Carbon Scam Ping - (POGW) Oxymoron of the day award...
Posted on 07/08/2008 10:00:15 AM PDT by Clive
When the federal Liberals lose the next election and Stephane Dion is forced to resign, the words "Green Shift" will no doubt appear prominently in the first paragraph or two of his political obituary. As a cautionary tale, it will rank right up there with John Tory's disastrous religious school funding proposal in Ontario. Ironically, the legacy of this self-described green zealot will be to kill serious environmentalism in this country for years to come.
That's too bad, because the concept of a carbon tax actually makes sense --even, dare I say, to conservatives.
I am talking here about a pure carbon tax -- a per-chemical-unit surcharge applied at the retail level to the sale of gasoline, home heating oil, natural gas, coal or any other fuel that yields carbon dioxide. Consider the benefits, from a traditional, conservative perspective.
1) A carbon tax can actually make government smaller. Right now, Western governments control and tax the use of carbon fuels through a bewildering variety of economic interventions. These include everything from fleet-wide fuel economy standards for auto manufacturers, to ethanol subsidies, to small-car purchase rebates, to alternative-power research grants. By monetizing the social cost of carbon usage in a generic way, a carbon tax could replace all of these programs through one simple microeconomic mechanism. Overnight, a whole army of green lobbyists, bureaucrats and environmental consultants could be turned away from the public trough.
2) A carbon tax is a (relatively) flat tax. Since a carbon tax is essentially a consumption tax, it would help chip away at the massive bias against the wealthy contained in our "progressive" income tax system. That's because wealthy people typically spend a lower percentage of their income on consumption than do the poor and middle-class. If a carbon tax were applied in a truly revenue-neutral way -- with revenues offset by across-the-board reductions in income tax or, better yet, capital gains and business taxes -- Canada would be a nation far more welcoming to the successful and the talented.
3) A carbon tax can help create a more socially humane, family-friendly society. Many people casually associate the word "conservative" with unfettered capitalism. That is a fallacy. A true conservative in the Edmund Burke mould is suspicious of any revolutionary creed that challenges the established qualities of a humane society, especially a creed -- such as unbridled materialism -- that corrodes family life and human spirituality.
The auto-dependant, air-conditioned, eight-lane suburban lifestyle made possible by cheap oil has created a nightmare not only for our environment, but also for family dynamics and civil society as a whole. Millions of Canadian fathers and mothers now spend little time with their families -- because their early mornings and evenings are spent alone, in metal boxes, fighting traffic.
Modern suburban developments have no sidewalks -- because no one walks. Nor does anyone spend time mingling in mixed-use, high-density commercial areas. They are too busy navigating that other alienating creature of cheap oil: the mega-mall.
A carbon tax would improve society along conservative lines by encouraging people to live closer to their places of work. It would discourage the inhabitation of large, impersonal swathes of tract housing in favour of higher-density apartments and townhouses located closer to parks, schools and downtown shops -- the traditional breeding grounds of civil society.
4) A carbon tax would fight terrorism and rogue power. This point cannot be repeated often enough -- especially for the benefit of those red-meat conservatives cruising around with right-wing bumper stickers affixed to the back of their eight-cylinder Suburbans and Escalades: When we pay US$140 a barrel for oil, we are enriching some of the most dangerous regimes on Earth -- including Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran. At worst, this means we are literally funding the nukes and terrorists that threaten to blow up Tel Aviv and London. At best, it means sucking up to the likes of Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia's royal family. Simply put, it is impossible to maintain any semblance of a principled foreign policy when your #1 enemies are also the pushers feeding your oil addiction. A carbon tax wouldn't end this dependency entirely, but it could significantly move the West's effective demand curve for oil
downward. And it would mean that a greater share of the West's energy needs could be satisfied by homegrown sources. Billions in windfall profits would be redirected from the coffers of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to those of George W. Bush and Stephen Harper.
All this is to say that Dion wasn't crazy to think that a case could be made for a carbon tax -- in principle, at least. Unfortunately, the Liberal leader lost his nerve. The plan he came up with is so full of spurious, politically inspired hedges and add-ons that it squanders all of the above-listed benefits.
