Global warming. Fixing it's as easy as... well, raising taxes. - Granite Grok

Global warming. Fixing it’s as easy as… well, raising taxes.

This past Saturday during our radio program, “Meet the New Press” (podcasts here) I gave co-host Pat Hynes (AnkleBitingPundits) the needle about “his guy”, John McCain, the latest politician to climb aboard the “man is the cause of global warming” bandwagon. As someone who refuses to buy into that notion, I am becoming more distressed by the day as the number of prominent people and politicians who believe the false premise continues to grow. As they swallow the hysterical environmentalist propaganda, they repeat it, thus helping to further spread what many believe to be junk science as gospel truth. And of course, as I reminded my friend Pat, once enough bad laws and new rules and regulations get passed as a result, it will be us “little guys” that end up footing the bill.
.
Unfortunately, it turns out that I was more right about that than I thought. This very week alone, I learned about three separate news items proving my point.
.
The Burlington Free Press reports on global warming legislation in the offing for the people who live in Vermont:
“The Legislature led by Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin has ridden a wave of good will on its effort to make Vermont a leader in reducing the human impact on climate change. The initiative, launched with two weeks of hearings and backed by a timely U.N. report that links global warming to human activity, has been hailed as the right thing to do that’s also good for the economy by branding the state as a green leader.”
How does it do this? Care to guess?
.
 

If your answer was “new taxes,” you would be correct. After all, is that not the government’s answer for everything? The same Free Press article reports that the proposal includes a tax on home heating oil, apparently in an effort to entice people to use less. Can you believe this? As the op-ed notes, this is a tax that
“hits hardest those who least can afford it because the cold doesn’t know rich from poor.”
Exactly. Heat is not some form of luxury for people, it is a necessity. Without it, especially in areas like Vermont, people could literally die. To turn around and tax it, in order to change peoples’ living habits, seems about as low as a government could possibly go. It would be as bad as taxing people out of their homes… oh, that’s right, they do that already.
.
Vermont is not the only governmental entity looking to extract additional tax monies from people in the name of unproven pseudo-science. Tuesday’s Washington Post reports that in Virginia,
“Arlington County is considering an energy tax on residents to help pay for its high-profile initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, officials said yesterday in proposing a $873.6 million spending plan for the coming year. Arlington residents could pay as much as $26 more on electricity and natural gas bills next year if the County Board decides to include $1.5 million for the environmental initiative in its spending package, which the board will consider in April.”
And what would these tax dollars, extracted directly from the family budget pay for? The Post reports
“the money would go toward solar-powered projects, energy audits for homes and an ‘aggressive outreach and marketing effort’ on energy-saving measures for residents and businesses, officials said.”
There’s no word yet as to what might happen to those who, if this new law passes, choose to resist this “aggressive outreach.” Again, who pays in the end for this? The “little guy” of course.
.
As if this weren’t enough, along come our pals at the UN. They are starting to pile on as well. As reported in yesterday’s Voice of America (VOA),
“A group of 18 scientists from 11 countries is calling on the international community to act quickly to prevent catastrophic climate change. In a report requested by the United Nations and partially paid for by the privately funded U.N. Foundation, the panel warns that any delay could lead to a dangerous rise in sea levels, increasingly turbulent weather, droughts and disease.”
Yeah right. They then follow their predictions of doom and gloom with some suggestions:
“The panel’s recommendations include a series of steps to cut the rate at which temperatures are rising. Chief among them are a global agreement on an acceptable ceiling for temperature rise and finding ways of adapting to cope with the damage already done.”
That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Not so fast. The VOA report notes that panel member John Holdren of Harvard University believes
“even these measures will achieve very little unless they are accompanied by a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions. ‘We don’t think ultimately society will get it right in terms of the full range and scope of activities needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, until there is an additional incentive in the form of a price on greenhouse gas emissions, either through a carbon tax or a cap and trade approach,’ he said.”
Think about it. Do you really believe you’re saving the planet by having less money to spend on yourself and your family? When new taxes are added to gasoline and heating oil, we’ll all just use the available alternatives, right?
.
(H/T’s to DCE at WeekendPundit and BDP at ABP)
>