Carbon Fee and Dividend: Another Take
The video below is billed as a “Republican, conservative, business-oriented” solution to the carbon emissions problem. In fact, however, it contains few if any differences from the “Carbon Fee and Dividend” plan that the Climate Citizens’ Lobby is offering, as I described yesterday. There is really nothing to dislike about the plan itself. It comes at no cost to the citizens of the country that initiates it (hopefully the U.S.), it doesn’t penalize businesses in that country, it doesn’t flow money to people in foreign countries, it doesn’t ask anyone anywhere to make sacrifices in their current quality of life for that of future generations,and it provides economic encouragement for other countries to follow suit and implement the same plan.
So why use the charged words above that divide Americans–especially in a day when the Republicans are best known for Trumpcare (favored by 17% of Americans) and Donald Trump himself (disapproval rating: 60%)? Why offend Democrats and Independents by implying that they are indifferent to American businesses? Not sure on that one; it seems like a mistake that might come back to bite its promoters in the butt–and that would be a shame.
Craig,
Your “Carbon Fee and dividend” is just another attempt at a Carbon Tax.
Such schemes have failed in every nation that has tried to introduce such schemes. Like Carbon Emission Trading or straight Carbon Taxes, each has proved unpopular, difficult to administer, with the twin evils of burgeoning bureaucracy and corruption.
The added tax burden is always an economic imposition on industry and consumers with no real benefit. Like Ethanol, it would create a whole new economic burden, while entrenching an expensive disaster.
Even the details are not properly thought through. It’s ironic to note the same people who expressed such vocal opposition to the President threat of tariffs to protect American jobs, claiming tariffs couldn’t be practically reintroduced, can now suddenly introduce tariffs for something as vague as carbon! Such a move would be quite rightly seen as American bullying.
This is always the problem with trying to apply ideologically motivated solutions to practical economics.
Trying to create an artificial “price” for carbon automatically changes how an economy is managed. Once political or ideological artifices are introduced to economic management, the economy loses all sense of reality and Venezuela is the result !
To digress, President Trump’s speech in Poland was delivered in a statesmanlike manner and well received by those who bothered to listen. The content was worth thinking about, but largely ignored by the Western and US liberal press.
In contrast, for those without rose tinted glass (where do you buy those things?) the response to vandalism, declared violence, looting and mayhem caused by leftist demonstrators in Hamburg was all too real.
As usual, media like the Guardian, Washington Post etc, excused the rioters behaviour and condemned the actions of the police.
My most vivid memory was watching one poor your Hamburg resident who described how the demonstrators had smashed and burned her car.
Although the young lady was herself a struggling student with a widowed mother and devastated by the loss of her vehicle, the purchase of which she had worked so hard to obtain, all the Guardian had to say was she should have better insurance !
Craig, that’s the problem with political ideological concepts like “Carbon Fee and Dividend”, they’re seldom thought through, and when they don’t work, not adopted, or even criticized, the response is not reasoned argument but a tantrum by leftist supporters.
( I would love to hear your response to the President’s historic speech in Poland. Trump is the first US President in nearly 100 years who no longer leads an ever expanding nation. He’s leading a nation in retreat. It’s interesting to see how much harder it is for the US left to accept, than the right.)