germany appears just below EU . What’s up with that???
Absolutely LBT, the USA could follow China’s lead and simply add an additional Billion unenergized populace so that our “Per Capita” production would be less than theirs. Funny how “Per Capita” works
@Greg
Each country in the EU has there own emission per capita and then they have a combined figure
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC
They are historic 2014 numnbers but germany is quite high at 8.9T, France with it nuclear plants is the obvious low one at 4.9T
The current number for Germany is 9.06T per capita so they have actually increased since 2014
However they started at 11.6T in 1990 and they had made progress but not enough.
Remember there Paris objective was decrease 40 percent by 2020 so 0.6*11.6 = 6.96T is the target number if we follow the spirit of the Paris agreement.
Germany like all countries is playing games with their targets what they have started doing is talking about total emissions and using that. The reason is fairly straight forward that number looks better because they have emissions which are not counted, which you may care to research 🙂
Basically what you do is offset them by buying bogus carbon credits with 3rd world nations and not counting things that emit but directly export the product (such as a power station exporting electricity to Poland). The per capita figure you can’t doctor in that way because it’s a straight formula energy use / population.
Oh I found the historical per capita data for Germany
https://knoema.com/atlas/Germany/CO2-emissions-per-capita
You can see it has basically flatlined and is on a slight uptick over last couple of years.
It doesn’t matter a twit because CO2 emissions are irrelevant to climate.
1) The amount of anthropogenic emissions are small in comparison to the total CO2 in the atmosphere.
2) the CO2 in the atmosphere has very little causality regarding climate.
3) The present amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is too low at present, being the lowest over the last 3 billion years.
4) As Dr. Ball aptly points out humans are Earths last chance to release captured CO2 so vital to life processes on Earth.
etc etc.
If only CO2 did what is claimed for it we could be in trouble. The whole emissions accounting is a red herring to push for global governance via the UN.
Pointing out the hypocrisy of OECD not naming the largest CO2 emitters is low-hanging fruit.
More to the point, the evidence is clear that CO2 is not the “control knob”. Never was, never will be.
Arguing over who emits the most is counterproductive because IT DOES NOT MATTER A BIT.
CO2 is greening the earth – so let’s bring it on! All energy liberates mankind. More is better.
I agree.
Why do these clowns think that punitive taxes help anybody or anything. They make it too expensive to do what needs to be done and that is a bad thing. It does nothing but cripple the economy and the people, but will not stop the fact that eventually what needs to be done will be done, after paying through the nose to do it. What a shame.
But, do not ignore the fact that such taxes create a brand new, huge revenue stream for the government politicians will have great fun spending and that, once started they will be VERY RELUCTANT to turn off. It is a road we should not and do not want to go down.
I agree.
How long will it be before the U.S. goes down the “green” sewer along with the rest of North America.?
US oil companies make about five cents off a single gallon of gasoline.
On the other hand US Big Government taxes on a single gallon are around seventy-one cents per state & rising rapidly.
The tax is now $1.00 per gallon in CA, BEFORE Federal taxes.
IOW, greedy governments make fourteen to twenty times what oil companies make and it is the oil companies who make & deliver the vital product to the marketplace.
It’s Big Government, not Big Oil.
It’s always been about Big Government getting control of the energy sector of the economy and more & more money from it.
Control energy and you control just about everything.
Taxing the hell of of poor people on some theory in the future which has not been able to accurately predict the last twenty years temperatures WTF
We are not sure if burning fossil fuels will lead to CAGW but we do know for certain that increasing the cost of these will lead to the suffering and deaths of many. I guess we have to decide on which is the paramount priority.
I can say for sure that burning fossil fuels will not lead to CAGW. There is a chance that it will lead to AGW, but certainly nothing close to catastrophic.
There’s a good argument to be made that what little warming does occur will be entirely beneficial as is the enhanced levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Mark W
Yes.
Absolutely.
Could we start using BGW – Beneficial Global Warming.
I do not dispute that there might be micro-aggressive non-beneficial local outcomes.
But, really, a warming planet [especially with a growing population] is Beneficial. Thus BGW.
Plant – crop, or fodder – growth is enhanced.
QED.
I think it really is that simple in outline.
Auto.
Beneficial Global Warming for a Big Green World
They want to tax poor people. It makes them happy to see poor people suffer.
The only surprise hear is that they said in public rather than behind closed doors to the faithful.
Massive taxation is designed to force people into cutting down the amount of energy they use, not by going down the renewables route as cannot deliver, but by making it far too expensive to us others sources.
Similar to seeking to create an energy crisis, the intent is to force wide scale life style changes in the pursuit of control and return to a mythic pre-industrial rural past for most. Needless to say, St Gore and friends will be above such things as they have ‘important work’ to do.
Why don’t just go straight to human sacrifice? By demanding peoples first borne, it will also reduce their carbon footprint…..
I almost like your thinking. Problem is, these people would only be encouraged by it, and would work to make human sacrifice real. Some have already called for imprisonment of the non-believers. CGI videos of their violent deaths have also been aired (350.org). They would love to see it made reality.
If they really tried to float this there would be sacraficing mostly of the CAGW supporters against the wall. Most people have already got to that point with politicians as you see with recent elections around the world.
Its called abortion on demand.
Let’s end the discussion on that topic please. It has nothing to do with the thread topic.
Go take a look at this article https://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/18-02-14/ The Rise of Victimhood Culture by Kevin Mccaffree in Skeptic magazine and consider the parallels with the climate wars, how the UN (IPCC) is the third party, how the rich nations are the supposed “oppressors” and how the poor, politically corrupt nations are the “victims”.
