Old-Guard Republicans to Push Carbon Tax at White House Meeting
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Former White House advisers, cabinet secretaries pressing tax
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Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn among scheduled attendees
The One Idea Climate Change Adversaries Agree On
A group of prominent Republicans and business leaders backing a tax on carbon dioxide were taking their case Wednesday to top White House aides, including chief economic adviser Gary Cohn.
The group, including former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and James Baker, is pressing President Donald Trump to tax carbon dioxide in exchange for abolishing a slew of environmental regulations. They unveiled their plan with a press conference in Washington and an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
“We know we have an uphill slog to get Republicans interested in this,” Baker said before heading to the White House. But “a conservative, free-market approach is a very Republican way of approaching the problem.”
Other possible attendees at the meeting include the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who weighed climate change policy during the campaign, and Vice President Mike Pence.
The Republican and business leaders, calling themselves the Climate Leadership Council, lend their stature to an approach for addressing climate change that mirrors an idea already advanced by Exxon Mobil Corp. Supporters say the tax is a conservative solution to climate change that replaces a regulatory regime with a free-market approach for addressing the greenhouse gas emissions.
Wal-Mart Founder
Paulson, who served as Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush, previously has advocated a carbon tax through his eponymous think tank, the Paulson Institute. Baker, who served as secretary of state and Treasury secretary under two Republican administrations, as well as former Secretary of State George Shultz, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Rob Walton and Sequoia Capital Operations LLC partner Thomas Stephenson, among others. Economic advisers to former presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan also are involved in the effort.
“Climate change poses an unacceptable risk to our climate and to our economy,” Paulson said in a statement. “Putting a price on carbon is by far the most efficient and effective way to restrict emissions.”
Baker himself conceded he remains “somewhat of a skeptic about the extent to which man is responsible for climate change” but the
Senior GOP figures are pushing the White House to consider carbon tax to fight climate change
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-gop-carbon-tax-20170207-story.html
Associated Press
A group of Republican senior statesmen is pushing for a carbon tax to combat the effects of climate change and hoping to sell the plan to the White House.
Former Secretary of State James A. Baker is leading the effort, which also includes former Secretary of State George Shultz. In an opinion piece published Tuesday night in the Wall Street Journal, they argued that “there is mounting evidence of problems with the atmosphere that are growing too compelling to ignore.”The group will meet Wednesday with White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, senior advisor Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and Kushner’s wife, is also expected to attend, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly.
Carbon taxes are designed to raise the cost of fossil fuels to bring down consumption. Baker and Shultz detailed in the opinion piece their plan for a gradually increasing carbon tax, with dividends being returned to consumers, as well as border adjustments for the carbon content of exports and imports and the rollback of regulations.…
Canada’s carbon-tax rebellion! ‘How is it justified for you to ask me to pay a carbon tax?’
After the audience broke out into 10 seconds of applause and shouts of support for the woman, Trudeau bobbed and weaved, riding the technicality that electricity is a local matter and that, in fact, it was the government of Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne that was responsible for Ontario’s soaring hydro bills, the product of the province’s billion-dollar carbon-fighting boondoggles.
The moment came when the Peterborough audience erupted in cheers and applause for a 54-year-old woman, Kathy Katula, who pleaded for the prime minister’s support in her battle against soaring Ontario electricity bills and the burden of living in what she described as energy poverty. “I’m asking you, Mr. Trudeau, how do you justify to a mother of four children, three grandchildren, with physical disabilities, and working up to 15 hours a day, how is it justified for you to ask me to pay a carbon tax when I only have $65 left in my paycheque every two weeks to feed my family.”
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New York Times Features Morano on Trump Sec of State pick – Morano called ‘hard-line denier of overwhelming scientific evidence’
…NASA’s Lead ‘Global Warming’ scientist goes political: Calls for a carbon tax
By Paul Homewood
Gavin claims to be a climate scientist.
Yet as a supposedly objective scientist in charge of GISS, why is he making overtly political interventions.
In this interview with the Vancouver Sun last year, he stated:
We have to have a price on carbon because right now it’s still free to put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So if you put a price on carbon that is commensurate with the damage that carbon-dioxide emissions cause, then people will be smarter. They will say: ‘Well, I can spend that money and damage the planet or I can spend less money and buy an electric car that’s fed by hydro. Vancouver is trying to be a real leader in switching to carbon-neutral energy sources and moving away from oil for transportation. All those things are very positive and the B.C. carbon tax is one of the most progressive and far-reaching ideas — even though in practice it hasn’t made a huge difference yet.
It is surely the job of taxpayer funded scientists to stick to the science, and leave policy making to the politicians.
Not that his scientific credentials are up to much, if his next comment in the interview is anything to go by:
Q: What is the future for waterfront cities like Vancouver?
