Climate cultists just refuse to give up on their taxation schemes, evolving them, massaging them, and now, expanding them
Here’s a Smart Solution to Climate Change
There’s a great way the U.S. and the European Union could together address two huge challenges in one policy sweep. It’s to create a transatlantic “carbon club,†which I’ll describe in a moment.
The geopolitical promise of this idea is to resurrect the notion of the “West†at a time when the U.S. and Europe are drifting apart but still hoping to rejuvenate their alliance after Joe Biden becomes president. The even bigger goal is to win the struggle against global warming, which both Biden and the EU cite as their priority.
The only way to slow climate change is to dramatically reduce our planetwide emissions of greenhouse gases. And the best approach to that is to put a price on carbon that’s both high and rising. This signal will make producers and consumers adopt behaviors and technologies to pollute less.
Guess who ultimately ends up paying for this? The average citizen. Their cost of living will skyrocket. I suggest that we implement this tax scheme on all news providers who believe in anthropogenic climate change, starting with the above Washington Post. Let’s see how they like it.
Within a given jurisdiction, we already know how to set such a carbon price. You can tax emissions directly. Or you can limit their overall amount by law, then issue carbon allowances which firms can buy and sell in an open market, at a price that constantly changes. This way emissions will be cut fastest wherever it’s easiest and cheapest to do so.
Of these cap-and-trade systems, the EU, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein jointly have the world’s largest. Still, it only covers sectors — from power generators to steelmakers and airlines — that account for 40% of European emissions, so the system must be expanded. Even then it still faces a bigger problem.
It’s that the rest of the world isn’t in the system. This both slants the economic playing field against European companies and leads to “carbon leakage.†Take a European steel company, for example. It must buy allowances to emit carbon, which is a cost. To avoid that cost, it can invest in technology that makes production cleaner, but that’s also expensive.
In other words, countries like China and India will benefit while the US and EU will handicap themselves. Is there something that can be done?
The solution to the free-riding dilemma is the club model proposed by Nordhaus and now endorsed by sharp minds such as Guntram Wolff, the director of Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels. Here a group of countries would agree on a minimum international carbon price.
All club members would then set about reaching that price with either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system, the equivalent of their club dues. As long as their domestic carbon prices are high enough and comparable, there’s no need for club members to punish each other’s imports, so they trade freely (if you ignore other tariffs and quotas for the moment).
Non-members of the club, by contrast, would have to pay countervailing carbon duties on their exports to the club. The EU calls this a “carbon border adjustment mechanism†(CBAM). Unlike ordinary tariffs, the surcharges wouldn’t aim at making domestic producers more competitive but at spreading the cost of global carbon abatement. So they should be allowed by the World Trade Organization.
And guess were the extra cost goes for those duties? Correct, right to the consumer! And those countries continue to blow up on “Doing Something” about their own carbon footprints, instead, telling the consumers in those climahysteric nations they should be blaming the climahysteric politicians for the high prices.
And, no, no, this merging of international markets shouldn’t give Globalist conspiracy theory folks any ammunition
If we still have a shot at controlling global warming, this might be it. Moreover, this kind of positive cooperation between rivals in east and west would have other benefits. Anxiety is growing that the enmity between the U.S. and China could one day end as the contest between Imperial Germany and the British Empire once did: in war. A successful collaboration against the common enemy, global warming, could defuse this conflict — and save the planet along the way.
Sadly, it appears that the Democrats will win both Georgia Senate runoff elections, giving the Democrats control of the Senate, and, if the Democrats stay united, they can pass this kind of bovine feces. We’re going to depend on Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) to do the right thing, and vote conservative in some cases, but while he’s voted right in many cases, it seems that when his vote has been the one to determine things, he votes with Chuck Schumer.
The “moderate Democrat” is a fiction designed to help them get elected in close races. When needed, they always vote party line with their most extreme friends.
Rev Warnock has been declared the winner over Sen Loeffler and Mr Ossoff leads Sen Perdue but it’s still considered too close to call.
Mr Biden will become President Biden on Jan 20, when the 4 yr trump nightmare will end.
A clean sweep for the Dems a strong rebuke for trump
People will be wondering what happened to their champion
Since when is two seats in the same state a “clean sweep”? It should have been obvious since they are both running on the same ballots that they would both win or both lose.
