Tag Archives: Carbon Tax

Why the PROVE IT Act Would Result in Carbon Taxes

From ClimateRealism

Guest post by Daren Bakst

The PROVE IT Act (S. 1863) is not a benign information collection bill on the carbon intensity of domestic and foreign goods. Instead, it would put in motion the creation of carbon taxes: a carbon tax on imported goods and a domestic carbon tax. It would also help the Biden administration as it works with the EU to impose carbon taxes on imported metals. Here’s why:

  • Congress has already demonstrated what will happen with PROVE IT Act information. Just over a year ago in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was a partisan reconciliation bill, Congress took information collected under the EPA’s greenhouse gas reporting program  to create a methane tax. The Senate passed the IRA on a 51-50 party-line vote with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tiebreaker.
  • Many bill supporters have shown they would replicate what happened with the methane tax. In the Senate EPW Committee markup of the bill, all Committee Democrats voted to kill an amendment that would have helped block the future use of reconciliation to impose a carbon tax on imported goods or a domestic carbon tax based on PROVE IT Act information. Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE) opposed the amendment precisely because it “prohibits any revenue measure based on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with commodities or products.”
  • When PROVE IT Act supporters argue the bill is a way to hold foreign countries accountable, they reveal that the legislation is about more than information. Supporters, including lead sponsors Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Chris Coons (D-DE), have argued that the PROVE IT Act is a way to hold other countries accountable for their emissions. Merely providing information cannot hold any country accountable. Their arguments are a tacit admission that the bill will be used to impose carbon taxes on imports, at a minimum.
  • Bill supporters openly acknowledge that the PROVE IT Act is intended to lead to more taxes. Many of the bill supporters are expressly admitting that the legislation will mean carbon taxes of some kind. Sen. Coons (D-DE) has said about the bill, “figuring out a fair process for imposing tariffs on countries that don’t have any transparency around their emissions is also going to be a complex part of any border carbon adjustment mechanism.” The European Union (EU) has created the first and only carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) and it includes both a carbon tax on imports and a domestic carbon pricing scheme. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has said the bill will “help us construct a carbon border adjustment of our own.” Since 2021, about half of the sponsors of the PROVE IT Act have sponsored bills imposing carbon taxes on imports, with many of these bills also imposing domestic carbon taxes. Senator Coons, a lead sponsor of the PROVE IT Act and two co-sponsors, Sens. Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), sponsored the Clean Competition Act, which uses carbon intensity data to impose carbon taxes on imported goods and a domestic carbon tax.
  • The bill helps to collaborate with the EU on its harmful climate policy. Senator Cramer has repeatedly argued for working with the EU on climate policy. He wrote: “We have an opportunity to counter Putin’s playbook with a bold initiative consistent with European priorities… One aspect of that initiative could be a joint trade mechanism between the United States and the European Union that levels a common carbon fee on imported goods.” Instead of fighting and rejecting the EU’s disastrous climate policy, the PROVE IT Act embraces what the EU is doing. Many supporters advocate for a CBAM similar to the EU’s, and seek to create a “carbon club” of countries that join together to impose carbon taxes in some fashion.
  • The PROVE IT Act will help the Biden administration in its negotiations with the EU to tax the carbon intensity of metals. The Biden administration and EU are working on the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum that would impose taxes on imported metals based on their carbon intensity. This is part of the Biden administration’s broader plan as USTR explains to “use trade tools to decarbonize our economies.” The PROVE IT Act would legitimize these efforts and help the Biden administration reach an agreement with the EU on carbon taxes by pointing to this domestic effort to develop carbon taxes. It would also provide the Biden administration the data necessary to try and unilaterally impose carbon taxes on imports, such as under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Action of 1974.
  • Creating a carbon tax on imported goods leads inexorably to a domestic carbon tax.1) To be part of a “carbon club” with the EU, as many bill supporters want, the US would logically need to have a system like the EU CBAM that includes a domestic carbon pricing mechanism. Not surprisingly, the PROVE IT Act helps to create the framework to implement an EU-type system.2) The US would sooner or later impose a domestic carbon tax if it imposes a carbon tax on imports. This is not simply due to trade law obligations but also because environmental groups and others would not stay silent as domestic industries failed to meet similar greenhouse gas reduction commitments.3) The PROVE IT Act is a way to build a lobby for a carbon tax on imports that can then be used to secure a domestic carbon tax. Domestic manufacturers would oppose a domestic carbon tax absent a corresponding tax on imports to “level the playing field.” Therefore, the PROVE IT Act is a political solution for domestic carbon tax supporters: The bill will lead to carbon taxes on imports, which will lead to a domestic carbon tax.

Bottom line

The PROVE IT Act would make carbon taxes a reality. If legislators genuinely oppose carbon taxes, then why even take the risk of facilitating their enactment and implementation by building the administrative framework and lobbying base for such taxes? And this would be a huge risk given that many bill supporters would use the reconciliation process to impose carbon taxes once they have the PROVE IT Act information.

What Are Climate Policies Costing Canada?

From Friends of Science Calgary

Contributed by Robert Lyman © 2024. Robert Lyman’s bio can be read here.

Executive Summary

A global survey published in the journal Nature in February 2024 found that less than 40 percent of the people asked in Canada and the United States would be prepared to spend one percent of their income to address climate change. Such findings stand in sharp contrast to what Canadians are already paying.


