Thread: Governments Cash In on Carbon Taxes

While scientists tangle over whether or not man affects climate change, governments are weaving revenue schemes that depend on it.

Around the nation and world, the taxation of CO2 is gaining appeal as a revenue generator.

In 2006, Boulder, Colorado passed the Climate Action Plan, the nation's first carbon emissions tax that raised $1.8 million in 2011.
In Washington State, a 2011 proposal projects carbon tax revenues of $1.9 billion by 2015.
In 2011, the State of Illinois began researching "Green Taxes" as a way to close the state's $3.8 billion deficit.

The carbon money grab is not restricted to the U.S. As of the last figures available in U.S. dollars, Finland receives $750 million annually, the Netherlands $4.8 billion, Norway $900 million, Sweden $3.66 billion and Quebec $191 million.

Carbon taxes ultimately come out of citizen's paychecks and collectively lower living standards. Politicians argue that climate tax revenues are neutral as they provide benefits and return money to the people. This may be a hard sell in the U.S. The same political class told the nation the now $1.7 trillion healthcare package was necessary to balance the very budget it worsened.

Even enthusiastic CO2 tax proponents are unhappy with its accompanying price increases. In Australia, unions who championed the carbon tax, are now negotiating for increased compensation to offset the rising costs of energy.

If nations nibble at the CO2 trough, the United Nations gorges itself on the newfound wealth source.

At the 2010 Cancun Agreements, UN member States agreed to pay $30 billion annually between 2010 and 2012 and beginning in 2020, $100 billion each year to the Green Climate Fund.

If you think this is to mitigate climate change, think again. According to a November 2011 IMF background paper, "The revenue generated by such carbon-pricing policies, need not be earmarked for climate finance." In fact, most of the revenue could be used by nations for deficit reduction. The IMF proposed the Green Climate Fund.

IPCC Group Co-Chair, Ottmar Edenhofer, makes it clear that the idea that carbon taxes will be used to address environmental issues is merely an "illusion." In a November 2010 interview with Germany's NZZ Online, referencing cap and trade he said…

"But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy."

Federal agencies seem content to further the illusion.

On December 7, 2009 while many focused on the memories of Pearl Harbor, the EPA declared CO2 a dangerous pollutant, clearing the way for virtually unlimited taxation. "Science overwhelmingly shows greenhouse gas concentrations at unprecedented levels due to human activity," claimed the agency.

That controversial finding may or may not be true, but it does not necessarily equate to higher global temperatures. In fact, recent studies of ikaite, a rare mineral, indicate that global warming trends, similar to those predicted by the IPCC, existed long before man spewed large quantities of CO2.

If it evolves that CO2 is not causing climate change, the EPA's massive tax assessments on fossil fuel providers are no longer necessary. With the assessments go the much-needed revenues.

This raises the bigger question. Since governments directly and indirectly fund much of the world's climate research, are they encouraging skewed research results to protect massive potential revenues? Globally and locally, governments have a vested interest in asserting that "the science is settled."

This could explain the vehemence against healthy opposition research and the embarrassing bungling of evidence supportive of manmade climate change.




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