This is why, ultimately, Dion will deserve to be sacked: His proposal is controversial and divisive without actually being courageous or principled.
The most obvious flaw in Dion's plan is that it would grandfather in all the goodies the Liberals have implemented or promised in the past -- including incentive funds for renewable power, home retrofits, "green manufacturing," "low-carbon farm and forestry practices" and so on. Dion also has larded up his plan with poverty-fighting provisions, including new child and employment credits. So much for fiscal streamlining.
A further problem is that Dion didn't have the guts to slap the tax where it would do the most good: on you and me.
Carbon taxes are effective only if they influence our decisions about where and how we live -- since that, ultimately, is what drives a market economy. But looking Canadians in the eye and telling them that they have to buy smaller houses and cars is tough. So instead, Dion's Green Shift is all about soaking Canadian "polluters" -- i. e., the upstream companies that produce the products and energy you and I need.
True, the $40 tax to be levied on each tonne of greenhouse gas emissions would largely get passed on to consumers. But because the tax won't be levied at the most logical place -- the retail level -- it won't affect the carbon inputs embedded in foreign imports. So, while shafting Alberta, it does little to inconvenience Saudi sheikhs or Russia's state-run oil company.
In the same cop-out vein, the plan contains a "Green Rural Credit" to soften the blow for people who live in rural and northern areas, where energy needs are higher. But if the very point of a carbon tax is to motivate people to live a lower carbon lifestyle, why would you simultaneously subsidize their decision to live in the land of frigid cold, ATVs and pickup trucks? Either you want people to use less carbon or you don't.
Dion's plan is a disaster because it carries all of the massive political costs associated with the label "carbon tax" -- without actually delivering the associated benefits. Whether you stand on the left or right, it's hard not to see this as a firing offence.
jkay@nationalpost.com
Carbon is not the problem. The problem is Socialism and its need to take your money and give it to others.
Pay more in taxes and government will pretend to control the weather — A hoax anyone with a working brain can see through.
Carbon Scam Ping - (POGW) Oxymoron of the day award...
Its just a flavor-of-the-month tax. For the tax-addicted, any reason is a good reason to tax. You don’t even have to know what you’re going to do with the money, something will present itself, something always does.
Medieval medicos used bleeding for everything. If the patient recovered, its because you bled him sufficiently. If he dies, maybe you didn’t bleed him enough quickly enough.
Exactly, and even if it was a replacement there are serious problems with the idea.
I wonder how many BTUs we could get from roasting a Green Zealot? That is a renewable energy source right there.
“Modern suburban developments have no sidewalks “
BS. However modern urban renewal projects have no yards. 3 story tinderboxes that maximize population density.
Nope. Taxes only make sense to those who are too lazy to work for what they want and desire to use the power of the state to take it from others.
Whether we buy their oil or Europe or China or India buy it, the oil will be sold.
The oil is NOT evil. The people pumping it have evil goals. Pretending that they do not exist is not the answer.
The ticking timebomb must be defused. Taxing ticking clocks is not the answer.
“The conservative case for a carbon tax”
— oxymoron, by a maroon. There is no conservative case for a new scam tax.
TAX ON BREATHING....About as smart as ethanol...
The problem with carbon taxes is that they are stupid and unnecessary. You might as well accept the premise of the left.
I personally think a pure conservative position on taxes should be one that does not support the use of taxes as a method of social engineering. A person should not be threatened with higher taxes because they choose to avail themselves of a freedom that is not illegal or offered tax breaks because they behave like good children for the bureaucrats. The citizen is the ruler and should not be satisfied with being treated or allowing their fellow citizens to be treated like children.
jonathan Kay should either quit smoking marijuana, or quit writing after smoking marijuana. None of this makes any sense unless you are stoned.
Carbon taxes are a “least worst” solution to global warming. (There can be no “best” solution to a nonexistent problem.)
Even if they were a tax grab, they would be worth the price, if they prevented any more bans, regulations, and other tools of eco-fascism from being imposed. At least a carbon tax leaves people with some freedom to make individual choices.