Most of the climate policy-related revenues to governments (i.e. costs to consumers) will be from the carbon dioxide pricing system. Based on the current schedule, the rate will rise to “at least” $170 per tonne by 2030. The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) estimated that the total direct revenue from carbon pricing over the period 2019-20 to 2023-24 would be $31.2 billion, but the amount with GST added (i.e. the tax on the tax) could be $32.3 billion. In Budget 2024, Finance Canada projected that the proceeds from the “pollution pricing framework” will rise from $10.4 billion in 2023-2024 to $20.7 billion in 2028-2029. That would place the total proceeds over the decade at over $80 billion.


The government claims that 90% of the revenues received from the carbon dioxide pricing system are rebated to the provincial governments that, in turn, are supposed to rebate the funds to taxpayers. The Fraser Institute, in its report on the estimated impacts of a $170 carbon tax in Canada, found that the rising carbon tax will cause pronounced reductions in the revenues from elsewhere in the tax system, such that the government will not be able to sustain the household carbon tax rebates to the extent it has promised without going further into deficit. In fact, the shortfall could add about $22 billion annually to the consolidated government debt.


While not treated by the federal government as a tax, the Clean Fuel Regulations have a comparable cost effect. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), in its published analysis of the regulations, estimated that they would decrease real GDP in Canada by up to $9 billion in 2030.


Surprisingly, there is no authoritative and reliable inventory of climate measures now in place; of past, present and planned expenditures; or of the results achieved. This in itself marks an extraordinary failure of governance and public accountability.


The Canadian Climate Institute contracted with Navius Research to develop what it refers to as the Climate Policy Tracker, a list of current and projected climate measures and related expenditures. According to it, there are 112 federal government climate policy measures and 364 provincial and territorial climate policy measures where funding has been approved or planned. The grand total of the expenditures made and planned is $172.8 billion by the federal government alone.


The total federal and provincial expenditures on climate measures over the period 2020 to 2030 as listed by the Carbon Policy Tracker are $476 billion or $11,900 per resident of Canada. This equates to roughly $28,000 per household (i.e. an average of $2,800 per household per year). This is just what has been announced to date; there remain five more fiscal years before 2030 during which governments may add more initiatives.


Canadians through their taxes and prices paid on energy are already spending far more than one percent of their incomes per year to fund federal government climate policies. The amounts paid will undoubtedly rise further. When the amounts spent by provincial governments are included, the total cost is probably more than double what is spent by the federal government. The public just doesn’t know about it.

Alaska Energy Future Needs Informed Voters (gas, hydro under political assault)

From Master Resource

By Kassie Andrews 

“We do not have a gas shortage problem; we have a gas contract renewal ‘problem’ that the incumbents on the board refuse to address.”

“How can a board member do both: support green unreliable energy and meet their fiduciary responsibilities of lowest cost, highest reliability, best service, and safety?”

Chugach Electric Association members face politicized, expensive, and unreliable power options that are certainly not the fault of rich, local resources that have proven their worth for many decades. Only inaction in the face of nefarious “green” can make it happen. Will Chugach members wake up to what economists call the concentrated benefit/diffuse cost problem?

Radical green politicization of electric co-op boards has been a long time in the making, specifically for the 90,000 members of Anchorage-area Chugach Electric Association (CEA). Here is the latest.

Green’ Incumbents CEA Board

Sam Cason and Mark Wiggin, green incumbents on the CEA board, are endorsed by the Alaska Center.  The Alaska Center supports a carbon tax and is funded by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which is managed by Arabella Advisors, the largest political dark money network in the country. The Alaska Center is advocating for the removal of the Eklutna Dam, Chugach’s single largest source of clean and firm renewable energy, accounting for 24% of the renewable energy portfolio and 5-6% of the total electricity for the Railbelt. 

The Eklutna Dam provides the lowest cost of firm power in the Southcentral region.  Aside from removing the lowest-cost clean energy, dam removal would affect Anchorage’s drinking water as 90% of the water comes from Eklutna Lake.

Cason and Wiggin are also endorsed by Renewable Energy Alaska Project (Renewable Energy Alaska Project, which is supported monetarily by National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a federally funded program with an annual budget of over half a billion dollars. NREL’s mission is heavily geared towards “Energy Justice,” aiming to convince folks that windmills and solar panels equate to equity and diversity.

According to the endorsement 

These two candidates have each shown their commitment to REAP’s mission of increasing the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency in Alaska throughout their time on the Chugach Board. And together they have pledged to address this Cook Inlet Gas Crisis in a transparent manner by diversifying Chugach Electric’s generation portfolio away from a dangerous dependency on natural gas towards a mix of local, reliable, stably-priced renewable energy sources.

Unfortunately for ratepayers, REAP has nothing to gain by advocating to keep clean, reliable, affordable power from Eklutna Dam. In fact, REAP stands to benefit from the removal of the dam under the proposal to deactivate “as soon as a different renewable energy source replaces the hydroelectric project’s output.”

Eighty percent (80%) of the power generation for CEA members is provided by natural gas. CEA has raised the red flag on dwindling gas supplies and the need to find “alternative sources” of energy to fill the gap. This “gap” is due to natural gas contracts expiring. New contracts need new provisions, an everyday practice. But green board members do not want to extend/renew natural gas contracts if their friends and current board members are all in the business of providing wind and solar solutions.

