Guest essay by Eric Worrall
At least one Republican congressman believes the USA needs more taxes. Carlos Curbelo, U.S. representative for Florida’s 26th congressional district has introduced legislation to charge $24 / ton for CO2 starting in 2020.
Curbelo Receives Praise for Leadership on Market Choice Act to Address Climate Change
Washington, D.C., July 25, 2018 | Joanna Rodriguez (202-225-2778)
Representative Carlos Curbelo (FL-26), sponsor of H.R. 6463, “The Market Choice Act,” welcomed support of his efforts to move forward a market-based approach to valuing carbon from 34 diverse companies representing a wide cross section of the U.S. economy.
“I appreciate all the messages of encouragement in response to the Market Choice Act
filed earlier this week,” Curbelo said. “This new and innovative solution invests in American infrastructure, accelerates the transition to clean energy, repeals discriminatory taxes, and provides regulatory relief and stability that shows protecting our environment and strengthening the economy are not mutually exclusive. I look forward to the continued discussion around this proposal and thank all those offering support and adding to the constructive dialogue this bill has begun.”“We welcome your demonstrated commitment to finding common ground on federal policies that can mitigate the effects of climate change,” the business leaders wrote in a letter to Curbelo and original co-sponsor Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-8). “Your recently introduced legislation, the MARKET CHOICE Act (H.R. 6463), represents an opportunity for both parties to engage in substantive dialogue on the risks and opportunities posed by climate change, and to craft legislative solutions that benefit citizens in many different areas of the United States.”
The letter was signed by: Aspen Skiing Company, BP America, Burton Snowboards, Calpine Corporation, Campbell Soup Company, Clif Bar & Company, Danone North America, DSM North America, The Dow Chemical Company, DTE Energy, DuPont, EDP Renováveis, Equinor US Gap Inc., General Motors, IKEA North America Services, LLC, Ingersoll Rand, JLL Levi Strauss & Co., Lyft, Inc., Mars Incorporated, National Grid, New Belgium Brewing Company, Outdoor Industry Association, PG&E Corporation, Schneider Electric, Seventh Generation Shell, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Stonyfield Farm, Inc., Symantec Corporation Unilever, Vail Resorts, and Worthen Industries.
Environmental and energy groups across the political spectrum also praised Curbelo’s effort. Curbelo announced the introduction of H.R. 6463, the Modernizing America with Rebuilding to Kick-start the Economy of the Twenty-first Century with a Historic Infrastructure-Centered Expansion Market Choice Act at an event with Columbia University Center for Global Energy Policy on Monday. According to an analysis by Columbia University, Curbelo’s proposal would reduce carbon emissions by 27–32 percent in net greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2025 and 30–40 percent by 2030. The analysis also suggests the proposal would have little economic disruption, and that lowest-income households benefit from the proposal with 10% of revenues being used for transfers/dividends to offset higher energy prices.
A PDF of the legislation is available here and a legislative memo outlining the policies in the bill is available here.
A PDF of the letter is available here and the text of the letter is available below.
July 25, 2018
The Honorable Carlos Curbelo
The United States House of Representatives
1404 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515Dear Representative Curbelo,
As businesses that understand the critical nexus between environmental and economic interests and strongly support a collaborative, non-partisan solution to address climate change, we write to thank you for your leadership in advancing a constructive dialogue. This issue impacts our employees, our customers and the communities that we serve regardless of political affiliation—and of course, it impacts our businesses in very direct ways.
We believe that an economy-wide, market-based approach to valuing or pricing carbon, when carefully crafted, can both strengthen our economy and reduce carbon emissions by encouraging technological innovation and stimulating new investments in infrastructure, products, and services. A market-based approach provides companies, such as ours, with much-needed certainty to aid us in making long-term investment decisions that can further mitigate climate-related risks for our companies, supply chains, and the communities in which we live and work.
We welcome your demonstrated commitment to finding common ground on federal policies that can mitigate the effects of climate change. Your recently introduced legislation, the MARKET CHOICE Act (H.R. 6463), represents an opportunity for both parties to engage in substantive dialogue on the risks and opportunities posed by climate change, and to craft legislative solutions that benefit citizens in many different areas of the United States.
While we are not endorsing H.R. 6463, we appreciate your thoughtfulness, as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, in introducing market-based legislation that will drive a robust, non-partisan dialogue on how valuing or pricing carbon and strengthening the economy are not mutually exclusive – something we, as businesses, have understood for many years.
Thank you again for your leadership and we look forward to constructive conversation with you and other Members of Congress on policy solutions to address climate change.
CC: The Honorable Brian Fitzpatrick
Source: https://curbelo.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2103
This move does not appear to be representative of the Republican Party’s position as a whole. Reuters reports that Last week, the House voted 229-180 to approve a resolution expressing “the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy.”
