Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon – The latest UN Emissions Gap Report provides psychological advice for defeating political opposition to carbon pricing, and suggests discouraging farming by taxing agricultural land.
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6.3.3 Political and behavioural factors
Ensuring broad and stable support for carbon pricing and the phasing-out of fossil fuel subsidies requires more than addressing distributional, competitiveness and leakage impacts. A number of additional success factors can be identified (Klenert et al., 2018a) and table 6.1 provides country examples for addressing these. The challenge is particularly significant where trust in government is limited (Klenert et al., 2018a; Rafaty, 2018). And yet, where trust is strong, there is a tendency for citizens to question problems if policy solutions challenge their world views, e.g. on the State’s role in the economy (“solution aversion”) (Campbell and Kay, 2014; Cherry et al., 2017). Designing policies that are consistent with the prevailing world views of specific societal groups therefore requires extensive communication and consultation prior to implementation.
To secure popular support for carbon pricing, the public needs to be informed about its positive effect on emissions reduction targets, as well as the co-benefits of cleaner air, health and fiscal sustainability (Hsu et al., 2008; Bristow et al., 2010; Kallbekken et al., 2011; Baranzini et al., 2014; Baranzini and Carattini, 2017). Timing is also important: a gradual reform is more likely to be successful than sudden and drastic price increases. Similarly, if several fossil fuel subsidies are being reformed, this can best be done by sequencing the reforms (Beaton et al., 2013; Rentschler and Bazilian, 2017b). Language matters too, with terms such as ‘fee’ or ‘contribution’ likely to meet with popular support compared with ‘tax’ (Kallbekken et al., 2011; Drews and van den Bergh, 2016; Baranzini and Carattini, 2017).
Carbon pricing and fossil fuel subsidy reform generate public revenues, the use of which can strongly impact support for carbon pricing. This is discussed in the section 6.3.4.
6.3.4 Use revenues from carbon pricing to foster sustainable development
Raising revenue through energy tax reforms relaxes constraints on broader fiscal policy, creating opportunities to stimulate more productive and socially inclusive economic development. With respect to carbon pricing, its potential for contributing to public budget is illustrated in figure 6.2b. In developing and emerging economies, where tax revenue-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratios rarely exceed 20 percent, an additional €60/ tCO2 carbon price on top of existing measures would generate revenues worth more than 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). These revenues would not be available under non-fiscal climate policies like emission standards or ETS that do not auction permits.
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Better alignment of broad tax policy can help reduce carbon emissions. Subsidies or tax deductions related to commuting (Su and DeSalvo, 2008), company cars (Harding, 2014) and the aviation sector (Gössling et al., 2017) are common in many developed countries and tend to encourage carbon-intensive transport choices. Replacing property taxes with land value taxes can reduce urban sprawl and increase housing density, which in turn reduces the need for longer commutes (Banzhaf and Lavery, 2010).
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Fiscal policies such as ecological fiscal transfers, contingent on environmental performance, can also play a role in the land-use sector. They could be a way to implement REDD+6 when international pay-for-performance or carbon market finance flows to the national or state government level (Loft et al., 2016). There is growing experience with ecological fiscal transfers, including transfers of tax revenues to support protected areas and forests in Portugal (Santos et al., 2012), several Brazilian states (May et al., 2011) and India (Busch and Mukherjee, 2018). Land taxes on agricultural land can also help reduce agricultural land use and deforestation (Kalkuhl and Edenhofer, 2017).
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Read more: http://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/26895/EGR2018_FullReport_EN.pdf
I’m horrified at the ongoing UN and green attacks on agriculture. The abundance we take for granted is politically fragile. We can all think of nations which rapidly fell from relative prosperity and security to utter desperation because they took a political wrong turn. The same thing could easily happen to any of us, if we let it.
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What better way to make sure your grandchildren don’t suffer from climaggedon than to make them starve?
A few years ago the use of cereals for biofuels caused a marked increase in prices, and resulted in widespread rioting in many countries where they relied on imported grain.
Reducing agricultural output in the future would have the same effect.
Tax increases brought in steadily produce the boiling frog effect. Farmers will not produce quantities of food if any profit they make is taxed away, whether by income tax or land tax.
The people who suggest all these schemes would be insulated from the effects in much the same way as Stalin and his cronies were unaffected by the Holodomor.
Damn science is hard, what releases Oxygen back in to the atmosphere during photosynthesis , so you cut agriculture for what ever reason they come up with at the moment, and what happens to the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. maybe tax land that is used to feed people first, that is taken out of food production.
Perhaps they want to reduce food production to make sure the Club of Rome’s projections of global starvation work out. Their studies were broadcast in 1872. “The Limits to Growth”.
And then there was the nonsense by Paul Ehrlich in 1968. “The Population Bomb”.
In the 1790s, Malthus had the same superstitions, but being of the educated classes his subtle advice was to reduce the numbers of the lower classes.
In 1968 Ehrlich was democratic in advising universal sterilization.
Al Gore is also democratic in wanting everyone to go back to the Stone Age.
Bureaucrats with power and persuasion can be very dangerous.
Could? Could happen to us???
Try is happening. The Propaganda Ministry has a near monopoly on Public School Education, Secondary and Post Grad Education, Social Media, Hollywood and the Primary media outlets. They have turned Science into Post-Modernist Nonsense.
This is their vision, this is their message, this is their educa…ahhh indoctrination. It simply is no longer a question of if and could but rather a matter of will and when. The Bureaucracy run by the elites are simply waiting for the last vestiges of the Baby Boomer generation to die off in sufficient numbers for the walking brain dead:: GenX and Millennials to vote them the power to implement their dystopian BiG Brother vision for control of the masses.
