Article gave wrong idea on carbon tax
Article gave wrong idea on carbon tax
Regarding Dec. 23 TGI business article “Carbon Tax, Don’t Fiddle While Paris Burns,” something was left out. The article was missing a crucial point and therefore was misleading, I think.
I looked up what the State Climate Commission recommendations were on Hawaii.gov. It says:
“Must be equitable and appropriate for the people of Hawaii.”
“The commission recommends carbon pricing mechanisms that minimize regressiveness which can be pursued through structures such as equity based tax credit or carbon fee and dividend.”
Citizens Climate Lobby is working with Republican and Democrats to support a carbon tax that is revenue neutral. I think this is necessary in order for this to work, where everyone gets an equal monthly rebate (dividend). This way they are encouraged in a positive way to save on gas to make the dividend offset effect larger. British Columbia has been doing this for 10 years and has reduced their carbon 15 percent, while their GDP increased.
If people get the false idea that this is another tax that goes to make more government, the carbon tax is going nowhere and yes, we will have a rebellion.
With short-term thinking, we are making a long-term disaster.
A very concerned citizen.
Sharon Geiken Westerberg, Kapaa
Don’t worry Sharon, we will all be fine without a Carbon Tax. The free market, if left alone, will take care of any problem’s you perceive might happen. So have a wonderful Holiday season, and relax.
Sure Gordon, who needs those pesky regulations and laws that restrict the free market? We can always trust big corporations to do the right thing, correct?. I agree with you that we should continue to repeal all of these left-wing regulations like Trump is already doing. Why shouldn’t 10 year old children be allowed to work in coal mines if the free market needs additional cheap labor? Why shouldn’t corporations be able to dump radioactive sludge into the ocean if it’s cheaper than trucking it to a safe dump site? Let’s do away with minimum wage laws and let the market decide wages, right? Big corporations always put our interests before their own greed, wouldn’t you agree? I say let the free market decide everything; who needs laws restricting the free market?
Sharon:
FYI
RG DeSoto
“A Carbon Tax
A Useless Solution to a Nonexistent Problem By S. Fred Singer | Posted: Fri. August 10, 2018, 10:52am PTAlso published in American Thinker on Thu. August 9, 2018
Mr. Fred Krupp is president of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). He claims that “capitalism will solve the climate problem” (op-ed, WSJ, July 22, 2018). EDF pays him the princely sum of about $350,000 USD. Evidently, his duties include spreading the idea that EDF, an aggressive environmental non-profit, is “pro-market.”
Krupp asserts that the climate warmed in the final two decades of the 20th century, thus following the 1988 predictions of Dr. James Hansen, former head of NASA-GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies), notorious for his violent opposition to emission of CO2.
But Krupp is quite wrong, and so are the predictions of Dr. Hansen. There is no warming at all after about 1940, ’til the El Niño event of 1998 (which had nothing to do with CO2). Therefore, there is no climate problem to be “solved.”
It turns out that the warming reported by surface weather stations is fake—it is entirely an instrumental artifact, caused by drastic changes after 1980 in the way in which (surface) temperatures were measured—as discussed in detail in a research paper by noted meteorologist Dr. Joseph D’Aleo.
Krupp further asserts that satellites show atmospheric warming. Wrong again! Prof. John Christy has shown that neither satellites nor balloon-borne radiosondes exhibit warming in the final decades of the 20th century—nor does any other data source.
A carbon tax?
Krupp espouses “market-based mechanisms.” All of this sounds persuasive until you discover that he really wants a carbon tax—the wrong remedy, especially for a nonexistent climate problem.”
Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former founding Director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. He is author of Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (The Independent Institute).
Fred Singer has been, for decades, a professional denier, and he is wrong on climate. Check NASA. 17 of 18 hottest years has been since the year 2000. Poor man is freaked out about government control, but ok is Big Carbon will decimate society. There are alternatives, and a carbon fee and dividend is the most powerful mechanism to get there, say economists.
I honestly cannot understand how he sleeps at night. Quite a work is Singer.
Fred Singer has been a professional denier for decades, even supporting the Doubt Machine of the Tobacco Industry. How does he sleep at night?
Yes! Why even bother with the paid deniers and front groups who thrive creating the delay of a false climate debate?
A revenue neutral carbon fee but with a 100% dividend, makes enormous sense (cents, too)! !
Conservative and liberal economists and scientists say it is the best way to create healthy pollution free communities and limit climate change. It is not a tax. This way citizens would RECEIVE the carbon fees as a monthly check, for example. That would protect us from price spikes in dirty energy.
Polluters PAY the fees, so it holds fossil fuel corporations responsible for the damages. or “externalities”, they cause, hundreds of billions of dollars per year (Harvard School of Medicine).
It would more rapidly limit further pollution than by regulations alone, as happened in BC Canada with a similar, popular policy. BC lowered emissions and also lowered taxes with their fees.
A study by respected non-partisan Regional Economic Modeling, Inc. found the dividends would help to create 2.9 million additional jobs in 20 years, while reducing carbon emissions 50% in that time, as fees stimulate low carbon technologies . http://citizensclimatelobby.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/REMI-National-SUMMARY.pdf
To those who reject the science: perhaps nothing will change your mind. But what have you got against cleaner air, less asthma in our kids, fewer heart attacks, and more money (the dividend) in your pockets?
To those accepting the science: Any effort to limit the problem of climate trauma is worth it. For example: the cost of sea level rise ALONE is so great that no effort to prevent it is unwarranted.
Elon Musk was asked “what can we do? ” Musk: “I would say whenever you have the opportunity, talk to the politicians.,,,,. We have to fix the unpriced externality [social cost]. I would talk to your friends about it and fight the propaganda from the carbon industry.”