Yes the rise of the self guilted green cult 🙂
I think they need to look up what happened on December 16, 1773 in Boston.
Richard K.
..I think they need to look up what happened on December 16, 1773 in Boston….
Today they would arrested by EPA for polluting..!
Cheers
Bahamamike
CCS (carbon capture and storage) perhaps and organic too probably! Well EPA approve cutting down US forests to burn at Drax which is several orders more insane.
Of course the old CO2 argument is still trotted out even though there is zero proof that it causes anything except increased plant growth.
In addition to plant growth, additional CO2 also leads to increases of phytoplankton. CO2 feeds life.
“Better living through carbon chemistry.”
The US has seen its national wealth almost triple… One of the other “founding” nations is Greece… How well has that membership worked out for them?
Well not too badly until they joined EU on a false prospectus …
The stock response of quacks and fanatics on why their remedy is not working–just use more, and wait a while. Trust us, we know it will eventually work.
The funny part about this is that government and quasi-official bureaucracies never stop and consider the unintended consequences. Massive taxation on energy will only result in a temporary usage reduction. I don’t believe people would stand for that hit to their lifestyles in the long run. The bureaucrats always seem to think that changes are made in a vacuum, and that people will just do what their told and not respond to such destructive changes. And yet, the more bureaucrats try to tighten their grips, the more inventive people are in finding ways to evade the bureaucracy.
In reality, a likely scenario that would occur in the wake of massive energy taxation is that people will transition to personal wind and solar energy to avoid the taxation and governmental meddling. They will also likely start burning more wood for heating to offset higher energy costs. The ironic result will be more airborne particulate pollution, not to mention the impact of mining all of the copper and rare earth elements needed to manufacture those solar panels, battery banks, home wind turbines and copper wiring….and early adopters will probably get tax credits to make the change while tax revenues dry up!
“However, fuel tax rates remain well below the levels needed to cover non-climate external costs in nearly all countries.”
In economic terms, raising gasoline and diesel taxes is a bad idea because it harms poor people the most and reduces a nations economic growth.
The OECD wants to raise gasoline and diesel taxes as a form of punishment for using fossil fuels.
In Ontario Canada taxes on gasoline are already around 43%. Add to that the carbon cap and trade restrictions which cost Ontario industry last year 2 billion $ and the coming carbon tax there is no end to this taxation on carbon.
Neither of your statements is correct. As the report clearly says, if carbon taxes hurt the poor, then we should consider transfers to alleviate that. And it is not punishment, it simply the idea that the price of something we consume should include all the costs, including externalities.
We can argue whether those costs actually exist and if they do what they are, but the basic economic principle is fair and sensible.
To take a simple example, if an airport expands and increases the noise levels for those living nearby, then they should be compensated by those who use the airport.
IIRC, half of the folks in the USA pay no income taxes. That would make them “poor’. Any fuels they burn would be taxed, but they would add CO2 to the atmosphere, and get a rebate! Sounds more like redistribution of wealth than climate change policy. Just domestic equivalent of the Paris green fund. The Gores, Suzukis, DeCaprios, Obamas and Trudeaus, of course, pay never-mind to fuel costs.
@Phoenix44
The problem with the theory of “externalities” is that any funds gathered under that rubric NEVER go to ameliorate the supposed “externality”. The various US states pried some $250 billion out of the tobacco companies. How many people with COPD due to smoking, or lung cancer, or whatever, have actually received treatment for their condition from these monies? I would suggest “zero” as a first-order approximation.
Phoenix44 your answer is ridiculous it leaves out the concept of a profit thru the sales chains. You are trying to treat the tax as if it is imposed on the cost to produce the product. There will be a massive amount of company profit built into the cost and you tax lands on the whole cost. It doesn’t matter if you set it correct at some point in time the moment anything moves the actual cost to produce or the tax then it no longer matches and you fairyland concept goes up in smoke. Your whole idea is a fairyland children story told to the young and gullible.
If you want to see what happens in the real world look at Australia and Canada which already have fuel excise and GST is imposed on top of that again. That is how these sorts of taxes work in grown up land.
Pheonix44,
I bought a house on a busy street. Over the last 20 years it got much busier.
Would you please come to one of my City council meetings and explain to them why they they need to compensate me.
Phoenix44 said;
There is a long list of legal synonyms for “punishment”, which will be readily available to an administration with a differing perception & interpretation of the working assumptions. Some interests have always sought to use taxation to impact their enemies or competitors … thus, such practices have long attracted legal & judicial attention.
Once we acknowledge that the putative costs may or may not exist, the proponents of increased prices (taxation) to meet a cost that may not be real, become vulnerable to the charge that they are simply “looking for an excuse”.
In the course of trying to ‘line up his excuses’, Obama took a self-inflicted political hit that was downplayed in the media, because they are his political allies, when he asserted much the same argument package, with respect to coal, the coal industry, and those who work in it & derive their livelihoods from … and at the same time thought it a good idea to demean & mock their guarantees under the 2nd and 1st Amendments.
The patent folly in Obama’s tactic of sneering at rock-solid Constitutional guarantees points directly to his lack of confidence in the verifiable (legal) reality of the “costs” which he, too, wanted to use as his justification (ie, “excuse”).
The costs-gambit is perhaps most-nakedly exposed, in the practice of making multiple GCM Model-runs, then selecting one that matches a preconception. Aided & abetted by the similarly illicit technique of repeatedly tweaking the (myriad arbitrary) assumptions incorporated into the Model until, again, the desired result is obtained.
