I don’t have strong views on global warming. Or climate change, or whatever it’s being called today.
But I’ve generally been skeptical about government action for the simple reason that the people making the most noise are statists who would use any excuse to increase the size and power of government. To be blunt, I simply don’t trust them. In Washington, they’re called watermelons – green on the outside (identifying as environmentalists) but red on the inside (pushing a statist agenda).
But there are some sensible people who think some sort of government involvement is necessary and appropriate.
George Schultz and James Baker, two former Secretaries of State, argue for a new carbon tax in a Wall Street Journal column as part of an agenda that also makes changes to regulation and government spending.
…there is mounting evidence of problems with the atmosphere that are growing too compelling to ignore. …The responsible and conservative response should be to take out an insurance policy. Doing so need not rely on heavy-handed, growth-inhibiting government regulations. Instead, a climate solution should be based on a sound economic analysis that embodies the conservative principles of free markets and limited government. We suggest…creating a gradually increasing carbon tax…, returning the tax proceeds to the American people in the form of dividends. And…rolling back government regulations once such a system is in place.
A multi-author column in the New York Times, including Professors Greg Mankiw and Martin Feldstein from Harvard, also puts for the argument for this plan.
On-again-off-again regulation is a poor way to protect the environment. And by creating needless uncertainty for businesses that are planning long-term capital investments, it is also a poor way to promote robust economic growth. By contrast, an ideal climate policy would reduce carbon emissions, limit regulatory intrusion, promote economic growth, help working-class Americans and prove durable when the political winds change. …Our plan is…the federal government would impose a gradually increasing tax on carbon dioxide emissions. It might begin at $40 per ton and increase steadily. This tax would send a powerful signal to businesses and consumers to reduce their carbon footprints. …the proceeds would be returned to the American people on an equal basis via quarterly dividend checks. With a carbon tax of $40 per ton, a family of four would receive about $2,000 in the first year. As the tax rate rose over time to further reduce emissions, so would the dividend payments. …regulations made unnecessary by the carbon tax would be eliminated, including an outright repeal of the Clean Power Plan.
They perceive this plan as being very popular.
Environmentalists should like the long-overdue commitment to carbon pricing. Growth advocates should embrace the reduced regulation and increased policy certainty, which would encourage long-term investments, especially in clean technologies. Libertarians should applaud a plan premised on getting the incentives right and government out of the way.
I hate to be the skunk at the party, but I’m a libertarian and I’m not applauding. I explain some of my concerns about the general concept in this interview.
In the plus column, there would be a tax cut and a regulatory rollback. In the minus column, there would be a new tax. So two good ideas and one bad idea, right? Sounds like a good deal in theory, even if you can’t trust politicians in the real world.
However, the plan that’s being promoted by Schultz, Baker, Feldstein, Mankiw, etc, doesn’t have two good ideas and one bad idea. They have the good regulatory reduction and the bad carbon tax, but instead of using the revenue to finance a good tax cut such as eliminating the capital gains tax or getting rid of the corporate income tax, they want to create universal handouts.
They want us to believe that this money, starting at $2,000 for a family of four, would be akin to some sort of tax rebate.
That’s utter nonsense, if not outright prevarication. This is a new redistribution program. Sort of like the “basic income” scheme being promoted by some folks.
And it creates a very worrisome dynamic since people will have an incentive to support ever-higher carbon taxes in order to get ever-larger checks from the government. Heck, the plan being pushed explicitly envisions such an outcome.
I’ve made the economic argument against carbon taxes and the cronyism argument against carbon taxes. Now that we have a real-world proposal, we have the practical argument against carbon taxes.