The UN, wholly supported by taxation from governments all around the world, tells us that more taxation by governments all around the world will solve a problem that was defined by the UN.
Yup, seens legit!
As a “3rd way” solution to the UN’s pressing problem, I suggest that all the revenue from the “carbon taxes” be sent to a Swiss account that I will setup later. /snark
Headlines for Eric Worrall article: “UN Climate Report Recommends Taxing Carbon and Discouraging Agriculture.”
Worrall puts up in red BOLD: ‘ Land taxes on agricultural land can also help reduce agricultural land use and deforestation ‘ and the headlines say “…Discouraging Agriculture….,’ but we need to know the context, by reading the preceding:
“…There is growing experience with ecological fiscal transfers, including transfers of tax revenues to support protected areas and forests in Portugal (Santos et al., 2012), several Brazilian states (May et al., 2011) and India (Busch and Mukherjee, 2018). Land taxes on agricultural land can also help reduce agricultural land use and deforestation .’
200,000 acres per day of the Amazon rainforest is sacrificed for cattle and soybean production (80% for cattle feed.) In that context, taxing the land isn’t discouraging agriculture as much as it is preventing the rape and exploitation of natural habitat. Better to eat a plant based diet and save US $1 trillion per year in health care costs of a diet of unhealthy animal and dairy products.
The Amazon has 5.5 million km^2 of rainforest. By 2017, only 20% of the forest that was there in 1970 has been deforested. So it has taken 47 years to clear 20% of the forest. A major part of the forest gets flooded every year by the Amazon river, so that part will NEVER be deforested. Sure, eventually man could deforest more than 50% of the Amazon, but that will take a long time. The Haitian people have deforested their own land so it is possible. However if you want to protect the Amazon, turn it into one big national park. No taxes needed.
Bob, I’ve been hearing the same story since the 70s. According to environmentalists, the Amazon rainforest was supposed to be gone by the year 2000.
That you use the emotive word “rape” concerning agriculture shows that you have nothing in the way of a factual argument. Sorry mate, but the BS has worn way too thin and nobody is listening any more.
There seem to be at least two generations of people in the elites who have known only a very good life yet find something existential gravely wanting. It has all been too easy. So, somehow, they have decided to manufacture an apocalypse without themselves being the victim, for they are the elite, the priestly class. Apocalypse now, they cry.
I do wonder sometimes if it is a form of “Survivors Guilt”. They feel guilty that they belong to the most successful society in history and must invent a cataclysm caused by that success to expunge the guilt.
Tax carbon and discourage agriculture.
So, lining people up and shooting them is too humane for *progressives*. They want the poor to die slowly of starvation and disease.
I thought the same thing, so in one paper the UN discusses we are going to have trouble feeding our population going forward and in the next they want to discourage agriculture which can only lead to one outcome.
RE:Tax carbon and discourage agriculture.
This is so obviously anti-human and Malthusian I can hardly believe even the UN could produce it. In other words, force energy poverty on as many of the “useless eaters” as possible and the hardy ones that do not freeze to death we can starve to death. What’s next? A 21st century version of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” or possibly a “Soylent Green” solution? My parents lived (and served) through WWII and talked later about how many people then thought it was the End Times and that civilization was not going to survive. That era was a Saturday in the park compared to what could happen now.
Odd.
Socialist and Communist reject the idea of “Supply and Demand” as a valid economic model yet they would invent a convoluted reason (CAGW) to reduce the supply of food to gain control, rather than money, over those who will demand it if their policies are followed.
But, I guess, no problem. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will just “pay for it”.
The U.N. has gradually transformed itself from a humanitarian peace-keeping organisations whose function was to defend humanity, into a rabid fascist force bent on destroying liberty, enslaving billions and starving them into submission with insane regulations on climate and agriculture. This has been achieved with much help from the OIC and communist nations.
Never attribute to malice what can reasonably be explained by people being stupid 🙂
Another “How to tax yourself richer” report from the UN. Quelle surprise.
Usually even most of these ijits also know that taxing food would be a quick way to civil unrest and revolution… so they try to argue that taxing agriculture instead might somehow get around the problem. In someways it really is very entertaining watching such stupid people trying to persuade themselves. A bit like watching a dog with a long stick in its mouth trying to walk through a narrow gap, and it simply can’t figure out why it is unable to get through, but keeps trying anyway.
The problem here is context.
The UN do not want uncontrolled forest destruction replaced by cattle leading to dead soil.
In places like US and Europe, agriculture is efficient enough on the flatter areas and forests can be regenerated where growing crops is stupid anyway. Trees on steeper slopes do not replace agriculture, they bind soil and promote biodiversity. Trees in urban areas again do not replace agriculture. Ditto trees along watercourses.
What is required is a sensible balance between food production and reafforestation. Vast swathes of the earth can do this.
Whether media sensationalism would survive it is another matter.
This is a not-very-well veilled attempt to turn us all vegan { in case some people haven’t noticed the latest increase in vegan propaganda.} I haven’t seem a particularly recent paper on vegan food availability, but one a few years back posited that Earth could sustain 4 billion population max if we all went vegan. The main problem is lack of arable land. Not all animal-husbandry farmland is suitable for cropping, plus the requirement to rotate crops to maintain soil condition makes a lot of arable land fallow at some time. I have yet to hear a vegan explain how half the world’s population is to be exterminated.
Eric Worrall, won’t happen – no pasarán!
That’s a kind of Terra forming / switching agriculture to settlements
globally
so monstrous
not even “Volk ohne Raum” fantasmorg A.Hitler dared to dream of.
https://goo.gl/images/ZtpaHT