But the ‘desired result’ is based on clear (‘court of law’) abuse of the modeling-tool, which is where the (political) movement ‘does a Guns & Bibles’ on itself.
Externalities also have benefits.
From the article: “The OECD brings around its table 39 countries that account for 80% of world trade and investment, giving it a pivotal role in addressing the challenges facing the world economy. …”
And how do they address the challenge? Why, they advocate raising taxes on everyone. Taxing economies harms those economies. OECD thinks it is helping when it fact it is hurting the economies of the world by advocating increasing taxes on everyone.
No that’s simply not true.
There is plenty to argue about in terms of whether there are costs and if so how large they are, but it is not taxes per se, but the idea that prices of things should contain all the costs, including those that are imposed on others, often indirectly.
I suspect just about everybody here would absolutely agree withe principle if it was in a different context – all the OECD is saying is that the external costs of consumption should be included in the price, and that tax is often the best way of doing that. Pricing things correctly is sensible, not damaging.
I can’t argue with that. You are being so simplistic anything I say would go right over your head.
The problem with such taxes is that first off, nobody agrees with what the damages are and how big they are.
Secondly, nobody agrees with who should pay and who should be subsidized.
Finally, even if we could get agreement on the above two points, the politicians will end up setting tax rates based on what they need and the people taxed and subsidized will be determined purely by political calculations.
This is the way it has always been, and unless we find some angels to run government, this will be the way it will always be.
I suppose we then would need an “Office of Pricing Czar” (obama has tried to set the framework for this office, I am hopeful that the current administration will limit its growth or do away with it). Should this be an elected position or appointed? Keep in mind it will have more power than any other administration office (and it will cost a lot if you want it to respond as needed)
But you are missing the most important point. The initial premise in the climate tax scenario is that “we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because of climate change potential”; everything else, after that mistaken premise, is just rationalization and false justification to gain the end result.
If the negative health impacts associated with coal use and air quality are quantifiable & more important than economic/health/environmental benefits that are associated with coal use, then that specific information is justification you can use to work with the DIRECT trade offs. If you can’t show the direct trade off then all you are left with politics & force to get your way.
I would be the first person in the world to sign up for an a la cart society if it was feasible. It is not.
Increased prosperity, health, nutrition – all spring from the well of fossil fuel use. Thew positives far outweigh the negatives. Taxation of energy use is an attempt at reducing the bases of progress.
A nation can’t tax itself into wealth, any more than a body could give itself blood.
The theory that government spending creates wealth is equivalent to a belief that moving money from one pocket to another makes you wealthier.
I wonder what might happen if a ‘carbon’ tax were levied at such a rate that all income and company tax could e removed?
Why bother?
That’s not the aim. The aim is to price carbon correctly by including ALL the costs, including external costs, and so make sure that we consume at he right price. It is not designed to raise revenue.
The aim is to control behavior. Freedom is irrelevant. Resistance is futile.
There are no external costs to fossil fuels. The cost is net negative (= positive profit). Were it not, economies would fail.
The so-called “externalities” are calculated as the social cost of carbon, all based upon hypothetical disasters culled from climate models inputted into social models. href="https://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/mit-economist-shows-weakness-in-social-cost-of-carbon/It' falsehoods all the way down.
Since the only noticeable effect of burning carbon, aside from the cheep, reliable energy it produces is an increase in plant growth that benefits agriculture so we should be paid a subsidy for using it in line with the agricultural benefit.
I put the HTML close after “falsehoods” but somehow it didn’t come through. Mod? 🙂
It’s always designed to raise revenue otherwise politicians wouldn’t be interested.
You still haven’t dealt with the other problem that there is a profit on the item and you can’t get at the real cost of the item and it won’t even be the same for different suppliers. You still need to tell us how you are going to apply the tax 🙂
Who gets to determine what the costs are?
Who gets to determine who gets to determine what the costs are?
Once you turn this over to the politicians it always becomes yet another excuse to tax and control.
PF, don’t know what you typed, but the correct format is [a href=””]text[/a]
using angle brackets, of course
Was pretty sure I typed that, icisil, but it didn’t come out. I must have screwed up, somehow.
[a href=””]text[/a]
“In road transport, 97% of emissions are taxed”. Wrong. Those taxes are, and always have been, used for maintenance of roadways. Oh, and 97% eh? Now where have we seen that number before?
Figures lie, and liars figure.
Not in the UK, where the various taxes far exceed the amounts spent on roads.
That alone should dissuade any thinking person from believing that government is capable of accurately determining how high such taxes should be.
The overall consolidated OECD budget for 2017 comes to EUR 374 million.
OF course, the US is the largest contributor @ 20.6%… Next closest is 9.4%.
MEMO
TO: President Trump
FROM: Joe & Nancy Deplorable, US Tax Payers
SUBJECT: OECD FUNDING
Mr. President,
As the OECD produces nothing of actual value and has far out-lived its usefulness to the US, as well as the rest of the world, (like the EPA) even though it’s not a lot of money, ($97 million, give or take a million) please tell them they are CUT-OFF, as our infrastructure needs the money more.
Thank you for your service.
J & N
I trust you have sent the memo.
I did!
The leftists need more money so that they can buy more votes.
Trump I hope you read this. You have to withdraw from another UN plan. The US saved the world, the enemies, even got a better deal and OECD is taking credit for US 5-fold increase in its economy since the war! It was US cash and Knowhow that gave the rest of the world an economy period. Mr. Pres, the entire UN is rotten. You know it, but please know, like the climateers say ” Its worse than we thought.
