$10 per gallon gas

[Balta1701]

People are already turning towards higher efficiency and green energy. I'm not debating the need for that. I'm saying that bringing the government in to it via taxes is not the best way to get on top of the alternative energy game because the government is almost always horribly inefficient with money. We have a lot of private ventures investing money into alternative energies right now. Yes, we still have a lot going into oil and coal, but we still need those right now and will need them for a while to come. I think adding more taxes will just force more companies out of the country, hurting the economy and lessening our ability to invest in alternative energy.

The counterpoint is...if you raise taxes, the only way those companies are going to be forced out of the country is if the raising of those taxes reduces the amount of energy they're able to sell...aka reduces the demand for that energy (especially the high carbon energy). You can't just move a power plant to China because the government instituted a fee on high carbon energy here. The only way that the case you propose happens is if we cut our non-renewable energy consumption, which I think we'd all agree is a good thing.

 

One other point I'd like to add here...a big part of the reason this is an issue at all is that in this case, the market itself was totally inefficient. The market itself paid for the production of the good in a supply and demand system. But for 100+ years, it did so without acknowledging that there was anything else happening, like either the depletion of those resources or atmospheric changes. The market itself failed. This is why oil companies and other energy companies do business the way they do...outside of energy companies in California, they make more money by selling you more energy. But the problem is, this only works for a system where you have essentially an infinite amount of supply and no harm done to any other system because of it. Both of those are untrue. The global energy crisis and global warming is a function of the market being simply designed in a way that it can not deal with the problems at hand. That's why setting up this system is important...a carbon price, done right, helps give the market a reason to take in to account those other effects that haven't been dealt with by the market at all.

[StrangeSox]

The counterpoint is...if you raise taxes, the only way those companies are going to be forced out of the country is if the raising of those taxes reduces the amount of energy they're able to sell...aka reduces the demand for that energy (especially the high carbon energy). You can't just move a power plant to China because the government instituted a fee on high carbon energy here. The only way that the case you propose happens is if we cut our non-renewable energy consumption, which I think we'd all agree is a good thing.

 

 

I'm not talking about moving power plants. Obviously those have to stay near their customers. I'm talking about killing off what manufacturing we have left because they can't afford some BS carbon tax (either on their products or passed on from ComEd in the form of higher energy rates). They'll pack up and head off to China and continue to pollute, which in the end does nothing to counter CO2 emissions. In fact, because China has lower emissions standards than the US, they'll probably pollute more than they are now.

 

Corporations don't pay taxes. They collect taxes from consumers in the form of higher prices and then give that money to the government. Introducing a carbon tax would be disastrous for the economy. Again, people and corporations are moving towards higher efficiency/ lower energy and renewables without the need for big government to get bigger. How many billions did T. Boone Pickens just spend on windmills?

 

I can't believe I'm posting a quote from Gingrich, but he basically sums up my feelings on this particular issue:

NEWT GINGRICH: I’m very skeptical about it. I’m skeptical for two reasons. First of all, the sulfur oxide problem is a very, very definable, limited problem involving a very small number of plants. Carbon trading is enormously complex and the European experience so far is a mess. And second, if you have single country adopt carbon trading what you will almost virtually guarantee is that the jobs and the industries will go offshore. And there’s a fairly famous case of a cement factory in Belgium that the minute they adopted carbon trading they moved the whole factory to Morocco, and it actually pollutes more in Morocco, which doesn’t have any air control standards, than it was polluting in Belgium. So, the Belgians lost the jobs, the plant increased the pollution. I’m not sure that’s a win-win strategy. I’m very cautious about cap-and-trade because I think it’s inherently politicized and it’s inherently very inefficient. Now, I’m sympathetic with the large corporations that see fifty different states adopting their own environmental standards, and suddenly see such a mess that trying to operate as a nationwide company is going to become extraordinarily complicated. And I think trying to find a different strategy—but here would be my point. Whether it’s a carbon tax, which I think is politically suicidal, or cap-and-trade which will turn out in the end I think to be a very complicated mess—both of those are designed to say, “We want to create a differentiation between non-carbon and carbon by raising the cost of carbon.” I would rather use tax breaks and prizes to lower the cost of non-carbon. You actually create the exact same differential either way.

Edited June 6, 2008 by StrangeSox