The conflict-of-interest at the expense of ratepayers is obvious. Unfortunately, the coop has decarbonization goals at odds with their primary duty of providing price-competitive, reliable power. The incumbents also reject proposals such as a coal plant with carbon capture as a policy of distraction and delay. Fair enough but proponents of wind and solar are engaged in just that.

We do not have a gas shortage problem; we have an economic problem that the incumbents on the board refuse to own. Instead, board members sit on their hands, allowing ENGOs to infiltrate our state government to draft and lobby legislation that will hold them harmless from liability for their terrible decisions to come. These ENGOs such as REAP are regularly invited to Juneau to testify on green bills enacting renewable mandatescentral planning organizationsgreen banks, and to further subsidize and “level the playing field” for for-profit renewable independent power producers.

In turn, there is no one invited to testify as to the true economical impacts of this legislation. While these ENGOs such as REAP and Launch Alaska (energy transition accelerator) claim to be non-profit, they are implementing profiteering.

At the end of the day, the totality of the “all of the above” energy legislation that is cycling through our capital will result in no accountability from the boards that represent the rate payers, as well as higher costs – either the board members know this and do not care to represent ratepayers, or they are not paying attention. How can a board member do both: support green unreliable energy and meet their fiduciary responsibilities of lowest cost, highest reliability, best service, and safety? We are well on our way to becoming ratepayers without representation with a very expensive utility bill.

All of the Above = Bad

The “all of the above” approach to energy is a terribly misinformed mantra that is repeated at all levelsincluding by Governor Mike Dunleavy, who is the primary champion for all of these green policies.  When they openly tell us what their plans are, we should listen to and believe them. Including ALL power alternatives implies unreliable, very expensive, and environmentally destructive sources will be put on our grid. As physicist John Droz sagaciously asks:

How do we advance our economy and our society by allowing unreliable, expensive, and environmentally ruinous power sources on the grid? Who really benefits from an “All of the Above” policy? Well it certainly is not taxpayers, ratepayers, or the environment. The primary beneficiaries are foreign conglomerates who supply us with energy sources that are unreliable, expensive and environmentally devastating — plus China who we will owe an even larger debt to!  All of the Sensible is the obvious answer.”

Yes indeed, sensible options needed for the ratepayers, please.

Folks, if you like representation in your power co-op, we need to elect board members who are not driven by green politics and greed, and who are prepared and willing to do the job – no matter how tough it gets. What will it look like when Chugach members are battling with .45¢/kwh power rates and social justice billing? Will we be forced to eat it like Californians? 

Today we have an advantage over models in the lower-48 where we have representation and nonprofits that provide our power; it is ours to keep. It is through ignorance or corruption that our nonprofit energy infrastructure is being dismantled.

Election Opportunity

The incumbents believe decisions they are responsible for are better left up to the government, ENGOs and bureaucracies. As Alaskans, we’ve lived through this progressive reliance on government as it has become a costly impediment to our way of life and our freedoms. In this election, we have a unique opportunity to keep our representation and align it with our values as Alaskans. Neither candidate running against the incumbents are beholden to special interests – they see the train coming and their background, experience and dedication to transparency equip them to deal with our challenges ahead.

Dan Rogers is an engineer and business owner with decades of experience in improving power system reliability and cost.  Dan was once employed with Chugach and is the co-founder of one of the largest power system engineering companies in Alaska.  He has been involved in many projects including the firm and reliable Bradley Lake Project.  His clear-eyed take is that renewable projects can be done at Chugach, “but only if a dispassionate look is taken at the options available.”

Todd Lindley is an engineer and business owner with a firm understanding of economics, energy systems and many years of applying logic driven solutions.  Todd has an extraordinary breadth of experience at home in the United States and abroad in design and evaluation/risk scoring on projects large and small.  Todd has been actively involved in the study of carbon legislation and energy policy.  He brings a unique perspective to the electrical utility realm as so much of our firm power is reliant on the oil and gas industry where he has spent his career as a Mechanical Engineer.

Ballots are in the mail – Retrieve your election passcode from your ballot packet and vote online here through May 17th. Watch the Anchorage Chamber “Make it Monday” forum with the candidates here.

Kassie Andrews is a Principal at MasterResource who regularly comments on Alaska energy policy.

Backpedalling: Now “Net Zero” is an unhelpful slogan says UK Climate watchdog

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

The term “Net Zero” has become a dirty word

It’s a win. The climate wars will rage on, but the Net Zero spell isn’t working any more, so they will have to find a newer one without such a smell. The sacred propaganda term that was going to save all life on Earth until five minutes ago is more than just a worn out advertising slogan, the skeptics campaign against it has made it a toxic term. Like ESG, it’s become a liability.

The people know “Net Zero” is not just a fluffy footprint on a forest, but an attack on their wallet and their lifestyle. It’s a great credit to GWPF and NetZeroWatch in the UK for turning this phrase back against the infinitely well funded financial-house-and-government-alliance.

Net zero has become unhelpful slogan, says outgoing head of UK climate watchdog

The Guardian (of the ruling class)

The concept of “net zero” has become a political slogan used to start a “dangerous” culture war over the climate, and may be better dropped, the outgoing head of the UK’s climate watchdog has warned.

“Net zero has definitely become a slogan that I feel occasionally is now unhelpful, because it’s so associated with the campaigns against it,” he said. “That wasn’t something I expected.”

Politicians on all sides are now wary of associating themselves with the term, he said, which was inhibiting progress.