The Greening of the Planet promises a global Garden of Eden with plenty and prosperity for a world population that has rounded out at the top, 85% of peak population in the next few decades. This will put to rest the last of the Malthusian marxbrothers with nothing to rip on. They will shrink back to the odd nut wearing a sandwich board with the end is nigh. I’m going to have to eat a lot of broccoli and omega 3 and smash records to get there myself!
I made a calculation that the 18% expansion in greenery on the planet in 35yrs amounts to 190Gt of ‘carbon’ with accompanying endothermic cooling equivalent to 30% more than the 190Gt of anthracite. Support for my long effort to flag the greening as the biggest development in climate in 10,000yrs may just be beginning to gain some traction with the article yesterday on the expansion of corn and soya planting in the Midwest cooling the region and creating more rainfall.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/02/13/study-massive-u-s-agriculture-in-the-midwest-has-a-climate-cooling-effect/
I know why climateers, after a few passing shots saying its bad for the planet, are deathly silent on this, the elephant in Climate Status. But crickets from sceptics seems odd.
I’m right there with you, Gary!
A Greener Planet Needs More CO2!
“Why hasn’t the OECD been decommissioned? Sixty seven years since the official end of the Marshall Plan has surely been enough time to tie up any loose ends?”
Looks like a classic example of ?Parnelle’s? immutable Law of Bureaucracy.. ‘In any Bureaucracy composed of Functionaries and Administrators, the Administrators will inevitably, inexorably and ultimately gain total control.’
Cheers
Bahamamike
It’s Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, by the way. Sort of an extension of a German writers (Simon) on political parties not being internally democratic.
It seems OECD is very much stepping out of it’s primary charter to ” stimulate economic progress and world trade” (wiki). I don’t think that calling for global taxes is the right approach (even for the wrong reasons).
The prime minister of Canada went to China to talk trade but connected trade and human rights. He was told to F*off. “Dec 4, 2017 – China cancels planned press conference, PMO says, amid Trudeau’s state visit. The countries have spent months in talks that have taxed China’s patience with Canada seeking provisions regarding the environment, human rights and gender issues …” PMO means Prime Minister’s Office. It is equivalent to saying ‘the White House”.
Yah but in terms of financial clout the PMO is the garden shed attached to the White House
Justin Trudeau is probably so naïve as to think that everyone really is, just like him! inside. All he needs to do is explain things, and the light will dawn for them.
Reminds me of Obama who declared that the only reason why the country wasn’t in love with ObamaCare was because he hadn’t given enough speeches.
So far, ‘climate change over the last 50 years has been either insignificant at any given location or indistinguishable from natural climate variability (even in the Arctic). Consequently, the cost of man-made climate change cannot be said to be greater than zero. The claim that natural climate variability is exceedingly small, is simply not supported by the preponderance of the scientific evidence at all available time scales. In other words, nothing is happening now that hasn’t happened many times before, and will very likely happen again no matter what we do.
The benefits of increased CO2 in the air are demonstrably positive for plant life, which, in turn, is positive for the entire biosphere.
Adding CO2 back into the atmosphere from whence it came is likely the single greatest thing humanity has ever done for life on Earth!
Givin the reality of these scientific observations, it becomes exceedingly apparent that the current climate change paradigm has nothing to do with observations or science, since it ignores the most essential aspects of the available science.
Any study of human behavior over the last 10,000 years, quickly reveals a constant theme of individuals or small groups attempting to control and manipulate larger groups for the purpose of gaining more power and wealth. Those attempting to do so will always defend there actions as being beneficial for the majority, but rarely does history bare out such benefits (with the possible exception of true/free capitalism, which tends to diminish with increasing scale). This is so common, that it is far more difficult to find examples of something different happening in human societies and nations with any significant size. There has been no discernable change in human behavior in this regard in the 21st Century.
So, how stupid are we to keep playing this game? It is overwhelmingly obvious that the real threat to the masses is those who try to control the masses, and always has been.
The threat is in the word ‘control’. The more control that is demanded, the bigger the threat to the population. The threat of man-made climate change to any individual (if it actually happened) would be akin to moving about 80 miles in a given direction in a lifetime. In other words, it is hardly a threat at all, as many people move much more than that on their own volition, and those that don’t, probably wish that they could. Simply put, climate change, man-made or natural, is simply not a threat, as life in general, and humans in particular are extremely adaptable. The simplest, cheapest, safest and most beneficial solution to climate change is adaptation, and that has been obvious from the start…and almost entirely ignored.
It is ignored because adaptation is individual freedom and individual freedom is not the goal of those who wish to rule. The imaginary threat of climate change is simply another story designed to make you give up your liberty and wealth to individuals who believe they are more deserving of it than you are.
On the scale from complete individual freedom on the left to complete individual control by ruling authority on the right, peace and prosperity peak on the left side, and war, genocide, fear and evil cluster to the right. How gullible are we to keep believing we can give up our freedom for safety, when that has never been the case in the long run?
I am beginning to think that reality is only a minor annoyance to ‘command and control’ paradigm builders (story tellers), and that humans are barely discernible in character from sheep.
This was an excellent comment, save for the false summary:
“On the scale from complete individual freedom on the left to complete individual control by ruling authority on the right, peace and prosperity peak on the left side, and war, genocide, fear and evil cluster to the right. ”
The claim that prostration to fear and authority is solely claimed by the right is wholly inaccurate. Government and true individual freedom, especially consciousness share an inverse relationship. The more of one, the less of the other.
The leftists seek to use government to compel others to behave according to their worldview. The right claims the free market but what they really do is give deference and a free ride to corporations to compel others behavior through pricing and monopolistic strategies.
