Neither gasoline prices rising from 25 cents per gallon to $4 per gallon nor California%26#039;s particularly high taxes on gas have curbed gasoline usage, so it seems illogical to assume that taxes would have any affect on consumption.
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5 months ago
Ammego - I%26#039;d sure like to abolish the Federal Income Tax! It didn%26#039;t exist 100 years ago, but now it%26#039;s stiflingly huge, with over 50% going to global conquest and oppression (which is OK as long as we call it %26quot;Defense%26quot;...), which firmly establishes us as a target for terrorism. Stupid.5 months ago
darrell m - I like police and fire protection, but that shouldn%26#039;t cost 50% of my income, plus 8% when I buy something, plus the higher costs of goods as companies pay excise and income taxes as well while producing and shipping the goods. We%26#039;re modern day serfs!5 months ago
Dana_1981 - Burundi? (LOL!)%26quot;Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have had carbon taxes in place since the 1990s, but the tax has not led to large declines in emissions in most of these countries — in the case of Norway, emissions have actually increased by 43 percent per capita. An economist might say this is fine; as long as the cost of the environmental damage is being internalized, the tax is working — and emissions might have been even higher without the tax. But what environmentalist would be happy with a 43 percent increase in emissions?%26quot;
%26quot;The one country in which carbon taxes have led to a large decrease in emissions is Denmark, whose per capita carbon dioxide emissions were nearly 15 percent lower in 2005 than in 1990. And Denmark accomplished this while posting a remarkably strong economic record and without relying on nuclear power.%26quot;
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/opinio...
5 months ago
(continued...)%26quot;Denmark avoids the temptation to maximize the tax revenue by giving the proceeds back to industry, earmarking much of it to subsidize environmental innovation. Danish firms are pushed away from carbon and pulled into environmental innovation, and the country’s economy isn’t put at a competitive disadvantage. So this is lesson No. 1 from Denmark.
The second lesson is that the carbon tax worked in Denmark because it was easy for Danish firms to switch to cleaner fuels. Danish policy makers made huge investments in renewable energy and subsidized environmental innovation. Denmark back then was more reliant on coal than the other three countries were (but not more so than the United States is today), so when the tax gave companies a reason to leave coal and the investments in renewable energy gave them an easy way to do so, they switched. The key was providing easy substitutes.%26quot;
So we have good (Denmark) and bad examples (Norway).
5 months ago
Tuba in the Rose Parade - That%26#039;s the rub, isn%26#039;t it? In theory, and in some cultures, a cap and credit trade system might work, but in a corrupt system such as the U.S. where politicians are on the take, surely corporations would buy exemptions and destroy the effectiveness (ultimately raising both costs and emissions).It may be no coincidence that instead of increasing government credibility the U.S. that Bush has quietly assigned himself the right to deploy our own troops on Americna soil and there will be %26quot;war games%26quot; conducted in U.S. cities this summer to practice squashing domestic disturbances. Of course Freedom of Speech against the government could easily be construed as %26quot;civil disobedience%26quot; now that we live in a police state (with unwarranted surveillance, jailing without charges or trial, torture in violation of all international treaties). With the Commander in Chief firmly in charge, the abolition of American democracy appears complete.
5 months ago
Unrelated, or is the cost of future civil unrest a reason for new taxes?The U.S. will conduct war games this year to simulate civil unrest scenarios in the U.S. That%26#039;s right, they%26#039;re going to simulate deploying our own troops on our own soil (against us), which was banned by the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878 following the Civil War.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?f...
%26quot;In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis.
The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada...%26quot;
5 months ago
U.S. experts will stage climate war gamehttp://www.upi.com/International_Securit...
%26quot;WASHINGTON, March 25 (UPI) -- U.S. foreign affairs and military experts will stage a war game this summer to study and highlight the national security threats posed by global warming.
The exercise, being staged by a coalition of seven think tanks and other non-profits called the Climate Change Consortium, will get technical assistance from the U.S. National Laboratory at Oak Ridge, Tenn., a statement from the organizers said Tuesday.
It said the exercise would be held in Washington July 27-28...%26quot;
5 months ago
Similar domestic war games have been held, often without prior notice, in American cities for the past 3-4 decades under the code name %26quot;Garden Plot%26quot; (although some incarnations have adopted other names such as Noble Eagle in 2001).http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/suppre...
Global warming offers a new excuse to maintain the funding and readiness for us to attack our own citizens if they%26#039;re %26quot;disobedient%26quot;. Surely the Pentagon will present this as one of the critical needs that must be funded by carbon taxes.
5 months ago
Nikel Johann - Good point, unequal policies (like Kyoto) would simply encourage corporations to move operations (just as we send our heavy polluting industries to China now).Thanks for the info on gasoline use. It only took a 2000% rise in price since the 1970s. I suspect that the decrease only works until users become accustomed to the new price. I gree that we need new standards. I%26#039;m looking to replace my SUV now that gas prices make the switch highly attractive (I can save $1000/year or more in gas cost alone):
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byclass.h...
5 months ago
Cliff F - I don%26#039;t think the average American can grasp having to keep a coat on all day and keep their thermostat set below 60F due to high energy costs. I do think it%26#039;s prudent to reduce fossil fuel use (due to peak oil, forget global warming), but a tax would only increase the cost of all goods, damaging economic productivity and therefore the resulting taxes and our ability to fund the very programs we need to reduce fossil fuel use.Certain %26quot;cap and trade%26quot; and certain %26quot;no net impact%26quot; financial incentives (get high impact uses to fund rewards to low impact uses) seem to make a lot more sense. We can learn from others%26#039; missteps.
5 months ago
Cap and trade is beyond the scope of the question, but a detailed MIT report is here for people interested:http://web.mit.edu/globalchange/www/MITJ...
Unfortunately the basic science documenting greenhouse gas warming seems very solid:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.h...
We can%26#039;t ignore it, but we can%26#039;t afford to approach solving it in a self-defeating manner (increasing taxation and economic decline) either!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou...