What a nightmare.
More taxes including public funds - they want more and more to 'fight climate change'. No more global warming - now it is whatever it might be outside today - cold, hot, dry, wet.
To fight what the earth is creating? My what an exaggerated sense of self. Perhaps a better use would be to aid those who would be impacted, and move on.
UN panel: New taxes needed for a climate fund
By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer
Thu Aug 5, 2010
.BONN, Germany – Carbon taxes, add-ons to international air fares and a levy on cross-border money movements are among ways being considered by a panel of the world's leading economists to raise a staggering $100 billion a year to fight climate change.
British economist Nicholas Stern told international climate negotiators Thursday that government regulation and public money also will be needed to create incentives for private investment in industries that emit fewer greenhouse gases.
In short, a new industrial revolution is needed to move the world away from fossil fuels to low carbon growth, he said.
"It will be extremely exciting, dynamic and productive," said Stern, one of 18 experts in public finance on an advisory panel appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
A climate summit held in Copenhagen in December was determined to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries adapt to climate change and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide trapping the sun's heat. But the 120 world leaders who met in the Danish capital offered no ideas on how to raise that sum — $1 trillion every decade — prompting Ban to appoint his high-level advisory group.
The Copenhagen summit also resolved to mobilize a three-year emergency fund of $30 billion starting this year. It was unclear how much has been raised and disbursed so far.
The advisory panel, which began working in March, will present its final report to Ban in October, a month before the next decisive climate conference convenes in Cancun, Mexico.
It will analyze a range of options, Stern said, and governments must decide which to chose, how much to raise from each source, and how to distribute the money.
Potential revenue sources include auctioning the right to pollute, taxes on carbon production, an international travel tax, and a tax on international financial transactions, as well as government grants and loans. Each could produce tens of billions of dollars a year, Stern said.
"No one single source will deliver $100 billion by itself. There is no silver bullet, no hole in one," he said.
Private capital also will be crucial, and governments must adopt policies reducing the risk to investors, he said.
The panel's recommendations will weigh the practicality, reliability, and political acceptability of each method, he said.
The advisory panel is chaired by the prime ministers of Norway and Ethiopia and the president of Guyana. Its members include French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, billionaire financier George Soros and public planners from China, India, Singapore and several international banks.
The governments of 194 countries are negotiating an agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which called on industrial nations to reduce carbon emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Unlike Kyoto, the next deal would set emission goals for developing countries, especially rapidly growing economies like China and India, in exchange for help with financing and technology.
The negotiating session in Bonn ends Friday, and delegates will meet once more in China before the Cancun ministerial conference.
taxes
Showing posts with label carbon tax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carbon tax. Show all posts
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Democrats Raising Taxes - the new fashioned way - save the earth
I fail to understand how so many people can be so … dumb.
He will not raise taxes on the poor, just the rich (anyone who has an income of $250,000 or more, whether combined incomes or business income …) but raising $100-200 a year (and that is a misstatement – underestimated by at least 50%+) on heating oil and electricity … so charging the very poor MORE money is not a tax and the fact you are charging more is to ‘help consumers lower costs’ … and the $100-200 more per family (that would be a family of 2 who makes $30,000 a year) would do what? Not erase carbon as that would already exist by virtue of using the oil/electricity. Unless it is to get us to put on the cardigan in the winter, lower the thermostat a little, sit by the fire maybe. You know – we can’t go on turning the thermostat down like we have for all these decades … that time is over.
So what will they do with the $100-1000 ?? They surely won’t re-sod it. These so-called experts and others – Democrats, when speaking on this subject, raise the issue of higher costs as if the costs are for some item / object we purchase, or even as in the case of gasoline, higher oil costs – but none of that is true. Oil costs will remain whatever they are yet the poor will pay a fee for something that cannot be linked to higher oil costs, nor would these higher fees be lower if oil were to say drop to $48 a barrel.
Liberals employ this method as if it is already a fact and proven, no need to explain or discuss. I would like to know, but then perhaps I already have a clue where it will go. In Europe, they pay considerably higher gasoline costs than does the US. It is claimed that the purpose of these higher costs was to raise revenue for all sorts of social programs. In the US, we won’t accept the same increases in gasoline, so perhaps we would be more entranced if it were for other reasons – like saving the planet, yet the money will not go to saving the planet and more than increased costs on cigarettes goes to saving the children or paying the medical costs of those people who smoked.
