McDermott pushes carbon tax
Erica Martinson
Politico
8/2/2012
[via Matt Dempsey
U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
Senate.gov]
These days in Congress, climate change is a question. Rep. Jim McDermott says a carbon tax is the answer.
McDermott (D-Wash.) will introduce a bill Thursday to create a carbon tax that he says will create incentives for long-term changes in the American energy market without harming the economy, and in fact providing much-needed revenues.
“A carbon tax is simple to administer and easy to understand. Over time, the price of carbon emissions is increased, which in turn, creates a market incentive to reduce emissions,” according to a fact sheet provided by his office.
McDermott doesn’t expect his legislation to move soon, he told POLITICO, but he wants to get the idea stewing in advance of possible tax reforms.
In politics, “you plant seeds. You put ideas out there and you let people think about” it, he said. “If someone has a better idea, I’m willing to consider it. I think that when we come back in January, we talk about tax reform. I don’t want it to be thrown on the table” at the last minute.
“So I’m putting it out there as a think-piece,” he said.
With so many people around the country suffering from drought, he said, it’s the perfect time to start the discussion.
Still, he’s bucking some big trends.
Since the slow death of cap and trade, Congress has been loath to pick up the issue of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — and to some degree, short on ideas.
Don’t call it a comeback, but climate change has been on the collective congressional mind this week.
The Senate environment committee held its first hearing in years on the state of climate change science, and Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) took to the Senate floor to champion a need for action. On the other side of the debate, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) — the man who literally wrote the book on climate change skepticism — has been pressing the issue even more than usual lately, making several floor appearances.
And several environmental groups have increasingly sought to make climate change a campaign issue. Some conservative thinkers even got together recently to kick around the idea of a carbon tax…
The article continues at Senate.gov
Also from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works:
Boxer hints carbon tax could be part of larger budget deal
A carbon tax could be part of a larger deal on tax and budget, two Senate Democrats who support action on climate change said today.
“I think if it’s part of a larger package, we could look at it,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), when asked whether a carbon tax could eventually be passed as part of a “tax swap,” which would combine a new levy on emissions with a mechanism to return money to consumers.
The idea has enjoyed a limited resurgence in the past few weeks, with Republicans including former Rep. Bob Inglis (S.C.) and former Reagan administration Secretary of State George Shultz championing it. Some within the policy community have suggested offsetting the tax with a rollback of corporate taxes, but Boxer appeared to indicate she would not support that idea.
“What I want to make sure is the middle class gets the breaks in the interim while we move to clean energy,” she said…
‘Your article on Sen. Inhofe is absurd…Have you even taken a second to look at the history of droughts? Why did you fail to do even the most rudimentary research for your article?…’
All articles H/T Climate Depot
Update : Top Democrat Pushes Carbon Tax to Fight Global Warming & Punish US Producers
Update 2: Here’s your future, America: Can’t Even Keep the Lights On: India & Her Supposed ‘Global Power’ Status
Update 3: John Kerry: Climate Change just as important as Iran getting nukes
John Kerry took to the floor of the Senate yesterday to lament the fact that the American people no longer believe that
Global WarmingClimate Change is an important issue, that it has lost credibility in the eyes of the American people. Of course he blames a huge disinformation campaign by the Right, but now he’s trying to bring it back again as a relevant issue again and to do that he’s bumping up the hyperbole, saying that climate change is just as important as the civil war in Syria and even Iran getting nuclear weapons…
People must be buying less ketchup these days, or something.
Update 4: Inhofe Exposes Another Epic Fail by Global Warming Alarmists Thursday
…“Amid the resurgence of hysteria from my friends on the left, I appreciated climatologist Dr. John Christy who testified this week before the Environment and Public Works committee saying that instead of proclaiming this summer is ‘what global warming looks like’ it is ‘scientifically more accurate to say that this is what Mother Nature looks like, since events even worse than these have happened in the past before greenhouse gases were increasing like they are today.’
“This isn’t the first time alarmists have tried these stunts and it certainly won’t be the last – when will they finally realize they’ve lost this debate?”
Read the whole thing.
