Economist Ross McKitrick, who along with Steve McIntyre played a major role in discrediting Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, has an interesting proposal for a carbon emissions tax tied to actual levels of warming. The tax would be linked to tropical troposphere temperatures, which I gather are generally agreed to be “the fingerprint of the CO2 contribution to warming.” As McIntyre points out: “If models are wrong and solar or something else is causing climate change, then it would have negligible impact. If models are right, then the tax would go up a lot.” On the other hand, if the tropical troposphere temperatures continue to decline as they have since 2002, then the tax would go negative and turn into a subsidy on carbon emissions. Of course, the alarmists are convinced this won’t happen so it shouldn’t be an obstacle to them endorsing the tax.
For more information read McKitrick’s article.
McKitrick has effectively laid down the gauntlet for both skeptics and alarmists by offering them a public policy proposal they both should be able to endorse, since both are convinced it will go their way. Only those of us who have independent moral and practical reasons for opposing any form of tax or subsidy whatsoever should have a good reason for not accepting the challenge.
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This is a very interesting proposal.
There is one, very easy, prediction. The alarmists will never, ever, agree to it.
Oh, Lordy…Imagine trying to enforce it.
Wait — I don’t understand. In the case where they subsidize carbon emissions, where does the money come from, assuming a reserve hasn’t built up before? Maybe a tax on Birkenstocks and organic hemp?
When has a tax that can be increased been reduced?
The anthropogenic warming crew has always been quick to cry out about a supposed mote in their critics’ eyes, while not noticing the undeniable log in their own, for starters Pew and Rockefeller support:
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm/did/153
http://www.activistcash.com/foundation.cfm/did/166
Not exactly anti-establishment supporters. What is the establishment up to?
Then again, as we have seen from Keynesianism to Lysenkoism, co-opting academics isn’t all that difficult.
In addition to which, the anthropogenic warming crew have already displayed a remarkably elastic conscience when it comes to editing temperature records. Do you honestly believe they won’t do it again? It is, after all, extremely self-rewarding.
Philemon,
“When has a tax that can be increased been reduced?”
I don’t disagree. Although this particular tax would presumably be explicitly worded to vary the level of taxation with the actual amount of observed warming. If so, it would have to be amended later to fix it at a certain level.
“In addition to which, the anthropogenic warming crew have already displayed a remarkably elastic conscience when it comes to editing temperature records. Do you honestly believe they won’t do it again? It is, after all, extremely self-rewarding.”
As to the above, McKitrick envisions the following, perhaps naively:
“But the benefits don’t stop there. The T3 tax will induce forward-looking behaviour. Alarmists worry that conventional policy operates with too long a lag to prevent damaging climate change. Under the T3 tax, investors planning major industrial projects will need to forecast the tax rate many years ahead, thereby taking into account the most likely path of global warming a decade or more in advance.
And best of all, the T3 tax will encourage private-sector climate forecasting. Firms will need good estimates of future tax rates, which will force them to look deeply, and objectively, into the question of whether existing climate forecasts have an alarmist bias. The financial incentives will lead to independent reassessments of global climate modelling, without regard to what politicians, the IPCC or climatology professors want to hear.”
(Keep in mind, I’m not endorsing McKitrick’s proposal.)
I can’t go along with any tax proposal to reduce carbon emissions. Such taxes only increase revenue to the government and expand its reach and power. If you want to stop carbon emissions, make them illegal. If not, leave it alone. All so-called market-based solutions are nothing more than an excuse by socialists to increase the power of the state by increasing its revenue. Should we allow criminals to purchase the right to steal and murder from those of us who don’t commit crimes? Neither should we allow energy producers to purchase the rights to destroy the planet if CO2 causes global warming and global warming causes death and destruction as some envrionmentalists claim. As I have written before, I don’t believe that CO2 is causing global warming, so I believe we should do nothing. And I’m not in favor of giving an inch to socialist environmentalists either.
Wow, I agree with Roger!
We’ve all heard dire predictions concerning the consequences of global warming. But I’m more worried about the consequences of governmental attempts to curb carbon emissions, which are undertaken flippantly, even absent any conclusive evidence that human activity is the principle cause of warming or that warming is on balance harmful to human life.
