Taxing the Weather

By Alan Caruba

Taxes imposed in the name of global warming are completely bogus. There is no global warming if, by that term, you mean a sudden, dramatic increase in the Earth’s average temperature. The Earth has been cooling for a decade, not warming.

It is incumbent on all of us to email, fax, call, and write our Congress critters and tell them they must vote against any legislation regarding “greenhouse gas emissions” or “global warming.” Tell them that a vote for such legislation will be your vote for whoever runs against them in the next elections.

The Obama administration and Congress are hell bent to cram a “cap and trade” emissions reduction bill down our throats.

In essence it is a hidden tax on the use of all energy by utilities that provide the electricity we use and the energy used by industry to manufacture anything and everything. The rationale is that carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted by the burning of coal, oil or natural gas, thus contributing to global warming.

The known science regarding CO2 amply demonstrates it plays no role in climate change except to react to it. It does not drive climate change, but shows up hundreds of years after any warming. CO2 is routinely absorbed and released by the Earth’s oceans and always has been. It constitutes barely 0.038% of the atmosphere.

Would you accept a tax on sunshine? Rain? Snow? A carbon tax is the equivalent of taxing the weather. It taxes the natural emissions that occur whenever energy is used.

Will the government tax you for the approximately two pounds of CO2 that you and every other human exhale every day? There are already proposals to tax farm animals for their “emissions”!

So-called “carbon taxes” are being contemplated by states and the federal government to suck billions of dollars out of the economy allegedly for so-called “green jobs” or for “redistribution” to social programs that will make everyone more and more dependent on government.

Some businesses will grow wealthy “trading” the carbon credits. Most certainly, Al Gore has. Wall Street is drooling over the prospect of buying and selling of carbon credits the same way they loved the “bundled” and “securitized” mortgage loans that are now called “toxic assets.”

Major U.S. corporations such as General Electric support it because vast sums will be diverted to wind and solar power companies and guess who is a major manufacturer of wind turbines?

Utilities will conjure up trading schemes for the carbon credits and grow wealthy while consumers pay for the totally needless increased cost of electricity. Some are already required to purchase carbon credits, wasting consumer dollars on worthless paper instead of investing it in new plants or upgrading their portion of the grid.

There is no basis in fact for cap-and-trade or any other legislation or regulation based on global warming. The result of such legislation will be to drive manufacturing from America to nations that do not senselessly penalize companies. Those jobs, already cratering thanks to the financial crisis, will disappear entirely.

If all this sounds fanciful, consider the Obama administration’s attack on the use of coal by utilities based on the “emissions” lies. Coal currently provides just over 50% of all the electricity produced in the U.S. Coal is available in the U.S. in enormous quantities. It is cheap and plentiful. There’s enough coal in the U.S. to provide electricity through the next century and beyond.

Who hates coal? Every major environmental organization in America. They hate all forms of energy other than wind and solar, the two least predictable, efficient, and practical means of producing electricity. Without government subsidies, it would not even be providing the grand total of 1% of all the electricity being used in America.

Carbon credits are snake oil. They have no real value. They will absorb and waste billions of dollars that would otherwise be applied to business expansion and an increase in the plants needed to generate the nation’s growing need for more electricity.

Is it a deliberate attack on America? Yes.