As Europe fights to keep warm this winter, going so far as to burn coal to keep the lights on, the reached from reality EU bureaucrats approved a new carbon tax on the old energy (heating and motor fuels), part of which will fund conversions to the new energy that isn’t working.
EU legislators agreed early on Sunday (18 December) to introduce a carbon price on buildings and road transport fuels, with a new €87-billion social climate fund established in parallel to cushion the impact on households and help them invest in green solutions.
The new carbon price will apply to petrol, diesel and heating fuels such as natural gas whose climate warming emissions have continued to rise over the years despite attempts to decarbonise.
By “decarbonise,” they mean offshore the carbon to places like China, where all the “green” stuff will be manufactured using dirty coal, oil, and whatever else you need to burn to make modern living possible. And China will be doing just that. Advancing technology, infrastructure, and its military using the currency of “western” democracies committed to backward-engineering your lifestyle.
There are (of course) exceptions.
Agriculture and fisheries won’t have to pay the extra carbon cost because they are “sensitive” sectors, Liese admitted. Trains running on diesel are also out of the scope of the system and won’t see their carbon emissions taxed as a result.
The new scheme will entail higher prices at the pump: up to 10.5 cents for a litre of petrol and 12 cents for diesel, according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research.
Heating fuels like gas, heating oil and coal will see their prices increase as well, to the detriment of poorer EU member states, which rely more heavily on dirty fossil heaters.
This is how you will be made to pay for an energy transition that doesn’t work, isn’t green, and that you do not want.
What’s next? A new tax on bread, cereals, and meats to fund your transition to bugs and leaves? With exceptions. No one responsible for running the government will be expected to live that way. And yes, you’d expect protests. And yes, the new carbon tax has been framed the same way.
Do you remember the yellow vest protests? They began in France when it proposed a gasoline tax. For months, citizens protested and started fires until France backed off to end the unrest. I’ve no clue if the tax reappeared, but the problem did not go unrecognized with regard to the new EU tax.
Last year, the chairman of the European Parliament warned lawmakers the tax could trigger political protests, Euractiv reported, noting that lawmakers have since advanced an €87 billion “Social Climate Fund” in a bid to help Europeans finance their personal shift away from fossil fuels.
The catchphrase is in that quote. To help finance. I’m not familiar with the EU’s finances, but it’s a great big, mostly unaccountable room full of progressives coming up with ways to spend other people’s money. Their thinking is no different than any other room full of lefties. Spend first, find funding later.
The Transporation Climate Initiative’s heyday, short as it was, got enthusiasts primed for its potential to plug budget holes. Sure, they’d spend a few bucks on the green dream of lowering transportation emissions. Offshore emissions to second and third-world countries with atrocious human rights records in exchange for the mining of rare earth metals needed to play this game of make-believe. But some or most of it will eventually disappear down the budget rabbit hole through the laundromat and back out the other side – always finding a way into their campaign contributions.
Net-Zero is pilfering pockets for political power, not any other sort. And while Europeans have accepted a widening range of tyrannies raising the price of gas is a sore spot. Perhaps that is why they post-dated the abuse to 2027. Everyone will have been distracted by a laundry list of the next big thing and forgotten about the laundromat the EU promised to build in 2022.