Nevertheless in my opinion this unfortunate move demonstrates that even Republican politicians are not immune to the lure of toxic tax ideas.
Taxes aimed at encouraging renewables have no hope of improving people’s lives. Legislation which unnecessarily drives up the price of energy almost always ends with voters rejecting the politicians who caused the pain – as just happened in Ontario.
The only genuinely viable alternative to fossil fuels is nuclear power. The evidence that renewables are useless is incontrovertible – even über green Google Corporation’s top engineers could not find an economically viable roadmap for the world to transition to renewables.
In voting districts where green policy support is strong, support for a carbon tax might be good for a quick political victory, but once voters discover there is no hope of renewables bringing energy prices down they tend to turn against the politicians who made their lives more difficult.
I briefly looked over H.R. 6463, otherwise known as “Modernizing America with Rebuilding to Kickstart the Economy of the Twenty-first Century with a Historic Infrastructure-Centered Expansion Act”… or … “MARKET CHOICE Act” for short, and here’s a rundown of some of the basic assumptions of the act on which Congress gives the appearance of being in majority agreement:
(1) roads, bridges, airports, and urban transportation systems are essential to the economic and national security of the United States;
(2) there is a chronic shortfall in funding for the maintenance of highways, bridges, and other critical infrastructure;
And the MARKET CHOICE Act is what? — a rational plan to raise more funding to address this funding shortfall ? Have you SEEN the waste in other areas of government spending?
(3) strategic investments in new infrastructure will allow for economic growth and dynamism in the twenty first century;
Yeah, it sounds pretty good, when terms like “new infrastructure” are in play, but when you consider what this general term breaks down into, investments in those areas are strategically uninformed, and the prospects for economic growth projected from them are grossly idealized beyond any intelligent understanding. Congress needs to vacate the idealism of general terminology here and dig deep into the details of practicality governing reality.
(4) there has been a marked increase in extreme weather events and the negative impacts of a changing climate are expected to worsen in every region of the United States;
Oh my God, is the USA Congress really standing behind this tired, disproven, old song?! The rest of point # 4 seems to mirror a quote straight out of the IPCC bible. Congressional majority agreement seems clearly stuck in the dark ages, which is disturbingly ironic, since they are trying to help engineer a new age.
(5) if left unaddressed, the consequences of a changing climate have the potential to adversely impact the health of all Americans, harm the economy, and impose substantial costs on local, State, and Federal budgets;
Hogwash! The climate is NOT changing in any more radical way than it has been, to increase threatening consequences. This claim is mired in the fearmongering rhetoric of those who speak falsehoods and confusion.
(6) efforts to reduce climate risk should protect our Nation’s economy, security, infrastructure, agriculture, water supply, public health, and public safety; and
Reduce climate risk ? There is no greater risk from climate today than there has been in the past, other than more humans are building more stuff that faces the same risks that have always existed from climate. More stuff does NOT mean more risk — more stuff means more stuff at risk. Build twenty houses in a flood-prone area, or build ten houses in the same flood-prone area — the risk of loosing ten or loosing twenty from flood damage is the builder’s CHOICE … NOT the fault of all humans using fossil fuels.
(7) there is bipartisan support for pursuing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through economically viable, broadly supported private and public policies and solutions.
“Economically viable” ? Clearly Congress has not done its homework.
Later on in the text of the act, we find this:
(9) GREENHOUSE GAS EFFECTS.—The term “greenhouse gas effects” means the adverse effects of greenhouse gasses on health or welfare caused by the greenhouse gas’s heat-trapping potential or its effect on ocean acidification.
“Heat-trapping” ?! “Ocean acidification” ?! Please make it stop! This is the collective voice of our USA Congress. These are fundamental assumptions supposedly justifying a tax on carbon dioxide.
Is Congress serious about believing what a majority of its members appears to believe, or is Congress using a wide-spread myth as an opportunity to raise more money? Either way, it’s an embarrassment.
The legislation to tax carbon emissions introduced by Carlos Curbelo (R, Florida) and supported by a variety of special interests is just a shell game set up around the false narrative of climate change. A tax on carbon emissions would be passed on to consumers by way of higher energy costs and absolutely nothing of value would be created. Instead of directly taxing the public, the government is proposing to tax energy producers who will then raise the market prices of their products and pass on the carbon tax to consumers. The government becomes a middleman who skims off a fee and provides no essential service with the proceeds; a modern version of a shell game in a banana republic economy.
A recent development has dramatically changed the direction of the global warming debate. The results of a 2016 report by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) indicate a possible century of non-warming in which CO2 does not play a significant role. The orthodox climate change narrative of the last 30 years is crumbling faster than a snow flake in warm water.