Then, the religious factor want to use government to compel those with different sexual and hedonistic profiles (ie drug users or what are seemed immoral acts by the religious) to succumb to those worldview.
In both cases you have a significant portion of the population who believes it is ok to use violence to get what they want, so long as some false external authority does the dirty work. All statists are hypocrites at some point because the foundation of the worldview is violence, plain and simple. At some point they will be willing to permit that violence to get what they want. This isn’t a left right paradigm where one party holds more culpability.
All parties contribute and humanity will never be free until we understand natural law.
I don’t see it happening so significant suffering will continue probably forever.
I’d say the left are way more culpable currently, just as the right was during the Bush era. Then again, they are all playing the tune of the puppet Masters behind the scenes, so can we really assign a percentage of blame? I think it’s pretty darn even.
Monopolies are impossible unless created and protected by government.
Corporations can’t compel you to do anything.
I agree
S oros pays some of these narcoactivists. Some of them are just stupid from using.
So where would people like me fit on your scale? Very right, very “religious”, and yet I believe that whatever YOU choose to do with your life (as long as it doesn’t hurt others) is YOUR business. Smoke what you want, have sex with whomsoever you can talk into it, that’s between you and God.
Just don’t expect other people to bail you out if your lifestyle bites back.
Leghorn, snap out of it. Did you just tell him to sleep with any one he can? I don’t think you mean that.
Pedos are going down. Very soon. The higher up, the better.
Also, you are already bailing out their drug use. You will pay in your insurance, your deductible, your crime rate, your overdoses, your drug camps in your parks, your overdose community services, your municipality, your schools, your stolen vehicles, your increasing homeless users, your bad and unreliable employees, and that is just for starters.
I would consider pedophilia “harming others”. But lumping pot smokers in with crackheads is wrong. I would say chronic alcoholics are much closer but I’m not worried about them robbing me. I had a stepdaughter killed by a drunk driver but I don’t think banning alcohol is the answer.
Leghorn says, “Don’t expect any one to bail you out when it comes back to bite you.”
Even more helpful is, “Don’t expect any narcophiles and substance abusers to be able to recognize any consequences for their own behavior. Especially not if it affects someone else.” You ought to know that users are notorious for not seeing their own problems. It’s built into drug use. And suddenly the answer to saving the republic is more drug use.
Well, I don’t recall saying everyone gotta that mold, so you fit where you want to fit. As long as you don’t desire to control my actions (which don’t include drugs save for homemade moonshine, thank you) then I’m ok with your faiths. I’m fine with people believing and acting however they please until it either attempts to control or compel others behavior, or initiates violence upon another. And to be clear because I noticed it mentioned in another comment, pedophilia is a violation upon a child, it is rape even if a ten year old consents because a ten year old doesn’t have the capacity to truly understand the sexual complexity or implications of their actions. Legalizing such behavior is in direct violation of natural law, which is pretty simple. Don’t steal. Rape is stealing sometimes sexual privacy and identity. Therefore, if a law is made by man that is aligned with natural law it is redundant, if it is in opposition it is wrong.
So Zeke, in order to make everyone as efficient and low cost as possible, the state has a right to tell people how to live their lives, and jail them if they fail to live up to the state’s standards?
“Sooo” MarkW, that is not what I said so I am going to ignore that.
I was afraid that when I made the comment that my use of the words right and left might be construed as references to an ideology, but I was simply picturing a diagram on a piece of paper. I fully acknowledge that the ideological ‘left’ has been much more controlling, and much worse for the people they attempt to control. Sorry for the confusion.
Leghorn…you are definitely on the side of personal liberty and minimal control. Even if you go to the extreme, I don’t see you as a threat to me or society in general, unless there were a few billion following in your footsteps. Going the other way is far more dangerous and harmful. (Note that I did not use the words right and left. The scale goes from absolute liberty to complete control. Ideological right and left can show up at either extreme of the freedom/slavery scale.)
Zeke, it’s what you said, in fewer words.
You have claimed that since people who do drugs or these other things might cost us money, or become less efficient workers, this gives the government authority to regulate these things.
Where does it stop?
MarkW says, “Zeke, it’s what you said, in fewer words.
You have claimed that since people who do drugs or these other things might cost us money, or become less efficient workers, this gives the government authority to regulate these things.”
No sir, that is not what I said. Look carefully. Foghorn said “Don’t expect any one to bail you out when your lifestyle comes back to bite you.” And I replied that we are already bailing out drug users. My list shows you and every one else here real costs, that a family like mine, is already paying for drug use.
In the past 12 months drug users have cost us, that is, our family, thousands of dollars.
It has cost our municipality.
It has cost this country 63,600 lives from overdoses in 2016 (CDC).
And so on, through the list. Now quote directly the itemized list of costs to individuals and towns that I gave, and tell me which ones are only potential costs, as you claim. I will demonstrate that they are very real, present, and very expensive ways that the rest of us are paying for drug use.
How does small government create the danger of others controlling what you can do?
All government devolves into totalitarianism, it is an unfortunate and proven reality. The foundation is the belief that others have the right to rule or govern over another. This is external authority and it doesn’t exist in reality, only in religious faith based systems. The type of person government attracts are those with an authority complex who seek the ability to control others because they can’t control themselves on some level, whether it be spiritual, financial, moral, etc. They lack control so they gravitate towards finding purpose through exercising that ability to compel others. The other type is the lazy, plain and simple. They want coddled and relatively free from consequence, which is why they gravitate to a stolen gravy train, which is exactly what taxation is. Stolen production. They don’t have to deal with the fluctuations in the market and they don’t have to worry about retirement because it’s all stolen off the backs of hard working private sector citizens.
