Carbon Tariff Coalition Letter
Dear Members of Congress:
As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is reportedly going to mark-up the PROVE IT Act (S. 1863) this week, the undersigned organizations want to express strong opposition to carbon tariffs and the PROVE IT Act. This legislation is a gateway for a carbon tax on imported goods and a domestic carbon tax.
It is shocking that legislators would contemplate advancing policy that would increase taxes, drive up prices for American families, harm workers and those on fixed incomes, and punish energy use.
Yet this is precisely what a carbon tariff does. A carbon tariff is two taxes in one. First, a carbon tariff is a tax on imported goods, borne by American consumers, workers, and businesses. Once the structure for imposing a carbon tariff has been established, it can then be used to impose a domestic carbon tax.
To think that the government would develop the administrative infrastructure to impose a domestic carbon tax without following through is naïve, at best. If the United States were to impose a tax on imports based on their carbon intensity, then there would be an expectation that domestic goods would be subjected to a comparable tax-based scheme. In fact, a domestic carbon tax might be required to meet international trade obligations.
The PROVE IT Act is not a benign government measurement scheme that will exist for knowledge purposes. It would create a detailed carbon-emissions measuring system for domestic and foreign goods, putting into place exactly what is needed to implement a carbon tariff and a domestic carbon tax.
Some proponents assert that the PROVE IT Act will help respond to the European Union’s (EU) carbon tax, otherwise identified as a carbon border adjustment mechanism. The United States should push back against the EU’s extreme green policies and not, under any circumstances, accept their disastrous environmental and energy policies.
The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism and carbon tariffs are a way to impose extraterritorial regulations. Recently, we have seen these types of regulations domestically, as American farmers know all too well. Some states have imposed barriers to selling goods, such as eggs and pork, based not on the nature of the goods but due to moral and ethical preferences on how food should be produced.
Just imagine foreign countries trying to impose their moral preferences on Americans by using tariffs as leverage over how the U.S. uses energy or how American farmers produce food. Carbon tariffs and the PROVE IT Act will help establish this precedent.
Maybe even worse than the imposition of all these new taxes is the purpose of the taxes. They are taxes to punish energy use. Since more than 80 percent of the world’s energy comes from coal, natural gas, and oil, which produce carbon dioxide emissions, a carbon tariff is a tax on the energy that makes modern life possible.
It would make medical care, housing, communications, food, and transportation less affordable, especially for people who already struggle to pay their bills. It would have a disproportionate impact on the poor and hurt those on fixed incomes, the elderly, and local institutions like hospitals, libraries, and schools.
The PROVE IT Act and carbon tariffs are not just bad policy, but bad politics. After all, supporting new taxes and opposing affordable and reliable energy is a toxic concoction.
A new survey sponsored by the American Energy Alliance and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity found that most Americans opposed a carbon tariff on imported goods, with 63 percent of Republicans opposed.
This opposition to paying carbon or energy taxes becomes even clearer when respondents were asked what they are willing to pay each year to address climate change. The median response was just $10, and 35 percent (including 17 percent of Democrats) said they are unwilling to pay anything. American Energy Alliance president Thomas Pyle captured the results very well:
The results reconfirm what we already knew: voters are not willing to pay any tax associated with carbon dioxide or energy – including a carbon dioxide or energy tax on imported goods. Those who believe in limited government and free energy markets continue to be allied with the vast majority of voters concerning the destructive and pointless nature of carbon dioxide taxes and on the fundamentals of the climate change issue.
As the markup of the PROVE IT Act approaches, there may be disingenuous gimmicks such as amending the bill to say it may not be used to impose a carbon tariff. Such a provision does not change the fact that the foundation would have been created to impose a carbon tariff and domestic carbon tax. Any new legislation could easily get rid of such a prohibition, and that is exactly what would happen.
The PROVE IT Act and other carbon tariffs efforts show a complete disregard for what matters to Americans. They want affordable, reliable energy to power their homes and lives, not government meddling that drives up their household bills. They don’t want federal schemes that treat energy use as a sin.
We strongly urge legislators to oppose the PROVE IT Act and any other legislation dealing with carbon tariffs.
Sincerely,
Daren Bakst
Director, Center for Energy and Environment
Competitive Enterprise Institute
https://cei.org/coalition_letters/carbon-tariff-coalition-letter/
************************************************Electric Vehicle Mandates Are Coming, but Are EVs Even Practical in Cold-Weather States?