Fortunately, this is something a future administration can void – what will be more difficult is giving up the increased revenue. Hard for any politician to ignore – more money to spend.
And given tax revenues down (as per other emails) they will need a new method of raising taxes without raising taxes.
U.S. consumers spared big costs in climate bill
By Timothy Gardner
Tue Aug 4, 5:07 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A new U.S. government study on Tuesday adds to a growing list of experts concluding that climate legislation moving through Congress would have only a modest impact on consumers, adding a bit more than $100 to household costs in 2020.
Under the climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives in June, electricity, heating oil and other bills for average families will rise $114 in 2020 and $288 in 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the country's top energy forecaster.
The bill requires energy companies to help consumers lower costs during the early years of the program which would "mute the impact of higher energy prices for households until at least 2025," said Kay Smith, an EIA economist.
Regulating greenhouse gases with a market mechanism, such as the cap and trade program outlined in the bill, is one of President Barack Obama's top goals.
Democratic leaders hope the bill, which would place a cost on polluting greenhouse gases in the United States like carbon dioxide for the first time, will come to a vote by the full Senate in October. That would come before a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen in December in which nearly 200 countries hope to form a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
The EIA estimate was in line with earlier projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office which said average families would pay about $175 extra annually by 2020, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which said families would pay at most an extra $1 per day.
Republican opponents of the bill have calculated household costs would rise $3,100 or more annually on higher prices for energy and other goods. The Chamber of Commerce estimated in April that a cap and trade system would cost households about $1,400 a year by 2020.
MINIMIZING WINDFALL PROFITS
A big part of keeping costs down involves the use of offsets, which would allow polluters like power plants to invest in projects -- like burning gases given off from rotting farm animal waste -- when they determine it's too expensive to cut their own pollution.
The CBO said in a report on Tuesday that offsets could cut the costs of the climate bill passed by the House by 70 percent from 2012 to 2050, though questions linger about whether some of offsets, particularly ones revolving around forestry, actually cut all of the emissions they claim.
At a hearing on Capitol Hill, the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, concluded that "consumers will bear most of the costs of a cap and trade system" as companies pass along their increased energy costs.
The GAO added, however, "These costs could be largely offset depending on how revenues are used."
Under the bill, many of the permits to pollute would be given away at first to local power companies, which would then be required to help lower consumer costs through investments in conservation and by lowering energy bills.
The finance committee is examining whether pollution permits required under the climate change bill should be sold or given away initially and whether some consumers, especially the poor, should be given rebates or new tax breaks.
"We want to make sure we minimize the chance of windfall profits" to companies, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said. Baucus acknowledged the difficulty writing a bill that achieves Democrats' environmental goals while still having enough votes to pass the Senate.
Fellow Democrat Blanche Lincoln drove that point home during the hearing, calling the House-passed bill "deeply flawed" and one that would hurt rural areas like her home state of Arkansas, which rely more heavily on petroleum fuels to drive long distances and grow crops.
But Senator John Kerry, a leading proponent of cap and trade legislation, accused some companies of engaging in "bogus arguments" that inflate the potential costs to consumers. He warned that if Congress fails to pass a climate bill, the Environmental Protection Agency likely would step in with carbon regulations that would be more onerous on companies.
[Note to Mr. Kerry: The EPA operates as an entity of the government of the United States - operating on mandates given by Congress (which includes the Senate) overseen by the President as the chief enforcer. And you are using scare tactics to terrorize people with the EPA as some draconian force.]
Democrats
He will not raise taxes on the poor, just the rich (anyone who has an income of $250,000 or more, whether combined incomes or business income …) but raising $100-200 a year (and that is a misstatement – underestimated by at least 50%+) on heating oil and electricity … so charging the very poor MORE money is not a tax and the fact you are charging more is to ‘help consumers lower costs’ … and the $100-200 more per family (that would be a family of 2 who makes $30,000 a year) would do what? Not erase carbon as that would already exist by virtue of using the oil/electricity. Unless it is to get us to put on the cardigan in the winter, lower the thermostat a little, sit by the fire maybe. You know – we can’t go on turning the thermostat down like we have for all these decades … that time is over.