A: You are going to have to put up with rising sea levels; they are not going to go down. But there’s a huge difference between a foot or two over 100 years and a metre or two metres. There’s a lot of waterfront development going on but is it sea-level-rise smart? I don’t know that it is. So don’t put stuff in the basement, have all your electrical equipment on the second floor or on the roof.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, sea levels at Vancouver have been rising at a rate of just 0.37mm/yr since 1910:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.htm?stnid=822-071
At this rate, Gavin’s two meters of sea level rise will take 5405 years.
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Related Link:
Gavin Schmidt’s climate change foibles:
Carbon Tax, Climate, Trade, Education Policy Concerns Arise with Trump’s Sec of State Tillerson
President-elect Donald Trump may have demonstrated another instance of veering from his core campaign policy platforms with a major cabinet selection in his likely Secretary of State pick, ExxonMobil CEO and chairman Rex Tillerson.
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Tillerson has a history of supporting policies opposite to many of the themes the president-elect highlighted during his campaign, including on Common Core education standards, using sanctions to enact foreign policy objectives, carbon tax, climate change, and on global trade and energy policy.
On climate change, Tillerson testified once before Congress that it is real–and that he believes people are behind it. “We have said for some time that there is no question climate is changing, that one of the contributors to climate change are greenhouse gasses that are a result of industrial activities,” Tillerson said in congressional testimony in 2010 before a House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee panel.
Perhaps the most controversial thing Tillerson backs is a carbon tax. Tillerson said in a 2009 speech before the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars:
A carbon tax is also the most efficient means of reflecting the cost of carbon in all economic decisions — from investments made by companies to fuel their requirements to the product choices made by consumers. A carbon tax may be better suited for setting a uniform standard to hold all nations accountable. This last point is important. Given the global nature of the challenge, and the fact that the economic growth in developing economies will account for a significant portion of future greenhouse-gas emission increases, policy options must encourage and support global engagement.
Trump is vehemently opposed to a carbon tax. On Twitter in May, Trump made very clear he does not—and will not—support a carbon tax. “I will not support or endorse a carbon tax!”
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Tillerson was also a donor to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and has funded other establishment Republicans like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney among others. As of mid-July, he had not donated to Trump’s campaign, according to a report from Inside Climate News; at that point Trump was the presumptive or actual GOP nominee for some time. It’s unclear if he later financially backed Trump’s campaign.…
Der Spiegel: EU Corporations Have Raked In 25 Billion Euros Through Corrupt Emissions Trading Scheme
…France’s socialist gov’t to drop carbon tax plan
| Source: GWPF |
It appears to be all crumbling for the elites:
- Brexit against their wishes;
- The Paris agreement;
- Trump wins popular vote in US; and now
- France to drop carbon tax plan.
The French government is set to drop plans to introduce a carbon tax, French financial daily Les Echos said on Thursday.
The newspaper, quoting several sources, said the socialist government will not include the carbon tax in a draft 2016 budget update currently being discussed.
…Environment Minister Segolene Royal had said in May that France would unilaterally introduce a carbon price floor of about 30 euros ($33) a tonne with a view to kickstart broader European action to cut emissions and drive forward the December 2015 United Nations-led international climate accord.
Washington Carbon Tax Measure Goes Down In Flames
Washington state residents decisively rejected what could have been the first tax on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the U.S.
The state’s carbon tax, dubbed Initiative 732, was opposed by about 59 percent of voters, while only 41 percent supported it.
The measure was not endorsed by national environmental groups, like 350.org, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and The Sierra Club. In fact, some environmentalists have come out against the tax and promptly claimed credit for defeating the measure.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/09/washington-carbon-tax-measure-goes-down-in-flames/#ixzz4Pc1vqc00…
Forget Paris: France Drops Carbon Tax Plan
Forget Paris: France Drops Carbon Tax Plan
http://www.thegwpf.com/forget-paris-france-drops-carbon-tax-plan/
The French government is set to drop plans to introduce a carbon tax, French financial daily Les Echos said on Thursday. The newspaper, quoting several sources, said the socialist government will not include the carbon tax in a draft 2016 budget update currently being discussed. Environment Minister Segolene Royal had said in May that France would unilaterally introduce a carbon price floor of about 30 euros ($33) a tonne with a view to kickstart broader European action to cut emissions and drive forward the December 2015 United Nations-led international climate accord. The plan had pushed power prices higher in the spring. Les Echos quoted a source as saying that the measure is too complicated to put in place and might be unconstitutional. The paper said that state-owned electric utility EDF, which produces mostly carbon-free nuclear power, was in favor of the measure, but that gas utility Engie SA had lobbied against the tax because it would make its gas-fired power plants less competitive than similar plants in neighboring countries. A source close to the French government told Reuters that nothing had been decided yet on the carbon tax but confirmed there were doubts about it. Full story see also: Nicholas Sarkozy Turns Climate Sceptics In Battle For Élysée
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