The scare stories worked. Look at the backpedaling on meat and flying:

Tackling the climate crisis has been presented as a massive change, but Stark was at pains to point out that it would not be. “The world that we’ll have in 2050 is extremely similar to the one we have now. We will still be flying, we’ll still be eating meat, we will still be warming our homes, just heating them differently,” he said. “The lifestyle change that goes with this is not enormous at all.”

Now they are trying to tell us it will be easy to change the weather?

This is part of the big backdown we’ve seen in so many theatres. First ESG became a dirty word, now “Net Zero” is too. Money is fleeing from “sustainable investments”. EV’s are on the nose. It’s the end of an era that started (as best as I can tell) around 2015 and the Paris agreement and has been hammered for the last five years.

But make no mistake, the freeloading barnacles of bureaucracy and banking will transmogrify, and they will hide their intent a little more carefully. In Australia, after the Carbon Tax became a dirty term (when Tony Abbott won in a landslide) the tax returned under many guises, but it was never called a Carbon Tax again. Among many names, it became The SafeGuard Mechanism, where an emissions trading scheme was legislated unbenownst to nearly everyone. Now they want to impose a fossil fuel tax. They are barely hiding it.

After years of failure at UN junkets to set up international emission trading schemes, which also got themselves a bad name, the EU has set up a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. These carbon tariffs will take money from foreign countries to make their own emissions trading scheme workable.

And just like all the other taxes, the media sycophants tell us we will “prosper” with an international carbon price. (Just as soon as we figure out how to smelt steel with solar panels.)

Helter Skelter Climate Policies

From Science Matters

 By Ron Clutz

Ross McKitrick explains the dangers of making climate policies willy-nilly in his Financial Post article Economists’ letter misses the point about the carbon tax revolt.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Yes, the carbon tax works great in a ‘first-best’ world where it’s the
only carbon policy. In the real world, carbon policies are piled high.

An open letter is circulating online among my economist colleagues aiming to promote sound thinking on carbon taxes. It makes some valid points and will probably get waved around in the House of Commons before long. But it’s conspicuously selective in its focus, to the point of ignoring the main problems with Canadian climate policy as a whole.

EV charging sign Electric-vehicle mandates and subsidies are among the mountain of climate policies that have been piled on top of Canada’s carbon tax. PHOTO BY JOSHUA A. BICKEL/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

There’s a massive pile of boulders blocking the road to efficient policy, including:

  • clean fuel regulations,
  • the oil-and-gas-sector emissions cap,
  • the electricity sector coal phase-out,
  • strict energy efficiency rules for new and existing buildings,
  • new performance mandates for natural gas-fired generation plants,
  • the regulatory blockade against liquified natural gas export facilities,
  • new motor vehicle fuel economy standards,
  • caps on fertilizer use on farms,
  • provincial ethanol production subsidies,
  • electric vehicle mandates and subsidies,
  • provincial renewable electricity mandates,
  • grid-scale battery storage experiments,
  • the Green Infrastructure Fund,
  • carbon capture and underground storage mandates, 
  • subsidies for electric buses and emergency vehicles in Canadian cities,
  • new aviation and rail sector emission limits,
    and many more.

Not one of these occasioned a letter of protest from Canadian economists.

Beside that mountain of boulders there’s a twig labelled “overstated objections to carbon pricing.” At the sight of it, hundreds of economists have rushed forward to sweep it off the road. What a help!

To my well-meaning colleagues I say: the pile of regulatory boulders
long ago made the economic case for carbon pricing irrelevant.

Layering a carbon tax on top of current and planned command-and-control regulations does not yield an efficient outcome, it just raises the overall cost to consumers. Which is why I can’t get excited about and certainly won’t sign the carbon-pricing letter. That’s not where the heavy lifting is needed.

My colleagues object to exaggerated claims about the cost of carbon taxes. Fair enough. But far worse are exaggerated claims about both the benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions and the economic opportunities associated with the so-called “energy transition.” Exaggeration about the benefits of emission reduction is traceable to poor-quality academic research, such as continued use of climate models known to have large, persistent warming biases and of the RCP8.5 emissions scenario, long since shown in the academic literature to be grossly exaggerated.

But a lot of it is simply groundless rhetoric. Climate activists, politicians and journalists have spent years blaming Canadians’ fossil fuel use for every bad weather event that comes along and shutting down rational debate with polemical cudgels such as “climate emergency” declarations. Again, none of this occasioned a cautionary letter from economists.

There’s another big issue on which the letter was silent. Suppose we did clear all the regulatory boulders along with the carbon-pricing-costs-too-much twig. How high should the carbon tax be? A few of the letter’s signatories are former students of mine so I expect they remember the formula for an optimal emissions tax in the presence of an existing tax system. If not, they can take their copy of Economic Analysis of Environmental Policy by Prof. McKitrick off the shelf, blow off the thick layer of dust and look it up. Or they can consult any of the half-dozen or so journal articles published since the 1970s that derive it. But I suspect most of the other signatories have never seen the formula and don’t even know it exists.

To be technical for a moment, the optimal carbon tax rate varies inversely with the marginal cost of the overall tax system. The higher the tax burden — and with our heavy reliance on income taxes our burden is high — the costlier it is at the margin to provide any public good, including emissions reductions. Economists call this a “second-best problem”: inefficiencies in one place, like the tax system, cause inefficiencies in other policy areas, yielding in this case a higher optimal level of emissions and a lower optimal carbon tax rate.