I certainly don’t have the answers to how we maintain this level of convenience in a society built without violence (government) but given the track record of the ruling elites throughout history, I think our species would flourish. I think this is possible because we are an imaginative creature, however easily manipulated (look around the evidence abounds), but our cava interactions are peaceful and mutually beneficial. Equitable? Certainly not, but nothing in this universe operates on equality of outcome.
I would really enjoy setting up a webcast with all you contributors on this particular these because each of us have some great insights. I think it would be an enlightening conversation
Zeke, your position is that the government has the right to ban anything with negative externalities.
Where does it stop?
Everything humans do affects others, there are negative externalities to every action under the sun.
You may not believe you are advocating totalitarianism, but that is the end of the road you wish to travel.
MarkW knows very well that those drugs are already illegal, and he is advocating overturning the rule of laws which were put in place by the people who live under those laws. The reality is, if someone says, “I want to legalize heroine and pedos,” he will not get elected and MarkW knows it. In fact, the cartels, dealers, and pedos days are coming, and coming very soon. The higher up, the better.
MarkW just called 63,600 drug overdoses in one year “externalities.” Good luck with that argument.
As for the subject of this article, I would just point out that at a time when rational, positive economic and civil behavior is being criminalized (carbon taxation, regulation, bans, and threats of fines and jail time), at the same time, criminal behavior is being legalized. Perhaps they are the two sides of the same coin. Just a thought. Growing food and driving cars in California is criminal, but drugs and prostitution and theft is being legalized. Could this be a pattern?
Something to seriously consider, also, is that criminals and psychopaths are extremely useful to bad actors who want to get into and keep power. How do you think powerful people get others to perpetrate crimes against their own countrymen? They give them their marching powder, rape victims, cash and a get out of jail free card. All pedos are psychopaths, and drug users commit crimes more than any other group. They are the ones who will carry out the commands of totalitarians against the rest of us. For example, MS 13. IS iS. Those are assets for bad guys in very high up places. +q
Just remember what Hill R Y said. “How they get to be Superpredators, we can talk about later.”
dur 2:02
I see that Zeke is incapable of arguing logically.
In his desire to protect people from themselves he is glad to embrace unlimited government power.
BTW, how many lives per year does the war on drugs destroy?
‘The reality is, if someone says, “I want to legalize heroine and pedos,” he will not get elected and MarkW knows it.’
Hey Zeke – Washington has been setting up shoot-up facilities where addicts can ‘safely’ take heroin, and Oregon is rushing to do the same thing.
You can’t make up these kinds of absurdities. But I remember when the academics were discussing this back when I was in college. The responses, of course, were ‘no one would do anything that stupid.’
Yeah. Only as soon as they can.
And there’s no danger of any of the usual suspects being voted out of office.
So now you fall back to the “we have the power, therefore we have the right” version of politics.
Like I said, a totalitarian at heart.
Alcohol kills way more than drugs do, why not ban that?
Junk food kills way more than drugs do, why not ban them?
Lack of excercise kills more than drugs do, why not mandate a weekly exercise regimen?
If your goal is to force people to be good drones who work to provide things for you, where does it stop?
Perhaps OECD would be happier if we all went back to burning wood, coal and fuel oil for heat. These people in their haste to reduce CO2 don’t think about how modern technology has already done that.
Carbon Based Life Form taxes Carbon under the guise of protecting Carbon Based Life Forms
Is that the headline?
Life consumes Carbon Dioxide. CO2 is the base of the food chain. Taxing food is immoral, right?
The OECD used to promote economic cooperation and development. Nowadays it promotes economic decline. It should be renamed OED.
OECD wants everyone to become a hunter-gatherer. Can France really support 67 million of hunter-gatherers?
BTW, according to Wikipedia, France’s Nationality (2010) was
89.4% French (born)
4.4% French (by acquisition)
6.2% Foreigners
8.9% Immigrants
for a total of 108.9%.
Only one thing came to mind while reading this —
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Thank you for this posting. It is more of a revelation than an essay. Left me with that “whiter shade of pale’ feeling.
Mission creep within the OECD would be, to put it lightly, an understatement. Goals and cooperation needed in 1961 were far different than today and it seems the OECD has passed its expiration date. With a budget of $442 million (USD in 2017) and mission creep it has exceeded or paralleled the EPA (US) grab for power and control far beyond its intended charter. Like and old car maybe it’s time to just junk it and get a new one. Not much hope in recycling the existing parts. Best start from scratch or the same old parts (personnel, ideals and agendas) will limit present/future value and function.
To a manipulative bureaucrat, any ‘crisis, real or manufactured, is an excuse to raise taxes.
Create a false ‘crisis’…
Use the ‘crisis’ to scare the masses….
Raise taxes to ‘address the current crisis’…..
A classic example of manufacturing a false crisis: “Oh We Got Trouble…….”
The Music Man
https://youtu.be/LI_Oe-jtgdI
LOL
That’s the way it seems to work.
Yes, double them in the EU member states and start collecting them in the Middle East and Venezuela.
…and double them in Canada also.
I don’t like to see energy being wasted, such as a large office block with every light burning brightly, long after all the employees have gone home. Having said that, energy should be as low cost as possible, since it enables countries to improve the living conditions of even the poorest citizens.
The OECD should understand this more than most. It is therefore especially disappointing that the Organisation for Economic Collapse and Decline should call for higher energy taxes which will be a setback for every developed nation and a disaster for the less developed ones.
It is even more ridiculous that the OECD should advocate higher taxes to fight an imagined threat based on climate ignorance and exaggerating models.