[…] this principle when it suits their purposes. They propose sugar taxes, soda taxes, carbon taxes, housing taxes, tanning taxes, tobacco taxes, and even “adult […]
[…] including votes on Colorado’s flat tax, Arizona’s school choice system, and a carbon tax in the state of […]
[…] And if the bureaucrats embraced a complete revenue swap, meaning no net increase in money for politicians, there might be a basis for compromise. […]
[…] carbon tax might be theoretically attractive if it enabled a big reduction in the regulatory burden and the revenues […]
[…] What exactly would it mean for ordinary people if politicians imposed a carbon tax? […]
[…] There’s obviously a serious policy debate to have about both the general concept as well of the individual components of this type of legislation, and I’ve periodically added my two cents to the discussion. […]
[…] increases in red tape, especially for the green parts of the Green New Deal (thus underscoring why it is rather naive for anyone to think the left would accept less regulation in exchange for a carbon […]
[…] such a swap is highly unlikely. Indeed, many proponents of the carbon tax are very explicit about wanting to use the revenues to create a new entitlement. That would be the worst outcome, assuming we want more […]
[…] California voters sensibly stopped the spread of rent control, Washington voters rejected a carbon tax, Florida voters expanded supermajority requirements for tax increases, and voters in several states […]
[…] message is simple and straightforward. It’s possible to design a carbon tax that is theoretically appealing. Simply use all the revenue to get rid of some other tax that causes greater economic harm, such as […]
“Bill Nye Proposes ‘Free-Market’ Tax on Cow Farts”
BY TYLER O’NEIL MAY 22, 2018
https://pjmedia.com/trending/bill-nye-proposes-free-market-tax-on-cow-farts/
[…] also not surprised that they embraced a carbon tax or value-added […]
[…] also not surprised that they embraced a carbon tax or value-added […]
[…] also not surprised that they embraced a carbon tax or value-added […]
[…] also not surprised that they embraced a carbon tax or value-added […]
[…] his column, I thought about putting together a detailed response. I was especially tempted to debunk the carbon tax, which is his preferred way of generating additional tax […]
[…] his column, I thought about putting together a detailed response. I was especially tempted to debunk the carbon tax, which is his preferred way of generating additional tax […]
[…] In a display of knee-jerk statism, the editors also want new tax burdens to finance an ever-larger burden of government. Such as an energy tax. […]
[…] In a display of knee-jerk statism, the editors also want new tax burdens to finance an ever-larger burden of government. Such as an energy tax. […]
[…] they balance the cuts with dangerous new sources of tax revenue, such as a border-adjustment tax, a carbon tax, or a value-added tax (the option I […]
[…] they balance the cuts with dangerous new sources of tax revenue, such as a border-adjustment tax, a carbon tax, or a value-added tax (the option I […]
[…] they balance the cuts with dangerous new sources of tax revenue, such as a border-adjustment tax, a carbon tax, or a value-added tax (the option I […]
[…] And some of them are even talking about very bad ideas, such as a value-added tax or carbon tax. […]
everyone knows Al Gore invented the internet… and he has established himself as a first rate intellect… so when his scientific positions are bolstered by research exclusively funded by the government… you know his conclusions can not be ignored…
“Al Gore Says Climate Change Caused Brexit”
BY TOM KNIGHTON
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/03/24/al-gore-says-climate-change-caused-brexit/
[…] understand this principle when it suits their purposes. They propose sugar taxes, soda taxes, carbon taxes, housing taxes, tanning taxes, tobacco taxes, and even “adult entertainment” taxes with the […]
[…] understand this principle when it suits their purposes. They propose sugar taxes, soda taxes, carbon taxes, housing taxes, tanning taxes, tobacco taxes, and even “adult entertainment” taxes with […]
[…] Reprinted from International Liberty. […]
[…] problems that we need to take out an insurance policy in the form of a carbon tax? Dan puts the economic blowtorch on them. British childcare is costing billions, fancy that, maybe something to do with regulations […]
[…] Carbon Tax […]
btw…. in the last 13 years…. al gore’s net worth has gone from 1.7M to between 200M-300M……………….
Reblogged this on Truth Is Power and commented:
Dan Mitchell: “Proposed #carbontax is a bad deal, requiring two bad policies for the vague promise of one good policy.”
“LOS ANGELES — Dr. Wie-Hock “Willie” Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics addressed a gathering of the American Freedom Alliance on Thursday night at the Luxe Hotel, describing the current state of debate about climate change as “spitting science in the face” and “treating science like a piece of rubbish.”
“Climate Skeptic Willie Soon Addresses Packed Audience in L.A.”
by JOEL B. POLLAK
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/02/09/climate-skeptic-willie-soon-addresses-packed-audience-l/
We need Zorba and SMApple on some talk shows …
Zorba- good posting. I believe you have nailed the hypocrisy that underlies this issue. While we can look back with some sort of a window of vision (and even that is clouded by historians), we’d be fools to think we could look forward with any chance of even a modicum of success.
As I stated, the left simply needs to show us how they want to live. Give up that titanium framed bike. Give up that plastic Evian water holder. Give up A/C, heat, and even running water, and I will begin to believe they are serious about their beliefs. Until then, I fear it’s “just the man trying to keep us down”.