Based on reasonable estimates of the social cost of carbon and the marginal costs of our tax system, our carbon price is already high enough. In fact, it may well be too high. I say this as one of the only Canadian economists who has published on all aspects of the question. Believing in mainstream climate science and economics, as I do, does not oblige you to dismiss public complaints that the carbon tax is too costly.

Which raises my final point: the age of mass academic letter-writing has long since passed. Academia has become too politically one-sided. Universities don’t get to spend years filling their ranks with staff drawn from one side of the political spectrum and then expect to be viewed as neutral arbiters of public policy issues. The more signatories there are on a letter like this, the less impact it will have. People nowadays will make up their own minds, thank you very much, and a well-argued essay by an individual willing to stand alone may even carry more weight.

Online conversations today are about rising living costs, stagnant real wages and deindustrialization. Even if carbon pricing isn’t the main cause of all this, climate policy is playing a growing role and people can be excused for lumping it all together. The public would welcome insight from economists about how to deal with these challenges. A mass letter enthusing about carbon taxes doesn’t provide it.

How the Carbon Cult Subverts Political Discourse

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Trudeau Turns the Carbon Tax Screws on Canadians April 1

Ross Mckitrick explains the smoke and mirrors in Trudeau’s justifications for his racheting carbon tax in a National Post article Wanted: A leader who is honest about climate policy.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Pierre Poilievre is leading anti-carbon tax rallies around the country, ginning up support for an old-fashioned tax revolt. In response, Justin Trudeau went to Calgary and trumpeted — believe it or not! — his love of free markets. After explaining the economic logic of using a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gases, the prime minister slammed regulatory approaches, which, he said, “all involve the heavy hand of government. I prefer a cleaner solution, a market-based solution and that is, if you’re behaving in a way that causes pollution, you should pay.” He added that the Conservatives would instead rely on the “heavy hand of government through regulation and subsidies to pick winners and losers in the economy as opposed to trusting the market.”  Amen to all that!

But someone should tell Trudeau that his own government’s
Emission Reduction Plan mainly consists of heavy-handed
regulations, subsidies, mandates and winner-picking grants.

Within its 240 pages one does find a carbon tax. But also 139 additional policies, including:

♦  Clean Fuels Regulations,
♦  An electric vehicle mandate that will ban gasoline cars by 2035,
♦  Aggressive fuel economy standards that will hike such cars’ cost in the meantime,
♦  Costly new emission targets specifically for oil & gas, agriculture, heavy industry and waste management,
♦  Onerous new energy efficiency requirements both for new buildings and renovations of existing buildings, New electricity grid requirements, and page upon page of
♦  Subsidy funds for “clean technology” firms and other would-be winners in the sunlit uplands of the new green economy.

Does Trudeau oppose any of that? Hardly. But the economic logic of a carbon tax only applies when it is used on its own. He doesn’t get to boast about the elegance of market mechanisms on behalf of a policy package that starts with a price signal then destroys it with a massive regulatory apparatus. Trudeau also tried to warm his Alberta audience to the carbon tax by invoking the menace of mild weather and forest fires. In fairness it was an unusual February in Calgary. The month began with a week of above-zero temperatures, hitting five degrees Celsius at one point, then there was a brief cold snap before Valentine’s Day, then the daytime highs soared to the low teens for nine days and the month ended with soupy above-zero conditions. Weird.

Oops, that was 1981. This year was weirder: February highs were above zero for 25 out of 28 days, eight of which were even above 10 degrees C.

Oops again, that was 1991. Granted, February 2024 also had
its mild patches, but not like the old days.

Of course, back then warm weather was just weather. Now it’s a climate emergency and Canadians demand action. Except they don’t want to pay for it, which is the main problem for politicians when trying to come up with a climate policy that’s both effective and affordable. In fact, you can only have one of those two. Take your pick: effective or affordable, affordable or effective.

In practice, of course we typically end up zero for two,
with policies that are both ineffective and unaffordable.

You can claim your policy will yield deep decarbonization while boosting the economy, which almost all politicians in every western country have spent decades doing. But it’s not trueWith current technology, affordable policies yield only small temporary emission reductions. Population and economic growth swamp their effects over time, which is why mainstream economists have long argued that while we can eliminate some lowvalue emissions, for the most part we will just have to live with climate change. Trying to stop it would cost far more than it’s worth.

Meanwhile the policy pantomime continues. Poilievre’s anti-carbon tax rallies are popular, but what happens after we axe the tax? If he plans to replace it with regulatory measures aimed at achieving the same emission cuts, he really should tell his rallygoers that what he has in mind will hit them even harder than the tax they’re so keen to scrap.

Or does he have the courage to do the sensible thing
and follow the mainstream economics advice?

If he wants to be honest with Canadians, he must explain that the affordable options will not get us to the Paris target, let alone to net-zero, and even if they did, what Canada does will have no effect on the global climate because we’re such small players. Maybe new technologies will appear over the next decade that change the economics, but until that day we’re better off fixing our growth problems, getting the cost of living down and continuing to be resilient to all the weather variations Canadians have always faced.