Massive voter fraud is a rebuke of free and fair elections and democratic institutions, not of Trump. There is no longer any need for elections. The Democrats can just tell us who gets to be in office and save all that scurrying about campaigning. The “by any means necessary” party wins again. I’m still not clear on why The Democrats want a senile corrupt old white guy to be President. They did have a lot of other choices.
Hillary must be REALLY pissed since her friends didn’t put this much effort into helping her win in 2016.
Prof,
Biden has advanced mental illness. He will be gone in 6 months to a year. Why Harris, she is a tool and takes orders. What happened is that Obama just got his third term. By the way, Nancy will be vice-president. What we are watching is the end of the US. Fine with me as this will result in a free South.
I haven’t seen anything that suggests Pelosi would give up her Speakership to be a do-nothing like VP.
I have not seen that either but as I understand she would be next in line, of course I can be wrong.
“I’m still not clear on why The Democrats want a senile corrupt old white guy to be President.”
I don’t think they did. I think they wanted the most extreme left commie they could squeeze in and that was/is Kameltoe Harris. They know full well like the rest of us premier Xiden will not fill out his term. Their main focus now is to get rid of him “by any means necessary” at the right point so Kameltoe can serve out his reign plus two of her own. If they will still have elections at all. Seems the left scammed the entire system while we were playing by the rules.
“I’m still not clear on why The Democrats want a senile corrupt old white guy to be President.â€
The left if you remembered were terrified of the socialist Bernie and what he brought to the table. They threw at us an entrenched 50 year crook to bow before BIG TECH, BIG BUSINESS and CORPORATIONS, the MIC, and GLOBALISM and their 1000 billionaires.
In the meantime the police are bashing heads of Trump suppoters in DC. SO be it. DEFUND THE POLICE.
See the left has destroyed this country. Everyone who the right thorougly supported has turned their backs on them and even the police are bashing heads of the right while standing around and doing nothing when leftists burn down cities and buildings and businesses.
So defund the Corporations. Defund Fossil Fuels. Defund Big Business. Let the airlines go out of business. Let everyone but Walmart and Amazon DIE a painful tax burdened death.
Let the corpos who turned against their staunchest allies, the right and embraced SJW and WOKISM and told the right to go fuk themselves.
So be it. Georgia was the result of Trumpians telling the Corpos to go fuk themselves since Perdue and Loeffler were both entrenched establishement corpo shills while Loeffler was a carpetbagger of the nth degee.
What happened is what has happened several times in the last 200 years. The parties actually flop positions without flopping their basic integrity.
The last time this happened was Teddy Roosevelt a Republican was embracing PROGRESSIVISM and so FDR stole his platform and the rest is history. If the GOP is one thing the DEMS are the other.
Today the Dems have become the protectors of Big Business and Billionaires and corpos and Big TECH and as a result the right is fast becoming the champion of blacks, latinos and the working man because all of big business told us to GO FUK OFF!!!!
That is why the left is embracing Biden. Its their last gasp before the progressives swallow the last of the corporatist left.
As Ron Paul said of Obama. He is not a socialist. He is a Corporatist. Nothing is more true today than the DNC embracing wall street, Billionaires, Big Tech and Big Business.
Interesting enough the democrats are fast becoming the party of BIG BUSINESS and CORPORATIONS.
They have single handely destroyed small business in this nation with lockdowns galore.
All the Big Business and corporations who used to illicit strong support from the right are now turning their backs on the right in favor of WOKISM and the left.
SO BE IT. The election in Georgia was a rebuke of Big Business NOT TRUMP.
Trump enacted huge tax breaks for corporations and they pissed in his mouth and trampled the little guy who Trump defends.
SO BE IT.
The result is the left is in charge now. Biden gets to raise taxes on the corpos. Raise Taxes on the rich.
SO BE IT. FUK the Rich. Fuk the billionaires. Fuk Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Walmart.
Thats not me saying these things. That is Trumps base. You wanted this MITCH. You wanted this Democrats.
Now its your turn to take care of they MIC and these mega corps who OWN YOU and won’t let you do a damn thing less they reveal how much money they slipped you under the table.
LOLOLOL….We the people have no power. We only think we do.