In the lot of Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s, local Ford dealership, dominated by an impressive lineup of F-150 pickup trucks and SUVs, I asked the salesman, Joe, about buying an electric vehicle. It turns out that not many EVs are sold in Eau Claire.
Joe told me that he typically sells about one or two electric vehicles for every 100 gasoline-powered cars. Since there were only a couple EVs he could point to on the lot, we went inside to see an electric sedan, a 2023 Ford Mach E.
It was far more than I could afford, but I inquired about how it performs. Joe said it can take over 40 hours to charge with a standard 120V three-prong wall outlet. Upgrading to a faster charger, the 240V outlet, is costly and requires new electrical wiring to the garage in most cases. This can be difficult or impossible for people who have old homes, rent their homes, or simply can’t afford it.
The car’s advertised range of just 250 miles doesn’t account for driving with the heat on, which reduces the range. While the Midwest had a mild start to the winter season, evading the cold altogether is an elusive endeavor in Eau Claire. Temperatures are expected to struggle to rise above zero degrees Fahrenheit this week, and battery-powered vehicles lose up to 40% of their range in the cold. When the wind chill is 30 degrees below zero, you can bet every car has the heat on as hot as it goes. It’s no surprise that Joe hardly sells any EVs.
When deciding on a vehicle to purchase, Joe suggested considering the environmental implications of driving the vehicle. It’s overly optimistic to assume that the environmental advantages of electric vehicles will outweigh their practical drawbacks. Driving an EV instead of a gasoline-powered car has no discernible effect on the climate.
While electric vehicles do not emit carbon dioxide during operation, they depend on fossil fuels for the electricity needed to charge their batteries, particularly in Wisconsin. With an average of barely three hours of direct sunlight per day in winter, solar power plummets to a third of the summertime capacity (and that’s when the panels aren’t covered in snow).
Additionally, manufacturing an EV emits nearly twice the amount of carbon dioxide compared to manufacturing a gasoline vehicle, and mining for battery components has other environmentally damaging effects.
All of the car, truck, train, and plane emissions in America account for about 3.9% of global carbon emissions. Even if America abandoned all fossil fuels overnight, it would hardly affect our climate.
Kevin Dayaratna, chief statistician at The Heritage Foundation, used government models to show that completely eliminating all fossil fuels from the United States would yield less than a 0.2 degree Celsius reduction in temperature by the year 2100. There may be reasons to purchase an EV, but saving the environment is not a good one. (The Daily Signal is the media outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
While China’s carbon emissions are more than double those in America, President Joe Biden wants Americans to foot the bill for reducing the world’s carbon. Going all-in on electric vehicles means our capacity to supply electricity must necessarily skyrocket.
In return, Americans will get higher electricity bills, a further reliance on China, and no environmental benefits. Biden’s goal of mandating that 60% of new vehicles are electric by 2030 will increase the cost of energy—disproportionately hurting the poor. According to last month’s special report from The Heritage Foundation on affordable and reliable energy, access to affordable energy directly influences access to safe water, health care, food, and cleaner environments.
Biden should leave car-purchasing decisions to individuals and not force them to buy EVs. If electric vehicles surpass gasoline vehicles in functionality or affordability, government subsidies and tax incentives would be unnecessary. People didn’t need tax credits for kerosene when they transitioned from using whale oil for lamps. They bought it because it was more efficient and it burned brighter.
While my trip to the dealership did not end with my joining the 0.1% of Wisconsinites who own an electric vehicle, maybe I’ll consider one when they can outperform gasoline-powered SUVs during a subzero January in Wisconsin.
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UK: Green Tories facing general election wipeout
The Conservatives are heading for an electoral wipeout on the scale of their 1997 defeat by Labour, the most authoritative opinion poll in five years has predicted.
The YouGov survey of 14,000 people forecasts that the Tories will retain just 169 seats, while Labour will sweep to power with 385 – giving Sir Keir Starmer a 120-seat majority.
Every Red Wall seat won from Labour by Boris Johnson in 2019 will be lost, the poll indicates, and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will be one of 11 Cabinet ministers to lose their seats.
The Tories will win 196 fewer seats than in 2019, more than the 178 Sir John Major lost in 1997.