Addendum

Notice that Trudeau asserts that his carbon tax is needed so that “polluters pay.”  Millions of Canadian taxpayers’ dollars have been spent on prime time TV ads reminding viewers that we have to do something to stop “carbon pollution”, by which they mean CO2 emissions.  No matter that CO2, far from being an unnatural contaminant, is plant food without which (less than 150 ppm) plants and animals die.  No mention of thousands of scientists proclaiming that “There is No Climate Emergency,” and that global warming and rising CO2 since the Little Ice Age have led to unprecedented human flourishing.

So essential CO2 is labeled as a pollutant in order to insist that emissions from burning hydrocarbons must be reduced to avert a crisis: heat waves, forest fires, floods, droughts, etc. etc.  The premise is “We have to do something to stop emitting CO2.”  Politicians of all stripes dare not question it.  And a video interview below demonstrates how that premise prevents any reasonable discussion of energy policy.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report looking into how much the carbon tax is actually costing Canadian households. In the CBC interview, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux breaks down the report. And, Dale Beugin, executive vice-president of the Canadian Climate Institute discusses the analysis his organization has conducted on the government’s emissions reduction plan. Note the PBO role is non-partisan, while the CCI agenda is open and obviously Gung Ho against CO2.

The discussion with the PBO ends at 11 minutes into the video, the remainder being CCI talking about ways to shape industrial policies to force additional emissions down to meet Paris targets.  A few excerpts from the first part show how difficult it is to escape the premise that we have to do something about CO2.

CBC:  I’m sure have been watching what’s been happening in the House of Commons the conclusions in your report they’re being cited by the conservatives in particular as proof that Canadians are worse off because of carbon pricing and that means this policy needs to go. Is that a fair representation of your findings?

PBO: Well it’s a representation of our findings once you also include the economic impacts of introducing a carbon tax. So there’s the fiscal impact on households paying the tax versus the amount of the rebate that households are receiving. But once you also include the economic impacts due to the introduction of a carbon tax, for example the reduction in activity or the slower growth in economic activity in some sectors then that’s the full impact.

CBC:  The fiscal analysis is the financial analysis that the government points to. They say most families will still get  more in rebates than they pay, sort  of Straight Cash Out, Straight Cash in.  Is that a fair representation?

PBO: The conclusion we arrived at if you take into consideration the carbon tax that households pay on their fossil fuels that they’re buying: gasoline, natural gas, diesel and so on, they pay that directly as well as the embedded energy component of whatever goods and services they buy and they subtract from that the the rebate then about 80% of households are better off.

CBC: It gets complicated and this is where it gets controversial because you took a look at the broader effect that carbon pricing, any kind of tax has on an economy, it can have an economic impact to the negative and this is the line from report that conservatives point to once you factor in the rebate but also the economic impacts the majority of the households will see a negative impact as a result of the carbon tax. The rebuttal to that conclusion is that it doesn’t tell the whole story it doesn’t look at other options and other impacts. What do you say in terms of people understanding the meaning of that analysis?

PBO: The analysis looks at the world where the we have a carbon tax versus the absence of a carbon tax which is how we do economic analysis. So the impact of a carbon tax on the economy will have impacts on some sectors; the transportation sector to take one example, or the oil and gas sector, lower employment than would otherwise be the case or lower profits than would otherwise be the case. So that translates into economic impacts on average for households: lower employment, lower profits, lower dividends for those who own stocks Etc. so these are the economic impacts.

CBC: This is where the analysis has caused some confusion and drawn some criticism because the analysis only compares the impact as you said of a carbon price versus nothing, and nothing isn’t an option right? It doesn’t compare carbon pricing versus other options that other experts would say could be even more expensive. So how should people assess the political arguments we’re seeing without a clear comparative analysis of the options?

PBO: So my mandate is to provide cost estimates of policy proposals by the government or policy measures that the government has introduced. My mandate does not include providing cost estimates of alternative scenarios or multiple options. So you’re right that doing something else to reach International targets or a Canada’s commitment under the Paris Accord would also have costs. For example if we were to introduce massive subsidies for new technologies to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, that would obviously have costs. Introducing regulations also has costs and these costs could could be measured if we knew exactly what these alternatives are but there’s no clear policy proposal from the government as what would be the alternative to a carbon tax. So it’s difficult to cost something that has not been proposed yet.

It’s true that the consensus among economists is generally speaking a carbon tax is probably the least disruptive way to reduce emissions. That being said we see that the government itself is not relying solely on a carbon tax for various reasons. So the government itself is introducing subsidies for clean fuel and many regulations.

CBC: So you can’t assess this compared to another proposal because there is no other proposal to assess.
You also don’t factor in the cost of climate change. We’ve seen massive wildfires still burning from
last year throughout the winter In British Columbia and in Alberta; you know the extreme weather on
the East Coast, flooding and storms, all of that has a massive economic impact as well and a
loss of productivity and cost to governments.

The idea is to stop that from getting worse or more frequent,
how do we assess that versus the cost
of using carbon pricing to lower emissions.

PBO: That’s a very difficult field to to venture into because the number of unusual weather events that’s
occurring. We don’t know which ones are due to climate change and which ones would have
occurred anyways, or whether their extent would have been smaller or even worse, probably
smaller especially in a short period of time. We’ve tried to estimate the impact of climate change
between now and the year 2100 and we find that there is a cost to climate change but for the next
few years between now and 2030 it’s very difficult to determine precisely the cost of climate change.  It’s an area that we ventured into but it’s not easy and not that many institutions and organizations have established clear parameters under which to estimate the cost of climate change.

