The Senate is poised to vote on S. 2191, the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade scheme for reducing carbon emissions, which would cost the U.S. economy an estimated $1 trillion to $2.8 trillion by 2050. When gasoline and electricity price increases are taken together, 90% of Americans reject even the low-range estimates of the measure’s costs. Meanwhile, truckdrivers and fishermen are snarling traffic and blockading ports in Europe, protesting “green” taxes.
The Lieberman-Warner bill “would impose the most extensive reorganization of the American economy since the 1930s,” states the lead Wall Street Journal editorial for May 27. It involves the government’s creation of a new commodity—the right to emit carbon dioxide—and puts a price on it. This constitutes an indirect tax that “would profoundly touch every corner of American life.”
Not only is it a giant revenue grab, but it gives politicians the right to influence the price of every good and service in the economy. In 157 pages of amendments submitted by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is $800 billion in consumer tax relief through 2050 to return a small fraction of the regressive tax revenues to the politically chosen. It’s a “massive income redistribution scheme” mediated by Boxer and “her fellow Platonic rulers.”
The National Center for Public Policy Research commissioned a survey of 802 people on how much they’d be willing to pay in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Respondents were given a choice between spending “nothing more,” a percentage increase correlating to estimates from three different econometric analyses of Lieberman-Warner, and a percentage increase just below the most optimistic of these projections.
About 65% of Americans reject spending even a penny per gallon more for gasoline, and 71% reject spending more for electricity. Only 6% would be willing to accept the gasoline and electricity price increase ranges forecast by any of the three studies.
The actual number rejecting the costs would be even higher, suggested David Ridenour, if they considered the inevitable price increases in other consumer goods, and the fact that many Americans would lose their jobs.
“As amazing as it is that 90% of the public agrees on anything,” said Ridenor, “is the fact that all three of the major presidential candidates—Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama—favor a proposal the public appears to be almost unanimously against.”
The goal of Lieberman-Warner is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 2005 levels by 2012, and by a further 30% by 2030. It assumes that every coal-fired generating station in the U.S.—the source of 50% of our electricity—would be shut down (Wall St J, op. cit.).
Europeans will fail to meet far more modest Kyoto goals. Because of the expense of the effort, “insurrection is in the air,” writes Nick Clegg (Daily Telegraph 5/28/08). The Labour Party got its biggest hammering in 40 years in recent UK elections (Civil Defense Perspectives, May 2008). A British polling firm showed that more than 70% of voters are not willing to pay any higher taxes on the pretext of combating climate change. Much of France ground to a halt last week in strikes over fuel taxes, resulting in clashes with riot police. Fishing fleets blockaded French ports and blocked cross-Channel ferries. Italian, Greek, and Portuguese fishermen have threatened to join the protests (Globe and Mail 5/28/08, AFP 5/27/08, posted by Benny Peiser to the Cambridge Conference Net 5/28/08).
All this to reduce the human share (4%) of global carbon dioxide emissions. The upshot of Lieberman-Warner is that “trillions in assets and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and the bureaucracy, all for greenhouse gas reductions that would have a meaningless impact on global carbon emissions if China and India don’t participate. And only somewhat less meaningless if they do” (Wall St J, op.cit.).
The Lieberman-Warner bill is, of course, based on the dubious assumption that returning to the carbon dioxide emissions of a pre-industrial economy would somehow improve the climate.
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