Isn’t some sort of global governance the necessary precondition for any sort of meaningful state initiative against global warming? And how intrusive will these measures become? Just think of the war on smoking, in which every imposition on the rights of private property begets another. What might have seemed extreme and intolerable intially becomes just another step in a long progression of usurpations.
I read recently that New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is citing global warming as a justification for new taxes on commuters who don’t use public transportation. Who honestly believes that global warming isn’t going to become the pretext of choice for all manner of power grabs by the state? It is already happening.
And who thinks state-connected industries are not already profiting from tax handouts connected with the war on global warming?
The global warming issue is a trump card for totalitarians everywhere. By the state’s logic, all our liberties are expendable in the prevention of a human-caused environmental armageddon — an unproven and unprovable assertion, but one which the booboisie is swallowing hook, line and sinker.
P.S. I think the idea of people measuring their “carbon footprint” is so stupid and ridiculous that it defies satirization. Am I alone in this?
I agree with all that any government intervention is dangerous. I think however that Mr. McKitrick is simply calling the environmental wackos’ bluff.
This IS a very interesting proposal, Geoff.
But like Yancey, I have is one, very easy, prediction. The moral purists will never, ever, agree to it.
So this gauntlet means nothing to them. No gauntlet is too difficult for them to refuse to run.
They will only agree to purely informal measures, forgetting that these measures cannot easily develop internationally and mean public pressure and enforcement mechanisms (like the violence seen in defense of lobster grounds or in range wars) – that they also oppose and scoff at.
Even as others decide that the potential losses and benefits warrant investing in a solution that will involve mutually shared costs, the ideologists can rationalize away them all as evil enviros, loony co-religionist KoolAid drinkers, venal, haughty and oppressive scientists, and cowed but devious money-grubbing corporate rent-seekers, the influence peddlers (and commie wanna-be media, corrupt politicians and mislead civilians.
Another prediction – this discussion will continued to be plagued by the difficulty we all have in perceiving a reality other than the ones already in our own minds.
As to Yancey’s prediction, I disagree. Alot of alarmists would find it very palatable indeed.
You’ll never catch Greens, or other socialists, agreeing to any pact under which they’ll lose if reality fails to live up to their ideological fantasies. For Greens–and authoritarians of every stripe–don’t much care about what is true or false.
Press them on philosophy, and you’ll discover they don’t even believe that objective knowlege is possible! If objective knowlege and truth are cultural illusions, it becomes easy and “natural” to lie, evade, manipulate data and so forth in the service of a “good” cause: the acquisition of power.
Official lies and deeply entrenched mythology invariably characterise ANY authoritarian or totalitarian hegemony. A French philosopher, Revel, wrote a great book, “The Flight From Truth” that explores and elaborates on this theme.
Why is it that authoritarian regimes must rely on widespread lies to sustain their existence? Fundamentally, authoritarians always lie because they’re engaged in imposing by physical force an ethos that is destructive and contrary to human nature. Therefore, systemic incentives reward deceit and punish honesty. When their programs fail to deliver promised results, they lie about the content of the original promise, about why the program failed to deliver, about who’s to blame. Thomas Sowell’s “The Vision of the Annointed” presents many examples in the history of the American Left that colorfully illustrate this dynamic.
Today, one can identify huge official lies across the landscape of American politics: global warming, HIV-causes-AIDS (refuted by Peter Duesberg), Keynesian notions of “cost-push” inflation and “consumer-led recoveries”, DDT as a terrible environmental hazard, World War II as a defensive war fought by desperate Americans threatened by Hitler, Lincoln as a benevolent liberator of blacks and defender of American liberty, and much much more.
Neo-conservatives, whose philosophical outlook is remarkably similar to that of the left, engage in deceit with all the enthusiasm and adroitness of their left-leaning bretheran.
Robert Brazil writes: “I think the idea of people measuring their “carbon footprint” is so stupid and ridiculous that it defies satirization. Am I alone in this?â€
Don’t hold your breath:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/breathing.htm
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