It’s very unlikely that there’ll be significant technological breakthroughs between now and
2030 sufficient to even partially offset the cost of a carbon tax for example, or any measures to mitigate or reduce our carbon emissions. But it’s quite possible that Beyond 2030 once technologies become more mature they’ll be able to offset some of the costs that we’ll we’ll have to incur to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So that’s why it’s difficult to say whether the costs will be offset by the benefits over the longer term but between now and 2030 it’s clearly not going to happen.

I’m providing unbiased nonpartisan information, information not pronouncements, not verdicts on policies. It’s up to decision makers and Canadians to make up their own minds based on the information we provide them so they can decide whether a carbon tax or other measures are the best way forward to reduce carbon emissions. We’re not passing judgments as to whether a policy is working or not.

My Observations

This interview shows that the carbon cult narrative
subverts rational policymaking in three significant ways.

Firstly, there is no accounting of all the economic and social damage done by the multitude of federal government climate policies and regulations (139 that McKitrick found in the Emission Reduction Plan). Secondly the benefits to offset the carbon tax costs consider only saving some damages from extreme weather. This is problematic in two ways. There is no certainty that imposing these costs on Canadians will have any effect on CO2 levels, or  that climate and weather will be any different for having made the effort.

Add to that the ignoring of actual benefits to humankind and to the biosphere from rising atmospheric CO2 and warming temperatures. Virtually every year global agricultural production sets records because of warming and CO2 enhancing photosynthesis. That puts food on the table for billions of people. What insanity to pursue things like carbon capture to rob the biosphere of CO2, while dreaming of a cooler future planet. Both objectives would threaten the world food supply and can hardly be benefits to justify emissions reductions.

Finally CCI gives the game away when they say, in effect:
“You don’t like the carbon tax, but doing nothing is not an option.”

In fact doing nothing to reduce CO2 emissions is the best option, though politicians are loath to admit it. Few nations are achieving their Paris Treaty targets, and their emissions dwarf Canada’s.

The prosperity that comes from hydrocarbons can serve to build and maintain robust infrastructure and means of production for humanity to adapt to any changes in the climate, such as those in the past likely to happen again beyond our ability to stop them.

No Federal CO2 Tax! (H. CON. RES. 86)

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr. 

Editor Note: The House yesterday passed a concurrent resolution “expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy.” Ten Democrats joined all but one Republican (Brian Fitzpatrick, PA) in the 222–196 victory. A free-market, winning policy on climate is to not support any legislation that increases either taxes or energy prices, directly or indirectly.

Expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy.


IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 25, 2024

Mr. Zinke (for himself, Mr. Scalise, Mr. Bost, Mr. Clyde, Mr. Crenshaw, Mr. Perry, Mr. Ogles, Mr. Jackson of Texas, Mrs. Miller of Illinois, Mr. Lamborn, Mrs. Miller of West Virginia, Mr. Carey, Mr. Langworthy, and Mr. Pfluger) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means


CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy.

  • Whereas a carbon tax is a Federal tax on carbon released from fossil fuels;
  • Whereas a carbon tax will increase energy prices, including the price of gasoline, electricity, natural gas, and home heating oil;
  • Whereas a carbon tax will mean that families and consumers will pay more for essentials like food, gasoline, and electricity;
  • Whereas a carbon tax will fall hardest on the poor, the elderly, and those on fixed incomes;
  • Whereas a carbon tax will lead to more jobs and businesses moving overseas;
  • Whereas a carbon tax will lead to less economic growth;
  • Whereas American families will be harmed the most from a carbon tax;
  • Whereas, according to the Energy Information Administration, the share of energy consumption during 2023 in the United States that was derived from fossil fuels was approximately 80 percent;
  • Whereas a carbon tax will increase the cost of every good manufactured in the United States;
  • Whereas a carbon tax will impose disproportionate burdens on certain industries, jobs, States, and geographic regions and would further restrict the global competitiveness of the United States;
  • Whereas American ingenuity has led to innovations in energy exploration and development and has increased production of domestic energy resources on private and State-owned land which has created significant job growth and private capital investment;
  • Whereas the energy policy of the United States should encourage continued private sector innovation and development and not increase the existing tax burden on manufacturers;
  • Whereas the production of American energy resources increases the ability of the United States to maintain a competitive advantage in today’s global economy;
  • Whereas a carbon tax would reduce America’s global competitiveness and would encourage development abroad in countries that do not impose this exorbitant tax burden; and Whereas the Congress and the President should focus on pro-growth solutions that encourage increased development of domestic resources: Now therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to American families and businesses, and is not in the best interest of the United States.

Aussie Renewable Investment Slumped 80% in 2023

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Rooftop solar / battery installations were the exception. Perhaps Aussie households are preparing for the coming grid failure?

Australian renewable sector recorded ‘alarming’ slowdown in 2023, energy body finds

Peter Hannam Wed 13 Mar 2024 01.00 AEDT

Investments in renewable energy plants showed an “alarming” slowdown in 2023, with financial approvals for new solar farms shrinking more than a third while no new windfarms won backing, the Clean Energy Council said in its annual report.

“There were no new financial commitments to utility-scale wind projects in 2023 (compared to six in 2022) – a disheartening situation that needs to be addressed,” the council said. The seven new solar projects with 912 megawatts of capacity last year was down from the 1.5GW in 10 solar farms in 2022.