The LEED building mantra was based on “seeing” rather than fact checking the energy utility bills of those building designs. The cost of lighting (LEDs) fell while the utility bills for these see through glass buildings went up dramatically for heating and cooling. I guess R value does matter in the end.
The cost of heating went up, but not by as much as the cost of lighting went down.
On the other hand the cost of cooling went down as the cost of lighting went down.
A lot depends on how much of the year you spend heating your home.
BTW, most office buildings are still having to run the AC when the outside temperatures are getting down below 50F. That much heat is being generated inside.
OECD was captured by the contemporary socialists already several decades ago. Sorry, it’s BS organization.
+1
The reality is that, based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with modeling, the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is zero. For those that believe in a radiant greenhouse effect, by far the radiant greenhouse effect is caused by H2O and not CO2 yet nothing is being done to reduce the amount of H2O in our atmosphere. The biggest source of H2O polution are the oceans and nothing is being done to prevent evaporation of H2O from the oceans into the atmosphere. Even if we could eliminate all CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere and with hence eliminate life as we know it on this planet, the effort woud have no effect on climate change.
The AGW conjecture is based upon the existance of a radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. But the reality is that a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere, or anywhere else in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction as is the AGW conjecture. The idea that so called carbon taxes will help to improve the Earth’s climate, is science fiction. Even if we could somehow stop the climate from changing, extreme weather events are part of our current climate and would continue unabated. There are many good reasons to be conserving on the use of fossil fuels, but climate change is not one of them.
I have seen several reports claiming the Trump administration is preparing to call for a $0.25 tax on gasoline, supposedly as one way to finance the new Trump infrastructure plan.
Don’t do it, President Trump!!!
Gasoline taxes hit the poorest members of society the hardest. As an example, Increasing the price of a gallon of gasoline by $0.80 *reduces* U.S. GDP by One percent. Which is a LOT of money.
Don’t do it!
I don’t know if Trump personally proposed this tax increase. I tend to believe that it was introduced by someone else.
Regardless of who is pushing this idea, if it actually shows up in a Trump Infrastructure bill, I will be writing to all my congressional representatives requesting that they vote against it. A gasoline tax is one of the worst ideas evah!
The Oklahoma legislature just tried to raise a bunch of taxes this week, including a gasoline tax. The bill went down in flames.
I think whoever promotes a federal gasoline tax increase is going to get a LOT of pushback.
It will be interesting to see whether Trump goes along with it or not.
So, where do you think the money should come from – the already-battered budget? I think Trump may have painted himself into a corner on this one. Our infrastructure is in bad shape, and the money to fix it has to come from someplace.
Well … ‘infrastructure’ has become a ‘game’, like Education or Immigration.
Lots of it is properly the responsibility of lower, local levels of government. Not the Fed. Or the OECD.
The classic ol’ hurricane-zone local-level infrastructure scam is to deliberately not do upkeep & maintenance on local powerlines, because we’ll get another hurricane one of these days, and then the Fed will roll in & build us a whole new system.
The Fed have purview over ‘interstate’ highways … because locals back-when ‘put on an act’, purposefully to manipulate the Feb & the Process, during freeway-route planning & development. Ero, the Fed owns a stake in so-independent Montana. And actually, a bigger-than-usual stake.
The way things are now going ‘all of a sudden’, the minimal public awareness of ‘infrastructure-scamming’ is likely to find itself on a dunce-stool alongside better-known gamey gamers gaming the game.
In some cases, yes, we want to ‘invest’ for some things, in some places. But no, we don’t want sly locals sitting up late with a jug of wine dreaming up ways to tap the Fed budget. Or to validate the OECD.
Local Power – written clearly into the Constitution – cuts both ways folks. Lower levels below the Fed hold Power … but that also comes with Responsibilities … the game often & progressively becoming, for ‘the poor locals’ to dodge their $ onerous side of the social equation.
It becomes, eg, a societal-level version of ‘learned helplessness’.
The OECD has no proof that CO2 has any effect on the Climate, and has no proof that increasing taxes will have any effect other than damaging the lives of the poor in the World, but this does not stop their deranged brains urging them to call for increased taxes of CO2 production. The OECD and the UN should be closed down, as they have long since passed their use-by date.
“Taxes are effective at cutting … emissions …”
A tax transfers money from the private to the public sector. Is there any evidence to support the assertion that emissions will be lower if the public share of national expenditure is increased?
The OECD in my experience is a sock-puppet for socialists who first write an OECD report, and then react to it as it was given from above. In its simplest form, some statistics are sent to the OECD that publishes them in shaming light, and this is used to drive legislation that has little to do with the statistics, and the statistics have little to do with facts.
In little countries in Europe (like, almost anywhere in Europe) this works stunningly well.
How to fix this for Europe?
There’s no fix as long as Europeans vote only for socialists of different shades. Note that there are no small state conservatives nor extreme right conservatives in Europe. Even most populists are center-left if not mixed with extreme left.
The main purpose of carbon taxes is to kill off the poor and elderly .It is sheer human arrogance and deceit
to claim we are going to somehow shape the earths climate to some committee’s liking .
The UN is assuring it’s demise by meddling and trying to rob citizens in the west to further the globalist agenda .
No, leftist kill the poor and the elderly because they think so much their children.
They’re nothing but a bunch murdering genocidal killers.
The EU hasn’t raised carbon taxes because they are afraid (and rightly so) that their industries would move to the second or third world, or even worse, to the United States. Same problem with any other energy tax scheme.
If everybody is entitled to the same share of fuel, water and energy, then they are also entitled to their share of weather, especially Canadian winters.