Carbon taxes don't have to be a tax grab (I know, I know — I'm skeptical too). The nominally “Liberal” government of British Columbia (it's really an anti-socialist coalition of right-of-centre parties) recently imposed a “revenue neutral” carbon tax. By law (the same law that created the tax) the carbon tax has to be “revenue neutral”. Everyone received an advance rebate this year & the income tax rates were reduced for everyone. It remains a “progressive tax” — rather than a flat tax, because low income people get bigger rebates, or larger tax reductions. The best part — the socialist NDP has come out against it & they are losing the support of their greenies. The tax also woke up a lot of people who were lulled into thinking that we could reduce our “carbon footprint” without doing more than switching to twisty light-bulbs, and banning SUVs.
It’s going to happen whether we like it or not. That’s why my wife and I are investigating retirement to Mexico. The thing I find amusing is that all of these sustainable development/carbon tax/anti-suburban types hype up the benefits of a lifestyle of living in densly developed urban areas where everyone is crammed into Soviet era apt. blocks. I guess that works in low crime, relatively homogenous population countries like Canada, but in a salad bowl country like the U.S. where hatred/violence breaks down along racial lines thus creating a remarkably unstable, volitile social scene, this is a formula for a complete breakdown in civil society. I really don’t understand that. What’s stranger is it’s numerous supporters come out of California where rival race based gangs are fighting for control of huge swathes of territory the gov’t no longer even attempts to control.
I live in upper NY State. I would dearly love to use loss heating oil and propane each year. Does anyone know of an oil furnace that will heat my house on a few gallons per heating season. I am going to spend at least 2 to 4 thousand dollars this winter to heat a winterized house.
It short increasing efficiency is good for the consumer. However, now I think there is little wiggle room because efficiencies now are near 90 %. Many dollars spent on efficiency research will produce small increases in heating efficiency.IMHO
Tellingly, when wonderful advances in alternate fuels such as algae are announced, those who fret the most about CO2 emissions are silent, or only clap for a short time with one hand. In particular algae-based biofuels take the issue of CO2 off the table, for they recycle 100% of CO2 in the fuel. Why is this not good news worthy of much cheering?
This is proof enough for me that there is another agenda at work, and when CO2 must be reduced no matter what, even as India and China are given a pass and even as countries in Europe miss their Kyoto targets without any penalty, then the agenda must be to suppress the prosperity and power of the US.
Yep. Government is failing us and is literally cutting and running from their responsibility to maintain order.
They have partnered with the Nation of Islam in at least one community to "keep the peace".
Sadly, Mr. Kay won’t be the last person who tries to convince conservatives that a carbon tax is a good thing.
Excellent.
And no, there is NOTHING good about a carbon tax. it isn't a flat tax, because all other taxes still apply- Federal income tax, all SIN taxes, (tobacco, liquor,etc.) provincial taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, GST.
This author has rocks in his head.
yea, well the nation of islam can have this f...ing gov’t for all I care. Before long the nation of islam may BE the gov’t.
Will we be charging a carbon tax on city bus tokens? How about on amtrak? Non-nuke electricity? How about on hay fed to horses? Or sparkling water for after our bike ride to work? If we flatulate, will a bureaucrat be waiting to monitor the CO2 in said flatulence as it leaves our rectal area so we can be retroactively taxed for the fuel our bodies used?
Actually, I’d be happy to pay a reasonable tax that allows me to fart in a bureaucrat’s face. Maybe this idea has some merit.
There is a horrible risk of enviromental damage caused by ecoli getting in the water table when all the crap drips out of it.
This is only the implementation problem--and, to be sure, it's a big one.
The core problem is there is no evidence carbon is a problem. Thus, no justification for trying to change behavior by means of a tax. We may as well tax "tapping your fingers." It's a human activity also. Taxing it would reduce finger tapping. But why would it be silly to tax finger tapping but not silly to tax carbon? The reason is that the left has relentlessly convinced even some conservatives that carbon emission is wrong. Thus, the market will not, by itself, set a high enough price on this wrongful behavior.
So carbon taxes, however constructed, are just modern sin taxes. The religion is Environmentalism instead of Southern Baptist. But that's all it is. Unlike a cigarette taxes, however, there is no evidence that carbon is harmful.
These sound nice, but how well do they scale? How much land (and water) is required to produce anything on an adequate scale? Would turning the Great Lakes into algal fuel ponds be sufficient?