On a rolling 12-month average, investment in the December quarter sank to the lowest level since the council began gathering data in 2017, dipping below $1bn.

Slow approvals, though, including in states such as New South Wales, mean the decade-end target of supplying 82% of electricity by renewables will be challenging, Green Energy Markets said in a recent report.

By comparison, grid solar was 18% higher than in January-February 2023, while wind generation was up 5%. Rooftop solar output increased 10%.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/13/australian-renewable-sector-recorded-alarming-slowdown-in-2023-energy-body-finds

I have a friend in sunny Queensland, the same latitude as Miami, who has invested in a state of the art rooftop solar / battery combination. His rooftop solar is good for keeping the refrigerators and freezers running, running the lights and keeping the TV and computers working, but it doesn’t generate enough power to run home cooling or heating.

Of course, some power is better than no power.

This political and leadership failure is sending a dreadful signal to what remains of Australian jobs and industry. If they invest in their own generation capacity, they risk getting slapped with a carbon tax. But the grid is rapidly deteriorating towards third world levels of reliability. Option “C”, pack up and relocate their factory and facilities to somewhere with sane energy policy, must be an increasingly attractive proposition.

“Prove It” CO2 Tariffs: The Wolf Is At the Door

From Master Resource

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“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.” (Free Market Letter, below)

Government intervention expands and expands from its own shortcomings. And in the service of “global climate change,” where deep-ecology alarmism prevails and economics is demoted, regulation is open-ended and increasingly strident.

Open international trade has been the gold standard for hundreds of years in theory and in practice. Adam Smith noted how the international division of labor produces the most goods and services for the greatest number, increasing the Wealth of Nations. His logic remains today.

Pricing carbon dioxide (CO2) is the weapon of the anti-industrial, anti-energy “Progressives.” Those with termite aspirations want to substitute dilute, intermittent, infrastructure-bloated energies for what the sun’s work over the ages naturally gave us: oil, natural gas, and coal.

An international tariff regime based on the CO2 content of goods and services is a fool’s errand—a promotion for the grifter side of the economy where experts-plus-politics displaces economic freedom.

The free-market community is aligned in opposition to this sea-change step-up in government control over the domestic and world economies. Their letter of January 16, 2024, to Members of Congress follows.

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
John Droz, Jr.: Founder, Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED)
Phil Kerpen: President, American Commitment
Kristen Walker: Policy Analyst, The American Consumer Institute
Thomas J. Pyle: President, American Energy Alliance
Jason Isaac: CEO, American Energy Institute
Margaret Byfield: Executive Director, American Stewards of Liberty
Richard Manning: President, Americans for Limited Government
Brent Gardner: Chief Government Affairs Officer, Americans for Prosperity
Grover Norquist: President, Americans for Tax Reform
David T. Stevenson: Director, Center for Energy & Environment, Caesar Rodney Institute
Ryan Ellis: President, Center for a Free Economy
Daniel Mitchell: President, Center for Freedom and Prosperity
Jeffrey Mazzella: President, Center for Individual Freedom
Isaac Orr: Policy Fellow, Center of the American Experiment
Craig Rucker: President, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)
Elizabeth Stelle: Director of Policy Analysis, Commonwealth Foundation
Matthew Kandrach: President, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy
E. Calvin Beisner: President, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
Dr. Steven J. Allen: Vice Chairman, The Conservative Caucus
Jerry R. Simmons: President/CEO, Domestic Energy Producers Alliance
Kristen A. Ullman: President, Eagle Forum
Craig Richardson: President, Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal)
Adam Brandon: President, FreedomWorks
George Landrith: President, Frontiers of Freedom
Cameron Sholty: Executive Director, Heartland Impact
James Taylor: President, The Heartland Institute
Ryan Walker: Executive Vice President, Heritage Action for America
Mario H. Lopez: President, Hispanic Leadership Fund
Tom Harris: Executive Director, International Climate Science Coalition
Annette Olson: Chief Executive Officer, The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy
Jon Sanders: Director, Center for Food, Power, and Life, John Locke Foundation
Seton Motley: President, Less Government
Bob Barr: Chairman, Liberty Guard, Member of Congress, 1995-2003
Brandon Arnold: Executive Vice President, National Taxpayers Union
Daniel C. Turner: Founder & Executive Director, Power The Future
Donna Jackson: Director of Membership Development, Project 21 Black Leadership Network
Paul Gessing: President, Rio Grande Foundation
Bette Grande: CEO and President, Roughrider Policy Center
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley: Deputy Director (Intelligence), Strategic Threat Assessment Group
David Williams: President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Derrick Max: President, Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy
Ben Zycher: Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Climate scaremongers want new ways to punish us for being alive

Last night on The Gunn Show, Michelle Stirling from Friends of Science joined Sheila Gunn Reid to discuss what unfolded in the United Arab Emirates during the annual climate summit.

Stirling also talked about her recent battle for free speech and the academic exchange of ideas after two of her papers were censored.

0:00 Intro
3:00 Pre-recorded interview with Michelle Sterling
4:30 Thoughts on the COP28 conference
8:30 ‘Where do farmers fit in the mix’ ?
11:00 Alberta’s energy is much cleaner?
16:45 ‘Shock at COP28!’
21:00 Mark Carney’s firm is underreporting carbon emission
29:30 Can people have a healthy debate?
30:00 Discussing a book on ‘Scientists don’t care about the truth’
45:00 The Gunn Show letters
47:49 End