{"id":191086,"date":"2009-09-25T20:49:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-26T01:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/25\/carbon-tax-update\/"},"modified":"2009-09-25T20:49:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T01:49:00","slug":"carbon-tax-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/25\/carbon-tax-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Carbon Tax Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s beginning to look like France will impose its own carbon tax \u20ac17 ($24.90) per ton of CO2<\/sub><\/a>.<\/p>\n

French President Nicolas Sarkozy<\/span> wants to move France toward greater reductions in carbon emissions, but it is also a reflection of just how big a failure that Europe’s cap and trade regime has been, with the creation of false offsets overseas<\/a>, construction of hydroelectric plants without transmission lines in China<\/a>, and paying farmers not to grow food<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In addition to that, there is the detail that the markets simply do not work, creating a “pollution fire sale,”<\/a>*<\/sup> which makes this system a joke.<\/p>\n

In any case, I ran the numbers,\u2020<\/sup> and got about $0.2212\/gallon, which in the scheme of things is not a huge chunk of change, particularly in France, where the price of a gallon of gas is about $6.00 including tax, but it is<\/span> likely to make coal powered electricity much<\/span> less competitive, particularly if the tax goes up over time.<\/p>\n

France is emulating Finland and Sweden, who implemented carbon taxes over a decade ago, and got reductions in emissions, as opposed to the EU cap and trade, which hasn’t ever worked.<\/p>\n

On a related note, both Caterpillar and Federal Express are lobbying for a carbon tax instead of a cap and trade<\/a> too.<\/p>\n

They mention a number of reasons, not the least of which is the giveaways to big coal, but the big reason is buried<\/span> a few paragraphs down here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A predictable<\/span>, graduated tax would have an impact on the role of the military overseas, improve the environment and be good for the economy, [FedEx CEO]<\/span> Smith argued.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n

Simply put, they don’t want to live in a world where the cost of carbon credits will fluctuate day to day because of the machinations of that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,\u2021<\/sup> Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n

FedEx and Caterpillar, and pretty much everyone but the coal burning utilities<\/span> can live with a carbon tax, it effects them all equally.<\/p>\n

If you make carbon permits a trade able market commodity, and suddenly you have where the difference between survival and bankruptcy are choices in an opaque and volatile market.<\/p>\n

You end up diverting enormous resources from upgrading equipment and doing research on more efficient ways to do things, and drive it into the blood funnel of the vampire squid.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>Original author’s pun, not mine.<\/span>
\u2020<\/sup>I assume that the tax is actually per tonne (metric ton), so that is 1000 kg of CO2<\/sub>, which is 273 kg of carbon. This means that the actual tax for a kg of carbon is about \u20ac0.0623 per kilo of carbon.<\/p>\n

A good approximation of the formula for gasoline is C8<\/sub>H18<\/sub> (It’s actually a witches brew of different hydrocarbons), and the weight of a liter of gasoline 0.76, so the weight of carbon in a liter is about 0.64 kg.<\/p>\n

This gives a tax of about \u20ac0.03989\/liter, or about $0.2212\/gallon<\/span>
\u2021<\/sup>Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon<\/span> mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi<\/span>, in his article on the <\/span>massive criminal conspiracy<\/span> investment firm, <\/span>The Great American Bubble Machine<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s beginning to look like France will impose its own carbon tax \u20ac17 ($24.90) per ton of CO2. French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to move France toward greater reductions in carbon emissions, but it is also a reflection of just how big a failure that Europe’s cap and trade regime has been, with the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1054,1079,984,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropogenic-climate-change","category-environment","category-europe","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}