Here in the U.K., in rough figures, The cost of wind energy is about 4 times that of the current market cost. This being due to the government subsidy policy which is a stealth tax, being paid by the consumer.
To me this is an inordinately high motivation/ coercion mechanism which will create endemic poverty and achieve little else.
To argue that this is insufficient and should be increased is grossly irresponsible.
All – Been a while since I posted, but have been reading WUWT diligently. Here in the Once-Great State of Washington USofA, there have been no less than 10 bills in the local State Legislative sessions the last two years concerning the taxation of Carbon Dioxide. Most have died in session but two have made it out of committee and will soon reach the floor for votes: SB 6335 and SSB 6203 (Here: http://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=6335&Year=2017 & http://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=6203&Year=2017). I have posted numerous times regarding various CO2 taxation bills here at WUWT and at the local government website. A few weeks ago, I repeated my submission (which is limited to a small number of characters at the website). So, I decided to email my legislators directly with the following:
=====
Should this bill be enacted: What is the plan when scientific evidence proves that carbon dioxide is not the driver of catastrophic climate change? The science is not settled on this point, and enacting such punitive taxation based upon non-conclusive evidence (in fact there is no evidence of anomalous climate catastrophe in the observable weather record – such catastrophe exists in model projections only) is disingenuous and not in the best service of the constituency of the State of Washington. Washington’s output of Carbon Dioxide to the overall globe is miniscule, and these rules will merely be punitive to industry and more importantly each individual user of any and all fuels purchased in the State.
GOV Inslee’s UW Research Found Lacking for Human-Caused CO2 Attribution
Recently, I have reviewed the back-up documentation presented by GOV Jay Inslee that purports to substantiate the need for such taxation (https://www.governor.wa.gov/issues/issues/energy-environment; https://environment.uw.edu/research/major-initiatives/ocean-acidification/washington-ocean-acidification-center/) and have found the initial attribution of increased global atmospheric CO2 is based solely upon the finding documented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Recently, the IPCC has back-tracked on their dire prediction for future carbon-dioxide caused ‘global temperature increase’, as real-world observations have not tracked with IPCC temperature projections (see: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html; https://judithcurry.com/2015/12/17/climate-models-versus-climate-reality/, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/01/ipcc-silently-slashes-its-global-warming-predictions-in-the-ar5-final-draft/, and: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/09/26/study-lowers-range-for-future-global-warming-but-does-it-matter/?utm_term=.a18d4d31fde8; http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/01/23/catastrophic-global-warming-less-likely-study-says.html).
Of note is the ambiguity in the UW research in this area, in a footnote found in the document found in the above appended URL and titled:
“Ocean Acidification in Pacific Northwest coastal waters: what do we know?” which concludes:
“28. Published summaries of datasets from diverse national and global locations have shown substantial differences in the variation of pH or CO2 concentration of marine waters (Hoffmann et al 2011 (see below
for full reference); Waldbusser and Salisbury, 2013). What is equally clear in Washington coastal waters is that ocean acidification differs between locations in ways that reflect local drivers. Data collected at regional scales reveal substantial spatial and temporal variability (Scientific Summary on Ocean Acidification, 2012). Over time, we see seasonal and daily variations in pH and aragonite saturation state, hence a single value does not and cannot describe the ocean acidification status of a system. Diurnal changes in production and respiration, tidal intrusions interacting with river plumes, and seasonality in phytoplankton growth and respiration processes all contribute to the ocean acidification signal, and all vary over different scales of time and space.”
Talk about ‘settled science’. Looks like local conditions of tides, upwelling, and the seasons have a greater influence on ‘ocean acidification’ than atmospheric carbon dioxide?? This is the Governor’s reasoning to impose huge amounts of taxation on fuels purchased in the State?
To conclude, to stumble into punitive and regressive taxation by placing a ‘YES’ vote for SB 6335, 6203 based upon inconclusive, partial scientific evidence is not what a member of our State Senate should like to see as part of their life’s legacy, looking back over a lifetime from that eventual rocking chair on the front porch. The attributions for causation are correlated but causation is not conclusively restricted to man-produced atmospheric carbon dioxide releases from a modern lifestyle. Please, consider a ‘NAY’ or ‘NO’ vote for SB 6335, 6203, or for any other future attempt to create revenue from a beneficial and from all scientific evidence, relatively innocuous trace gas. We have elected and placed our trust in you to weigh the evidence and vote on our behalf. Please, consider what you are about to asked to do, and to vote “No” for any and all Carbon Dioxide Taxation measures.
Thanks,
Mike Roberts
======
Boy, did I ever create a response. I was asked via return email to submit a contact phone number, and after doing so I received a direct personal phone call from one of my districts’ State Senators. We spoke for over 40 minutes. He assured me that they were doing all they could to prevent these bills from passing; as the the legislature is now in a Democratic majority, they will be relying on Democrat reps voting against the measures because they represent Republican-majority districts, so as to remain re-electable. He also warned me that, should the legislature not pass the carbon dioxide tax bills, there exists strong, outside influences to create an ‘astro-turf’ initiative to present a much more punitive and restrictive version of a CO2 tax directly to citizens for a vote. That potential was a much greater threat in his opinion; what he said was needed was a way to contact the 19 – 30 voting age group, and present them with facts in an attempt to persuade them that CO2 taxes were not a benefit, but a net negative.
I’ve written enough for now; I’ll keep you all posted regarding any future developments.
Yours in WUWT,
MCR
[Thank you for your reply, for your efforts. .mod]
I’m an Oregon guy, but the same thing is going on here, and let me add my thanks for your efforts as well.