So what will they do with the $100-1000 ?? They surely won’t re-sod it. These so-called experts and others – Democrats, when speaking on this subject, raise the issue of higher costs as if the costs are for some item / object we purchase, or even as in the case of gasoline, higher oil costs – but none of that is true. Oil costs will remain whatever they are yet the poor will pay a fee for something that cannot be linked to higher oil costs, nor would these higher fees be lower if oil were to say drop to $48 a barrel.
Liberals employ this method as if it is already a fact and proven, no need to explain or discuss. I would like to know, but then perhaps I already have a clue where it will go. In Europe, they pay considerably higher gasoline costs than does the US. It is claimed that the purpose of these higher costs was to raise revenue for all sorts of social programs. In the US, we won’t accept the same increases in gasoline, so perhaps we would be more entranced if it were for other reasons – like saving the planet, yet the money will not go to saving the planet and more than increased costs on cigarettes goes to saving the children or paying the medical costs of those people who smoked.
Fortunately, this is something a future administration can void – what will be more difficult is giving up the increased revenue. Hard for any politician to ignore – more money to spend.
And given tax revenues down (as per other emails) they will need a new method of raising taxes without raising taxes.
U.S. consumers spared big costs in climate bill
By Timothy Gardner
Tue Aug 4, 5:07 pm ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A new U.S. government study on Tuesday adds to a growing list of experts concluding that climate legislation moving through Congress would have only a modest impact on consumers, adding a bit more than $100 to household costs in 2020.
Under the climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives in June, electricity, heating oil and other bills for average families will rise $114 in 2020 and $288 in 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the country's top energy forecaster.
The bill requires energy companies to help consumers lower costs during the early years of the program which would "mute the impact of higher energy prices for households until at least 2025," said Kay Smith, an EIA economist.
Regulating greenhouse gases with a market mechanism, such as the cap and trade program outlined in the bill, is one of President Barack Obama's top goals.
Democratic leaders hope the bill, which would place a cost on polluting greenhouse gases in the United States like carbon dioxide for the first time, will come to a vote by the full Senate in October. That would come before a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen in December in which nearly 200 countries hope to form a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
The EIA estimate was in line with earlier projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office which said average families would pay about $175 extra annually by 2020, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which said families would pay at most an extra $1 per day.
Republican opponents of the bill have calculated household costs would rise $3,100 or more annually on higher prices for energy and other goods. The Chamber of Commerce estimated in April that a cap and trade system would cost households about $1,400 a year by 2020.
MINIMIZING WINDFALL PROFITS
A big part of keeping costs down involves the use of offsets, which would allow polluters like power plants to invest in projects -- like burning gases given off from rotting farm animal waste -- when they determine it's too expensive to cut their own pollution.
The CBO said in a report on Tuesday that offsets could cut the costs of the climate bill passed by the House by 70 percent from 2012 to 2050, though questions linger about whether some of offsets, particularly ones revolving around forestry, actually cut all of the emissions they claim.
At a hearing on Capitol Hill, the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, concluded that "consumers will bear most of the costs of a cap and trade system" as companies pass along their increased energy costs.
The GAO added, however, "These costs could be largely offset depending on how revenues are used."
Under the bill, many of the permits to pollute would be given away at first to local power companies, which would then be required to help lower consumer costs through investments in conservation and by lowering energy bills.
The finance committee is examining whether pollution permits required under the climate change bill should be sold or given away initially and whether some consumers, especially the poor, should be given rebates or new tax breaks.
"We want to make sure we minimize the chance of windfall profits" to companies, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said. Baucus acknowledged the difficulty writing a bill that achieves Democrats' environmental goals while still having enough votes to pass the Senate.
Fellow Democrat Blanche Lincoln drove that point home during the hearing, calling the House-passed bill "deeply flawed" and one that would hurt rural areas like her home state of Arkansas, which rely more heavily on petroleum fuels to drive long distances and grow crops.
But Senator John Kerry, a leading proponent of cap and trade legislation, accused some companies of engaging in "bogus arguments" that inflate the potential costs to consumers. He warned that if Congress fails to pass a climate bill, the Environmental Protection Agency likely would step in with carbon regulations that would be more onerous on companies.