It is unfortunate that the issue of climate change is portrayed as a scientific issue. It is unfortunate that intelligent people are capitulating to that narrative.
The main issue is NOT the current science of climate change, i.e. the modeling and scientific extrapolation of current trends into the future. The issue is CLIMATE ACTIVISM.
In other words, the main issue is whether we must act now. The main issue is the belief that unless we take action today, our descendants in one hundred years will suffer! That is the premise that leads to climate activism. And activism is the issue, not scientific prediction.
The issue is then 20% science (at best) and 80% futurology.
Why is it mostly futurology?
It is because making the prediction of human suffering, one century into the future, requires you to know two things: (a) the state of the climate in one hundred years and (b) the state of humanity in a hundred years.
The first part, the state of the climate, would actually be the substantially simpler part of the prediction. The second part, predicting the state and advancement level of humanity in a hundred years is impossible — and anyone who claims to be able to make such prediction is speculating into uncertainties that resemble more the eschatology of apocalyptic religions than science. That is why climate change is a RELIGION; not a science. A religion we will be forced to adopt and live by, because, like with other similar ideologies, “environmentalism will only work when the entire world adopts it”. Does that remind you of something? Perhaps the sweet juicy red content of the watermelon?
The interplay between future human advancements and the climate, as well as the opportunities for future action are impossible to predict and model. Model human advancement in the next one hundred years?! That is crazy! Utterly crazy! Just think about it for a minute… predicting human advancement in the next one hundred years. Human growth is exponential. Most likely humanity will see in the next one hundred years as much advancement are we have seen from paleolithic times to today. The world of 2117 will be utterly unrecognizable to a human living today. Any person who claims to have the apocalyptic intuition to be able to see the human state in one hundred years ought to be dismissed as crazy.
“But what is the harm in being cautious?” many will say?
The great harm is in compounding decreases in world growth rates. If average world growth were to decrease one single percentage point annually (and that is what would currently take to have even a modest impact on the trajectory of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations), say reduce average world growth from four percent to three percent, then that one percent difference will compound to 270% in a century! That means our human descendants will be almost three times poorer than they would have otherwise been –worldwide! That would be a suicidally devastating blow to human potential and, ironically, a world that is three times less prosperous than it would have otherwise been, will also have much reduced capacity to address, adapt, counter, or reverse any effects of climate change. If climate change even happens! Not because the climate “science” is wrong but because humans invent something that makes climate change a mute point by moving away from carbon (naturally moving away, not the expensive dirigistic totalitarian way current climate activists want to impose), or invent something that counters or even reverses climate change, or ultimately adapt and take advantage of the new climate.
The stakes in reducing global growth by one percent ( a change actually welcomed by many “watermelons” as a positive thing in itself) would have a devastating compound impact on future human potential. The so called “precautionary principle” should be applied primarily and foremost to anything that reduces human growth. Because the compounding effects of lost opportunity are enormous.
The whole issue of climate change is like someone in 1900 saying to your great-great grandfather: “look grandpa, we know that it is only fifty seven degrees in your house in the winter, even with the fireplace running, but if you keep burning wood at the current rate, then humanity will eventually run out of available trees for wooden telegraph poles in one hundred years, and your great great grandchildren will have to live in a world devoid of communications!”.
Indeed the science would be somewhat “settled”. Assuming sophisticated models of population growth, heating need growth, telegraph usage growth, forest growth and replantation worldwide, indeed the world would have run out of telegraph poles by 2017. People would endlessly argue in scientific papers about the details of heating need growth, telegraph usage trajectory, tree growth management alternatives etc. until the details became rather precise and the science “settled”. Indeed the science would be settled but the prediction — and especially the need for action to stop grandpa from raising his house temperature to sixty three degrees — would be bogus. Utterly bogus. Bogus because the biggest unknown was not the scientific behavior of tree growth and replenishment rates, or the modeling of future telegraph needs per capita. The biggest unknown was the changing state of humanity. A humanity that would have easily found substitutes for wooden telegraph poles, if they were even needed, a humanity that would discover other means of heating houses other than burning potential telegraph poles, and a humanity that would ultimately not give a hoot about what happens to the telegraph, because humanity has found a magical metaphysical way of communicating without even having physical connections (remember in the early nineteen hundreds electromagnetic waves and even light needed some sort of medium to transmit, hence theories about ether, until Einstein upended the then “settled science”, Bell commercialized the telephone, and magical ways were found to transmit not only one sentence messages, but virtually all human knowledge –to everybody on the planet! — instantly!).