By monetizing the social cost of carbon usage in a generic way, a carbon tax could replace all of these programs through one simple microeconomic mechanism. Overnight, a whole army of green lobbyists, bureaucrats and environmental consultants could be turned away from the public trough.
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Yup. This guy is off his rocker. The very fact that one would cave on a “carbon tax” shows how weak the author is. Does he think this will really cause the “green lobbyists, bureaucrats and environmental consultants “ to simply go away. Heck, if I were one of these groups it would embolden me.
Great, a conservative case fore MORE taxes. I can just see Pres McCain announcing a deal on this with democratic majority in 2009.
There is no conservative argument for a new tax.
At current rates of taxation, there are only conservative arguments for reducing or eliminating certain taxes.
For example, if we want to encourage electric cars (a policy with which I disagree), then the conservative solution is to make them TAX FREE to buy and sell.
I guess you haven't been to Toronto area lately. it's downright dangerous to be white and walking alone in most areas'. It has become exactly what you decribe an American Berb to be.
Crime isn't any lower in Canada. It's relative to population levels, which at first glance makes it appear lower.
Winnipeg for example, is often the murder capital of North America, and in fact it may reach that distinction again this year before it's over.
Despite the stupid gun laws in Canada, gun crimes are rampant, exceeding gun crime levels in most American towns and cities. That's because criminals feel relatively safe to carry concealed weapons, knowing full well it is very unlikely any law abiding citizen will have one.
No more land and water that digging up tar sands does, or developing oil fields and refineries, running pipelines. In fact crops can be grown along all those pipelines which would A) turn the expensive of keeping brush from regrowing in these laneways into a profitable venture B) provide aditional food for wildlife.
The argument that we don't have enough land to grow both food and fuel is laughable.
These pellet stoves are easy to retrofit — they don't need a chimney, just a 6” hole in the wall behind the stove. They are safe and clean burning, because only a few ounces of pellets are in the firebox at any time. You don't usually have to pay a premium on your home insurance (like you would for a cord-wood burner).
Also — if there is ever a carbon tax, or carbon rationing in your area, your pellets will be exempt.
There have been several threads on Free Republic about these lately. Here's a link to one of them:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2034911/posts
"Put an environmentalist in your tank!"
- Soylent Alternative Fuels Corp.
“The argument that we don’t have enough land to grow both food and fuel is laughable.”
What does a belly laugh sound like, when it comes from someone starving because of the corn-ethanol debacle?
Actually, I’m quite glad to hear that. Thanks for the update! I’ve never met a Canadian I liked.
Well here in Orange county in FL, we’re way ahead of the game thanks to our local government tyrants.
You see, we already have the likes of McDonald’s Corp. buying carbon credits from the county to offset their large use of “energy.”
But our county commissars went on and made sure the gullible public will swallow and “pledge” that if individuals “go green” and buy $20,000 solar water heaters, why they’ll get a rebate or a carbon credit they can stick in their pocket for a rainy day.
Say, whatever happened to the Acid Rain epidemic?
And what about Killer bees? Weren’t they supposed to take over by now? Oh, wait, now all the bees are MISSING! I’m confused...maybe that’s the goal!
I had one of those. Besides the unreliable supply of pellets, the price of them jumped up from $2-3 a bag to $7-8 a bag making it more expensive than electric heat.
It’s one of those ideas that looked good on paper, but the laws of supply and demand make unpractical.
A regular wood burning stove is still the best thing.
I might need to clarify something I wrote in my #34 to you.
“These pellet stoves are easy to retrofit — they don’t need a chimney, just a 6” hole in the wall behind the stove.”
You do need to run an insulated exhaust duct from the stove, though the wall, and outside. It’s much like installing a gas fireplace.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! There is no one starving because of the "corn ethanol debacle". Show your proof other than BS news articles.
Ethanol production does use corn grown for human consuption. It uses feed corn, which is not digestable by humans. That stuff is grown soley for animal feed.
The ethanol process does not use the protien content of feed corn, this is recovered and further processed into animal feed. therefore, increased ethanol production results in increased animal feed production.
Other by products from ethanol production include corn starch and corn syrup. Therefore, increased ethanol production causes increased corn starch and syrup production as well.