[Note to Mr. Kerry: The EPA operates as an entity of the government of the United States - operating on mandates given by Congress (which includes the Senate) overseen by the President as the chief enforcer. And you are using scare tactics to terrorize people with the EPA as some draconian force.]
Democrats
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Carbon Tax? Global Warming Hysteria
Becoming Vice President, or the CEO of one of the world's largest corporations, does not mean you are very wise. Just wealthy. Perhaps Mr. Tillerson (Exxon/Mobile) can sell / buy their credits from Mr. Gore's company.
17 Jan 2009
The Gazette
HENRY AUBIN
New life for carbon tax
EXXON CEO’S ENDORSEMENTshould prompt politicians to take a fresh look at the idea
Shocking news on the environmental front has gone almost unnoticed in Canada’s news media. The boss of Exxon Mobil Corp. last week aligned himself with Al Gore, David Suzuki and Michael Ignatieff in urging Washington to adopt a carbon tax. That’s right, Exxon Mobil – the company that Greenpeace once dubbed Climate Criminal No. 1.
Rex Tillerson, chief executive of the company that puts a CO2belching tiger in your tank, said that a carbon tax – that is, a tax on products that cause greenhouse-gas emissions – would be far more effective against global warming than the alternative cap-and-trade approach. The world’s largest oil company has thus abandoned the fossil-fuel industry’s united front for cap and trade. The industry sees cap and trade as the lesser of two evils.
The question now is whether more companies will rally to Exxon Mobil’s heresy. And, if so, whether they will be able to provoke an urgently needed public debate on the two approaches.
Why urgent? Because the horse has almost left the barn. Barack Obama, who takes over the White House next week, favours cap and trade and says putting it in place will be a priority.
Canada is poised to follow: Prime Minister Stephen Harper supports the same approach, as do the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois.
Some Montrealers can hardly wait. They set up the Montreal Climate Exchange last spring in anticipation of Harper’s launch of a cap-and-trade system. Under such a system, government regulators would give a company a permit allowing it to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gas. Any company that exceeded that limit, or cap, would have to buy emission allowances from a company whose emissions are below its cap. The Montreal exchange would be the only place in Canada for such buying and selling.
Given the support that cap and trade enjoys across the political spectrum, you might wonder why it needs a review. The answer is that this approval is less a sign of cap and trade’s environmental virtues than of its political advantages.
Many politicians fear the carbon tax because they don’t want the stigma of imposing a new tax on consumers. Cap and trade could increase prices to consumers just as much, but it would do so more subtly, imposing the cost upstream on the producers. Voters would never hear that toxic word, tax.
The case for cap and trade has weakened since Obama espoused it a year ago. Cap and trade would require a vast regulatory apparatus. Bureaucrats would have to decide emission limits for industries, deal with lobbyists and politicians pleading for exceptions, check to see whether companies are falsely reporting their emissions, and so on. The potential for laxity and corruption is great. Last fall’s economic crisis has shown the inherent limits of regulatory institutions.
Stéphane Dion tried to sell the carbon tax when he led the Liberals in last fall’s federal election. The idea bombed even though – like Exxon Mobil’s Tillerson – he said the tax should be revenue neutral. Dion failed because – curiously for a veteran teacher – he lacked the pedagogical skills. He couldn’t articulate the carbon tax’s obvious virtues.
A carbon tax could be slapped on with hardly any extra personnel. There’d be no loopholes: It would be as hard to avoid as today’s GST. And it could be imposed overnight, unlike cap and trade which could take years to set up. The worrisome rate of emission increases makes speed an important criterion.
Tillerson’s version of a carbon tax is tougher than Dion’s version – it would, unlike the Green Shift, include gasoline. He’s also a better salesman than the Liberal. “As a businessman,” he said in a speech in Washington, “it is hard to speak favourably about any new tax. But a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach. It avoids the costs and complexity of having to build a new market for securities traders or the necessity of adding a new layer of regulators and administrators to police companies and consumers.”