The poll exposes the huge influence that Reform UK is set to have on the election result. The Right-wing party would not win any seats, but support for it would be the decisive factor in 96 Tory losses – the difference between a Labour majority and a hung Parliament.
The result would be the biggest collapse in support for a governing party since 1906, with an 11.5 per cent swing to Labour. …
Writing for The Telegraph, Lord Frost, the Conservative peer, described the poll’s findings as “stunningly awful” for the party, saying it was facing “a 1997-style wipeout – if we are lucky”.
He said a combination of tactical voting and any decision by Nigel Farage to return to front-line politics could leave the Conservatives facing “an extinction event”.
Lord Frost added that the only way to avoid the likely defeat was “to be as tough as it takes on immigration, reverse the debilitating increases in tax, end the renewables tax on energy costs – and much more”.
James Johnson, a former Number 10 pollster, said the figures suggested any possible path to victory for the Conservatives had “all but vanished”.
He said the data showed the Tories were haemorrhaging the votes of Leave supporters who backed them in 2019 and would be punished by those voters “if they do not get tough on migration – fast”.
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A French-led energy insurrection against renewables
The final days of 2023 were marked by what could end up being a turning point for Europe’s energy and climate policy.
On 19 December, 11 EU countries issued a joint statement urging the EU to take full account of nuclear power – not just renewable energies – when elaborating future policies that will determine how the EU achieves its greenhouse gas reduction targets for 2040 and 2050.
“Nuclear power is indisputably a sustainable and equally valid technology to achieve these objectives for member states that opted to resort to its use,” said the joint declaration led by France and signed by Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden.
Shaping the EU’s 2040 climate policy. The joint declaration from the French-led Nuclear Alliance comes weeks before the Commission publishes its 2040 climate proposal, due out on 6 February. It also comes amid ongoing discussions on the EU’s “strategic agenda 2024-2029”, which will be adopted by EU leaders following the June European elections.
“Looking forward to the future and our collective 2040 and 2050 climate-energy targets, we strongly encourage the European Commission to propose a regulatory architecture that facilitates for member states to achieve carbon neutrality by encompassing our energy diversity,” the declaration adds.
A “low-carbon” target for 2040? If the eleven countries get their way – and they already have a blocking minority in the Council of EU member states – this could mark a paradigm shift for EU policy.
Until now, only renewable energies and energy efficiency have been subject to binding quantified targets to meet the EU’s climate objectives.
“However, we must collectively recognise that these two dimensions are not enough to encompass the diversity of solutions and industrial capabilities across the member states,” the joint declaration insists, saying nuclear power must be considered as well.
So what does the 11-country alliance actually want?
That was spelt out by an official in the cabinet of Agnès Pannier-Runacher, France’s now former energy minister: “We have now reached an impasse,” the official said in reference to the EU’s renewables target for 2030, which was hiked to 42.5% of the EU’s final energy consumption. “If we want to go further in renewable energies, we are going to hit the low-carbon base of certain member states” – something that won’t be acceptable for France.
“So we need to turn the tables and stop thinking about elaborating a fourth renewable directive … but perhaps the first low-carbon directive.”
French rebellion against EU renewables target. The joint statement by the French-led Nuclear Alliance also insists on one crucial point: The choice of energy mix is a matter of national sovereignty under EU treaties – a principle they believe must be upheld.
France pushed this reasoning to the maximum in a draft law on “energy sovereignty,” presented in January, which promotes nuclear power as a way of ditching fossil fuels, ignoring the EU’s 2030 renewable energy goals.
The bill is consistent with France’s draft National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP), presented in December, which had already ignored the EU’s a renewable energy target for 2030.
And it goes even further by scrapping the existing renewable energy goals for 2030, which are a legal requirement under the EU renewables directive.
What now? With its draft “energy sovereignty” bill, France is deliberately putting itself on a collision course with EU-agreed targets. This could be a step too far for pro-renewable countries like Austria, which called on the European Commission to ensure EU law is enforced.
But Paris seems intent on pursuing this policy. When a government reshuffle was announced on 11 January, the energy portfolio was scrapped and moved under the responsibility of the Energy Ministry, suggesting a shift in energy policy primarily focused on the relaunch of France’s nuclear industry.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/a-french-led-energy-insurrection/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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