About that growing “conservative” coalition for a carbon tax…
The Washington Times (7/31/13) reports: “House Republicans launched an all-out attack Wednesday on what they say are the secretive, pseudo-scientific ‘cost of carbon’ metrics that the Obama administration is using to justify increasingly harsh environmental regulations. At least three pieces of legislation to dismantle the metric, or at least greatly limit how it can be used, are moving through Congress. The measures represent the latest Republican attempt to slow the ambitious climate change agenda laid out by President Obama last month. Critics say the cost of carbon figures represent, at best, pseudo-science used to further a crackdown on fossil fuels. At worst, some argue, they are a back door to an eventual carbon tax on American businesses.”
Divide et impera.
National Journal (7/1/13) reports: “To really cut down on greenhouse-gas emissions, natural gas must eventually follow in the footsteps of the coal industry by adopting technology to capture its carbon emissions, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz saidThursday. ‘Eventually, if we’re going to get really low carbon emissions, natural gas, just like coal, would need to have carbon capture to be part of that,’ Moniz said to reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. ‘But that looks to be quite a ways off. In the meantime, gas will be part of the solution.’ Moniz’s comments are significant because he explicitly states what many energy and environment experts have routinely said: Natural gas, which burns half as many carbon emissions as coal and is thus heralded as a cleaner fossil fuel, must eventually also reduce its carbon emissions in a world committed to combating global warming. After all, half as many carbon emissions is still more than no carbon emissions, which is what nuclear power and renewable energy sources provide the country.”
When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The BBC (7/2/13) reports: “US scientists found that even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes and murders, as well as group conflicts and war. The team says with the current projected levels of climate change, the world is likely to become a more violent place. Marshall Burke, from the University of California, Berkeley, said: ‘This is a relationship we observe across time and across all major continents around the world. The relationship we find between these climate variables and conflict outcomes are often very large.’ The researchers looked at 60 studies from around the world, with data spanning hundreds of years. They report a ‘substantial’ correlation between climate and conflict.”
Do you think Sanders and Ma’am Boxer will drag CAP, the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation voters to the Hill and harangue them for their foreign, “dark money” funding? We don’t think so either.
The Washington Free Beacon (7/1/13) reports: “A major left-wing foundation has received tens of millions of dollars from a shadowy Bermudan company with ties to wealthy American hedge fund managers and distributed those funds to prominent liberal nonprofit groups. A sizable portion of the Sea Change Foundation’s revenue since 2011 has come from a single company, incorporated in Bermuda, called Klein Ltd. The company’s only officers are employees of a Bermuda law firm, and neither provided information on what Klein actually does. Documents filed with the Bermudan government suggest that the company exists only on paper.The money Klein has donated to Sea Change has been passed on to some of the largest liberal and environmentalist groups in the United States, including the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Center for American Progress (CAP).”
If they want to try a carbon tax, they’d better do so in the light of day.
The American Energy Alliance (PDF) (8/1/13) reports: “The last thing the American people need is a new tax, especially a carbon tax. A carbon tax would hurt American families by driving up the cost of energy as well as reducing economic growth. According to a study of one popular carbon tax proposal, a carbon tax would reduce the income of a family of four by $1,000 a year, cost the economy over 400,000 jobs by 2016, and increase the price of gasoline by 30 cents a gallon by 2030. Not only would a carbon tax harm the economy, it would have no substantive impact on global temperature. If we would reduce America’s carbon dioxide emissions to zero, global temperature would only be 0.052°C lower by 2050 and 0.137°C by 2100—not enough to have any substantive impact on climate. A carbon tax would not reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to zero and would therefore have even less of a climate impact.”