The Carbon Tax

The people who brought us the most recent depression are suggesting another, the carbon tax. In the NY Times a former Government official makes the following statements:

 I’m a businessman, not a climatologist. But I’ve spent a considerable amount of time with climate scientists and economists who have devoted their careers to this issue. There is virtually no debate among them that the planet is warming and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible....

Now I have not argued that we are warming. I have been tracking this with sentinel species for over 25 years. There is warming and it is significant. However it is not clear what the results will be. Namely I can see earlier blooms and I can see movement of plant species northward. Will the sea water really rise that high, well they managed in Holland, and after all New York was called New Amsterdam, and in fact the bottom half of Manhattan was underwater when my ancestors arrived in 1649. Thus the issue is not the fact of global warming but our ability to deal with the consequences.

He continues:
  
Some members of my political party worry that pricing carbon is a “big government” intervention. In fact, it will reduce the role of government, which, on our present course, increasingly will be called on to help communities and regions affected by climate-related disasters like floods, drought-related crop failures and extreme weather like tornadoes, hurricanes and other violent storms. We’ll all be paying those costs. Not once, but many times over....

Unless I missed something a tax takes money from the people and gives it to the Government. Thus this tax he proposes takes money from those who could least afford to miss it and gives it to over paid useless Government employees to allocate as they wish. One suspects that the writer has not taken the New York subway with the masses for decades, and most likely his limo gets well less than 30 mpg. Also he could worry less about a carbon tax. The poor schlub in Queens sees the result as a regressive tax on him.

A tax on carbon emissions will unleash a wave of innovation to develop technologies, lower the costs of clean energy and create jobs as we and other nations develop new energy products and infrastructure. This would strengthen national security by reducing the world’s dependence on governments like Russia and Iran.

This is one of the most illogical statements ever made. By taxing the masses then the Government decides on winners and losers regarding low carbon sources. Did we not just see that for the past six years. Was that a success? Entrepreneurs work despite the Government. They work in a Darwinian world, cruel and survival of the fittest reigns. The suggestion of this former banker and Government employee fails on all counts; realism, rationality, and reason. Pity.