One of the things members of the Cult Of Climastrology, including elected officials, media outlets, and low hanging Warmists, constantly push for is a “carbon tax”, usually in a manner that they think will only effect Other People. And they always tell us that this artificial construct would be the free market in action. For instance, here’s one I ran across at the Miami Herald in a letter to the editor from Walt Minnick, cofounder of the Partnership for Responsible Growth, a hardcore Progressive group out of D.C. pushing for all sorts of climate change schemes. Here’s what he calls “innovative solutions”
(1) Rely on the free market instead of more EPA regulation. If Congress approves a fee on carbon emissions, business will become more energy-efficient, and consumers will buy less carbon-based fuel.
(2) Use half of the revenue generated to reduce our corporate tax rate, the highest in the industrialized world, to 25 percent and return the balance to low- and low-middle-income families to offset their slightly higher energy costs;
See? Free market! And an acknowledgement that these schemes will increase costs. Returning (tiny amounts) of money back to low and middle class families makes them even more reliant on Government. Anyhow, free market!
Carbon pricing schemes double since 2012 in climate fight: World Bank
The number of carbon pricing schemes worldwide has almost doubled since 2012 but most taxes or markets have prices too low to prevent damaging global warming, the World Bank said on Sunday.
Carbon pricing, including emissions trading schemes from California to China, now covers about 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in a sign of momentum before a U.N. summit on climate change in Paris in December, it said. (snip)
The study showed that prices, meant to shift investments from fossil fuels toward cleaner energies such as wind or solar power, ranged from less than a dollar a tonne of carbon dioxide in Mexico to $130 a tonne in Sweden.
In more than 85 percent of cases the price was less than $10, “considerably lower”, the report said, than levels needed to help limit temperature rises to a U.N. goal of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.
So, once Government has instituted these schemes, the Free Market has determined that the values are not worth much, and Warmists want them artificially increased. In fact, many of these schemes have been deemed as “worse than junk bonds“.
The free market also dictates that companies will move away from areas that have these carbon tax schemes, or work hard to avoid paying them. There is a lot of fraud occurring. They increase costs to the consumers and reduce jobs. Governmental intervention in the free market hasn’t worked out so well.