CERN is the world’s top particle physics research facility. This distinction is important. Many physicists do not accept the premise that global circulation models adequately describe the long-term temperature of the earth well enough to warrant actions to change future temperatures through human intervention. Computer technology and databases are simply not adequate to solve the problems on which they are being applied. President Rosenbaum at Caltech recently posited that nature cannot be modeled with classical physics but might be modeled with particle physics. Conventional global climate models use theoretical particle nucleation models that require very large ad hoc adjustments to produce reasonable matches with local observations. The CERN global models of particle nucleation are based on actual laboratory nucleation-rate measurements and require no rate adjustments to match the real world.
CERN suggests that the climate models used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to estimate future earth temperatures are too high and that the models should be redone. Promulgating environmental regulations with too little information could exacerbate a future climate threat instead of reducing it. The likely damage done from acting on the wrong premise, a warming or a cooling planet, nullifies arguments for any action until the science is right.
Climate science is far from settled. Solving the climate change conundrum before the world wastes 100 trillion dollars running in the wrong direction is the major problem for climate science today. Ill-advised legislation like that proposed by Congressman Curbelo must not be passed. It will result in the destruction of the U.S. economy. We do not need to add a carbon tax to the cost of energy that is based on a false narrative, may produce adverse effects on the environment and is unnecessary. The only beneficiaries from the tax would be connected politicians and manufacturers of alternative energy products, which are not technologically ready to supply commercial quantities of reliable energy. How all the outdoor companies got drawn into supporting this ill-conceived legislation is inconceivable.
My short letter to Congressman Curbelo:
Dear Congressman Curbelo,
In your PR statement regarding H.R 6463 (https://curbelo.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2094 ), you refer to “. . . work on a comprehensive solution to mitigate and adapt to climate change”. Before I can support that, may I please ask you to define the phrase “climate change”? In your mind, what exactly does that mean?
Is “climate change” what has occurred to Earth’s biosphere over the last 200 years, or the last 2 billion years, or what will happen in the future 1,000 years? Is climate change something only caused by humans, or is it due—in whole or in large part—to natural processes? Is climate change alarming at any level, say Earth’s average temperature increasing by 0.1 C per century, or is there a certain quantifiable rate in any parameter “x” whereby “change” starts happening (e.g., >3 C warming per century, or >100 ppm CO2 increase per century)? What are the full set of metrics that are to be monitored for defining “climate change”? And what is the ideal climate at which humans should be satisfied such that no further change, upward or downward, is acceptable: is that state in the past, now, or in the future? And is there a, ahem, consensus among Earth’s population—from Eskimos to Polynesians to Sahara desert nomads—that the “ideal-climate-that-should-nevermore-change” is agreed upon?
In summary:
“If you can’t define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you really tell anyone else what it is. There is, in fact, no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity.” — Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I await your reply.
s/ Gordon Dressler
N.B.: Unfortunately, this posting is the only way I can “send” the above response to Mr. Curbelo. His official House-sponsored website (https://curbelo.house.gov/contact/ ) only welcomes comments from people residing within his district. Apparently, he is quite fine with sponsoring national (i.e., Federal) level legislation but is really interested in only how this plays with voters in his district . . . but isn’t this just the true color-of-the-blood of most politicians anyway?
It’s a ploy to get votes from his state, of course. He does not care to know any other perspective than the popular perspective of his ignorant voters. And if he can use this to get in good with the federal government — to help them raise more money from taxes — then all the better.
Let’s see — we want to impose a carbon tax to feed a fund that helps to build roads and infrastructure requiring processes that use fossil fuels and produce more CO2, hence increase the demand to use fossil fuels, which will create an even broader base to tax more and raise more money. Tax that which causes that which we can tax more. It’s like a perpetual tax machine — insidiously brilliant.
I am getting so tired of “Florida Man….” articles. It really gets to be galling when the Florida man doing the stupid is also an elected Representative.
From the article: “Curbelo’s proposal would reduce carbon emissions by 27–32 percent in net greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2025 and 30–40 percent by 2030.”
Those are very large reductions. How does Curbelo think we are going to meet those numbers? Or is this just a reduction on paper based on carbon tax trading?
BTW, Curbelo is a True Believer. I’ve seen him pushing CAGW themes for a while now.
In fact, such legislation would do little to reduce “net greenhouse gas emissions levels”, but would be instrumental in raising the cost of energy generation by 50-100% (or more) by 2025.
But since when have politicians cared squat about the impact of their wonderful laws on the costs that average US citizens bear as a result?
Next, buying slaves, or paying to not be a slave, will be “market choice”?
Carbon taxes will work just as soon as service stations start offering “carbon free” fuel at the pumps. After all they got rid of lead in the fuels and did it without a lead tax and the valves in our cars didn’t burn out even after years of telling us that lead in fuels was like lead in pencils. Something you can’t live without.
Vote him out quickly before he spreads.
AND this differs from a fuel ‘surcharge’ or tax HOW?