That is why it is unfortunate that economists, policy makers, and even smarter people who support sustained individual freedom, seem to have been tricked, or have capitulated, into seeing climate change primarily as a “science” issue. It is not about science. It is about futurology, economics, and politics.
There is also something perverse in leftists seeing a need to inconvenience current humans today, for the benefit of a group of future humans who will be fifty times richer than we are (yes that is what four percent annual growth compounds to in one hundred years) and who will likely outlive us by several decades (remember the mechanism of aging is already been cracked, so that may even be in the more immediate horizon, not nearly one hundred years). That is, the left wants the poor short lived people of today to suffer, in order to accommodate the much richer and much longer lived people of the future. It’s absurd coming from the left.
If you asked me: “What will life be in one hundred years?” I’d say “wonderful, climate change be damned. I don’t know,…I cannot even begin to imagine the details but wonderful”.
If you asked me: “Will humanity survive its increasing ability to annihilate itself through increases in destructive warfare power?” I’d say “I don’t know”. So if you want something to worry about worry about that.
Remember. Climate change is not about “science”. It’s about the eschatological futurology of beliefs that are more akin to religion than science — and religious freedom should be preserved. “The People” should not have the right to abolish religious freedom. Not even through democratic vote.
But the very essence, the essential product of politics is coercive collectivism. Pandering to politicians that they refrain from using climate change as an opportunity to increase coercive collectivism will fall on mostly deaf ears. I’m happy that people seem to have finally had some sort of intuition on this in the last election. Even if they cannot rationalize it. But the risk that they may actually make the situation worse is real. Very real!
Say no to the eschatological religious philosophy behind carbon taxes.
NO TAX!!!!!!
Dan- Unlike you, I have a STRONG view on global warming. It is this: I DO NOT KNOW, and neither do they or anybody else. So far, there is no solid evidence either way.
Let’s put it this way: Global warmers base their claim on the FACT that temperatures have risen 1.1 degree in the last hundred years. So, riddle me this: what were you using 100 years ago to measure temperature that was accurate to within even 2 degrees? We cannot even do that today without serious NIST calibration procedures. Further, how many places were you measuring temperature 100 years ago? And which temperatures were you using in your statistical calculations? The high? The low? Some average thereof? What did you do about days where it was cold all day, and then the temperature suddenly rose? And since it’s really heat content that counts, did you do a proper thermodynamic calculation for the density of the air, and a wet bulb temperature to account for humidity? And in the cities, did you measure the temperature inside buildings? You know buildings reject heat during the summer, and therefore give a falsely high temperature externally, right? And they leak heat during the winter to the same effect, right? So you would need to average the inside temperature with the outside in proper thermodynamic methods ….. there’s more, but that’s a good taste from an engineer who understands thermodynamics and how you can manipulate statistical data…
And then you want to blame it on Carbon in the atmosphere? Don’t even get me started on the statistical holes in that argument. But, just as a teaser- can you please explain how they measured CO2 in the atmosphere 100 years ago?
Hey- I’m an engineer- we all want clean air and water. We breathe and drink it the same as anybody else. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job to create an efficient balance. Just tell us when you are ready to move back to the cave and throw away your plastic Evian bottles, and we’ll find a way to make that comfortable as well.
“And…rolling back government regulations once such a system is in place.”
Anybody who thinks any government regulation once enabled will be removed is kidding themselves.
That statement reminds me of a Teddy Kennedy promise about how we were going to fix the illegal immigration problem with border security and a wall once Reagan signs the amnesty of the existing 2 million illegals.
Another big-government-knows-best tax and regulatory and bureaucracy (and giveaway) scheme. Why is Feldstein considered a conservative?
[…] Read More: Carbon Taxes: Worrisome in Theory, Bad in Reality […]
“The science is settled!”
The BS gets deeper by the second. Anyone with the ability to read and think can learn that the sun [the source of every bit of energy that this Earth has or ever will have] GOES THROUGH CYCLES.
These cycles result in varying periods of Earth-temperature change.
Recorded history is actually too short to come to any definite conclusions, but archaeological explorations indicate we are presently near the end of a warm period and seem poised to enter another much cooler period.
I don’t KNOW and you don’t KNOW. Who KNOWS? No one.
But don’t give in to power-lusting schemers crying “The sky is falling in, the sky is falling in!”