Over the years, so many in the Credentialed Media have called for carbon taxes and cap and trade programs. Here’s the latest, as the editorial board of the Toronto Star makes their case
Canada needs to set a price on carbon, once and for all: Editorial
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows it. Most Canadians know it. And Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne and most of the premiers know it.
We need to put a serious price on carbon to do our bit to keep the Earth from getting too warm, and inflicting havoc on much of the planet in the form of melting ice caps, freakish weather, heat waves, droughts and floods.
So it’s discouraging that Trudeau and the premiers could not agree at their get-together in Vancouver this past week on a “pan-Canadian framework†to peg the price of carbon at $15 a tonne, $30 a tonne or some other modest but credible figure to deter fossil fuel consumption.
Instead, they punted the decision into the fuzzy future. Despite our heady pledges at theUnited Nations climate conference in Paris a few months ago, Canada will be going green no time soon.
Now, something interesting occurred to me: all the carbon taxes and such that the Credentialed Media calls for would not apply to the TV, Internet, and paper news business. This always applies to Other People. Yet, think of the vast amounts of energy, resources, and fossil fuels needed for the news sector to do their jobs. The Toronto Star needs vast amounts of fossil fuels to gather the news, then deliver their papers. They use vast amounts of paper, which comes from killing trees, to publish their paper. Think of all the energy needed to gather the news, produce the news, then disseminate it, both in dead tree edition and on the Internet. Think of all the resources needed to keep the reporters up and running, as well as the buildings and vehicles. This is all super-bad for climate change.
Hence, I suggest that any news organization that has recommended any sort of carbon tax and/or a cap and trade scheme be subject to
- a carbon tax of $45 a metric ton of carbon pollution
- a surcharge of 35 cents per liter/gallon of gasoline purchased by a news organization
- a road tax of 2 cents per mile traveled for all employees during their work day and on company vehicles
- a tax of $1 per pound of paper used to make newspapers
- a requirement that all news organizations upgrade their buildings so that they are 100% LEED compliant
- all helicopters used to gather news can only use biofuels
- and none may raise the cost of their services/products
Those are very modest proposals, are they not? Reasonable, right? Surely, those who advocate for carbon taxes and/or cap and trade schemes would be willing to participate, right?
Teach typed:
Sorry Willy, but you can’t get away with that without explaining. How would TV, internet and the paper news business avoid the carbon tax on any fossil fueled energy they used??
We’re not convinced that you understand how business and taxes work. Are you advocating special taxes for industries you don’t like? Sounds positively Drumpfian.
-the little guy who exaggerates often and overuses the term “we” when typing about himself
Since you advocate that a carbon tax only apply to climate realists, I’ll counter with a modest proposal.
Maybe we should levy a special tax on the neo-conservatives that advocated the tragic invasion of Iraq.
Let’s see, 40% of Americans are conservatives, half of which are adults. That’s about 60,000,000 adult conservatives responsible for the Iraq debacle. We won’t advocate putting you in jail for killing thousand of brave Americans, but you will be dunned for the total cost – some 3 trillion dollars. 3 trillion divided by 60 million = $50,000 each.
How will you pay for it? Or do you expect those of us who opposed the horrible idea to pay for your horrible idea, not to mention the young men and women who died for your horrible idea?
-the little guy who often exaggerates and is prone to nosism and false equivalence when commenting
“Neo-conservatives that advocat d the tragic invasion of Iraq.” And most top liberals advocated the same thing at the time, also. I’m sure this fact just slipped J’s mind and wasn’t a deliberate omission.
j,
You’re confused again. It was the President Bush’s decision. Bill Clinton didn’t invade. Bush’s entire conservative administration engineered the invasion.
Please supply a list of top liberals who advocated invading Iraq before the Bush administration had decided it was a top priority.
Should we just set up an extra tax on conservatives to cover the costs of their godawful misadventures? That makes more sense than enacting special taxes on newspapers.
Some of us have had to pay the $50,000 Jeffrey suggested, and more. Alas! It wasn’t $50,000 plus for the military, which I would have supported, but far more to pay lazy scumbags who won’t work.
The story shows how very, very easy it is for the left to promise action on
global warmingclimate change, in a general sense, but when it comes to government leaders actually imposing taxes on their citizens, it gets a little tougher.And let’s face the facts: all taxes fall on the end users of products. The J boys tell us that we need to impose taxes on these horrible carbon-spewing corporations, but corporations don’t pay taxes; they simply collect them from the end users of their products. The left seem to think that corporations will just absorb the taxes, taking them out of profits, instead of passing them on, but the left really don’t understand economics; if they did, they wouldn’t be leftists anymore.
D Boy 2,
Who pays you to build roads?
D Boy 2,
We understand why you don’t want to talk about who pays you to build roads. You have just barely enough self-awareness to be embarrassed by the hypocrisy of your situation.
You receive more money from the government than any 10 families of “lazy scumbags who won’t work”.
D Boy 1 makes over a million a year (he claims) treating Medicaid and Medicare patients, whom he describes as lazy and stupid.
We get it. Enriching yourselves at the expense of taxpayers is OK, but we should let the poor “die in the dirt”, since they aren’t clever enough to get a sweetheart deal with the government.
No wonder you’re embarrassed.
The taxpayers pay me to build roads, which is one reason you never see me complaining about gasoline taxes, because they are specifically meant to pay for highway maintenance and construction. I have said that, since federal law mandates that 92% of all federal fuel tax dollars be spent in the state in which they were collected, that the federal excise tax should be reduced by 92%, giving the states the room to raise their taxes to cover the difference; that’s a simple matter of efficiency.
It doesn’t matter how much of my pay comes from government projects: it’s still money for producing something and for working for a living.
2 Thessalonians 3:10 is instructive.
A carbon tak of 20$ per ton for all Teach would raise the price of gasoline by 20 cents per gallon
This would seem to be a burden that would not hurt yourself Teach
One of the J Boys wrote:
I just love how the left are so very, very good at telling us that a tax won’t hurt. If the tax is meant to discourage consumption, as the left want to do, then it must, by their own definition, hurt people enough to change their behavior.
D Boy 2,
I really don’t care how you make your living, as long as it’s legitimate. I believe that government is by and large a force for good, but not just your source of income. My point is though, why can’t you, totally dependent on taxpayers for your sustenance, show just a hint of compassion for those less fortunate?
And then you throw Christian Bible quotes my way?!? Would Jesus let poor children die in the dirt because they couldn’t afford health care?
Is that the America you wish to live in? You getting very well compensated by the taxpayers, yet advocating that poor children be allowed to die in the dirt? Have you no sense of decency?
You are not unlike the small government Republicans who make a good living at taxpayer expense telling others they need to live with less.
So you believe taxpayer money going to you is of value to society, but feeding poor children, public education, and healthcare subsidies are a drain?
Why not advocate for privatization of road building? You could go out and raise money from private donors to build toll roads to be paid by the end user. Why do you insist on government and taxpayers supporting you?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.†Upton Sinclair
[…] we need A Carbon Tax For The information Media » Pirate's Cove […]
[…] First, one must wonder whether letter writer Sabrina S. Fu has given up all use of fossil fuels and only uses alternative energy sources. We know the answer, and it’s surely “no”. Rarely does any member of the Cult of Climastrology practice what they preach. But, since the Baltimore Sun decided to publish this support for a carbon tax, let’s refer back to this post […]