There’s still time to reconsider North America’s climate-change strategy. The carbon tax has new, well-placed allies in Washington, including Obama’s economic adviser Lawrence Summers and energy secretary-designate Steven Chu. Note, too, that Canada’s new Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, came out in favour of a carbon tax in 2006, well before Dion. Maybe the fight is not over. The Montreal Climate Exchange would lose from a carbon tax, but so what? The planet would gain.
global warming
17 Jan 2009
The Gazette
HENRY AUBIN
New life for carbon tax
EXXON CEO’S ENDORSEMENTshould prompt politicians to take a fresh look at the idea
Shocking news on the environmental front has gone almost unnoticed in Canada’s news media. The boss of Exxon Mobil Corp. last week aligned himself with Al Gore, David Suzuki and Michael Ignatieff in urging Washington to adopt a carbon tax. That’s right, Exxon Mobil – the company that Greenpeace once dubbed Climate Criminal No. 1.
Rex Tillerson, chief executive of the company that puts a CO2belching tiger in your tank, said that a carbon tax – that is, a tax on products that cause greenhouse-gas emissions – would be far more effective against global warming than the alternative cap-and-trade approach. The world’s largest oil company has thus abandoned the fossil-fuel industry’s united front for cap and trade. The industry sees cap and trade as the lesser of two evils.
The question now is whether more companies will rally to Exxon Mobil’s heresy. And, if so, whether they will be able to provoke an urgently needed public debate on the two approaches.
Why urgent? Because the horse has almost left the barn. Barack Obama, who takes over the White House next week, favours cap and trade and says putting it in place will be a priority.
Canada is poised to follow: Prime Minister Stephen Harper supports the same approach, as do the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois.
Some Montrealers can hardly wait. They set up the Montreal Climate Exchange last spring in anticipation of Harper’s launch of a cap-and-trade system. Under such a system, government regulators would give a company a permit allowing it to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gas. Any company that exceeded that limit, or cap, would have to buy emission allowances from a company whose emissions are below its cap. The Montreal exchange would be the only place in Canada for such buying and selling.
Given the support that cap and trade enjoys across the political spectrum, you might wonder why it needs a review. The answer is that this approval is less a sign of cap and trade’s environmental virtues than of its political advantages.
Many politicians fear the carbon tax because they don’t want the stigma of imposing a new tax on consumers. Cap and trade could increase prices to consumers just as much, but it would do so more subtly, imposing the cost upstream on the producers. Voters would never hear that toxic word, tax.
The case for cap and trade has weakened since Obama espoused it a year ago. Cap and trade would require a vast regulatory apparatus. Bureaucrats would have to decide emission limits for industries, deal with lobbyists and politicians pleading for exceptions, check to see whether companies are falsely reporting their emissions, and so on. The potential for laxity and corruption is great. Last fall’s economic crisis has shown the inherent limits of regulatory institutions.
Stéphane Dion tried to sell the carbon tax when he led the Liberals in last fall’s federal election. The idea bombed even though – like Exxon Mobil’s Tillerson – he said the tax should be revenue neutral. Dion failed because – curiously for a veteran teacher – he lacked the pedagogical skills. He couldn’t articulate the carbon tax’s obvious virtues.
A carbon tax could be slapped on with hardly any extra personnel. There’d be no loopholes: It would be as hard to avoid as today’s GST. And it could be imposed overnight, unlike cap and trade which could take years to set up. The worrisome rate of emission increases makes speed an important criterion.
Tillerson’s version of a carbon tax is tougher than Dion’s version – it would, unlike the Green Shift, include gasoline. He’s also a better salesman than the Liberal. “As a businessman,” he said in a speech in Washington, “it is hard to speak favourably about any new tax. But a carbon tax strikes me as a more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach. It avoids the costs and complexity of having to build a new market for securities traders or the necessity of adding a new layer of regulators and administrators to police companies and consumers.”
There’s still time to reconsider North America’s climate-change strategy. The carbon tax has new, well-placed allies in Washington, including Obama’s economic adviser Lawrence Summers and energy secretary-designate Steven Chu. Note, too, that Canada’s new Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, came out in favour of a carbon tax in 2006, well before Dion. Maybe the fight is not over. The Montreal Climate Exchange would lose from a carbon tax, but so what? The planet would gain.
global warming
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