Ethanol production has very little impact on commodity prices, mere pennies per bushel. The main reason for commodity price increases are increased fuel costs, which have doubled last year alone, and increased fertilizer costs, which have more than tripled. Other comodity price factors are increased labor and machinery costs.
It is LAUGHABLE to suggest that reducing ethanol production will reduce the price of feed corn. Unless of course you are willing to pay even MORE tax payer funded farm subsidies to farmers- so that we can GIVE away corn to turd world countries for free like we always do anyways.
There is no food shortage in this world, only increased costs of growing it due to one main factor- high oil prices.
As it is, most years, like 2004 stats show, the US government dumps over 10,000,000 tons of unsold corn into landfills a year.
Regardless, only 1% of the corn crop grown is of the variety edible by humans. This stuff never see's a ethanol plant. Now you know why the corn you steal from the road side for your summer corn on the cob roast doesn't digest. It's pig feed.
Here, in B.C. there's a temporary shortage of sawdust — because sawmills closed after the U.S. housing market crashed. However, we'll soon have a glut of sawdust for pellets, because we have millions of acres of beetle-killed wood that will be ground up to make pellets.
Corn has gone up a lot — but, it's still a lot cheaper to burn corn for heat, than it is to produce ethanol from it.
In some areas, switchgrass pellets, or peanut shell pellets might be the cheapest.
I cut, hauled, bucked, stacked, split, carried, stuffed, and burned, cord wood for decades, when I lived in the north. After 200 cords of round wood, I can tell you that burning pellets takes a lot less effort. A whole lot less effort. Much, much less effort.
On the downside, you might have to join a gym, if you've been relying on processing firewood to keep you trim.
Also, pellet stoves are much cleaner than round-wood burners — they emit about a fifth of the particulates (smoke). They are very efficient too (you use less wood).
If you don't like the idea of burning wood, and your house is fairly airtight, you might want to look into a in-floor hot water heating system. (google Hydronic Radiant Floor Heating ) If your house isn't too large, you will save a lot of money using an electric hot water tank for in-floor radiant heating. Once the system heats up it doesn't use as much energy to maintain the heat, much like a boiler-radiator system.
I've done (and still do) it all. I tossed out the pellet stove a few years ago because of the pellet problem. Plus the think does use a fair amount of electricity to run the blower auger and fan, and is useless when the power goes out. I have two windmills, a solar array, 24,000 amps of battery storage plus a generator for back up. That takes care of everything during the summer. I use wood for winter heat, and grid power for a back up electric furnace when I or anyone else just can't be home at all times to tend the system, which, as anyone who uses windmills, batteries and solar arrays will tell you, requires constant monitoring. Murphy's law always strikes when you are away.
Am I correct?
Thus, you missed the point entirely. There are many alternative technologies that essentially recycle atmospheric CO2 into liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Yet NONE are being cheered.
The left frequently dismisses things they don't favor by having endless questions that don't deserve answers, nor would ever be satisfied if an answer were given. For example. nobody would think to use the Great Lakes to grow algae, so your question is moot.
The one algae proposal I did see stated that it could produce over 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year in the New Mexico desert, implying that US fuel needs could be fully met by covering 10% of the New Mexico desert with algae greenhouses (not ponds). Of course, this would never happen, if only because as technologies are perfected, we will start to have many alternate sources of biofuels.
With your set-up, I can understand why you'd be concerned about a pellet stove's electricity consumption. In my case, it wasn't a factor at all — the (modest amounts of) electricity consumed by the auger, combustion-air blower, and heat-circulating fan was just another source of heat & therefore not wasted energy. I had a circulating fan on my old wood stove, so the net change was negligible.
BTW, some pellet stoves come with an emergency battery-backup — but, it's easy to rig one with a battery connected to an inverter. Inverters have become very cheap lately. Like most home heating systems, a generator is needed for longer-term back up purposes. Pellet stoves should probably be considered an alternative to oil or gas burning appliances. They don't take a lot more effort than an oil furnace, and they can be a whole lot cheaper to run. Except for certain wood heaters, most home heating systems require some electricity; so the pellet stoves are no different in that aspect.
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