Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries tagged as carbon tax

Entries tagged as carbon tax

The New (Green) Robber Barons

Monday, August 20, 2007

What do you call titans of industry who influence governmental regulation to provide them with tax and subsidy incentives to make a business venture profitable?

They used to be called robber barons...now apparently they’re “eco-millionaires.” The NYT piece gives a brief overview of four such figures:

Bruce Khouri “did not found Solar Integrated until 2001 once tax and subsidy incentives made the market more attractive.”

Pedro Moura Costa says he “saw the carbon market could be big business and the Kyoto Protocol confirmed my views.”

According to David Scaysbrook, “tax breaks, subsidies and emissions caps had prompted even more conservative investors ‘to finally move off their perch.’”

And “Neil Eckert, chief executive of Climate Exchange, which runs the main European exchange for carbon trading, has shares worth about 18 million pounds ($36 million). He is also non-executive chairman of Trading Emissions and Econergy, both involved in emission-cutting projects and generating revenue from carbon credits.”

More here on how not only individual investors but also nations are cashing in on artificially-created carbon schemes.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 14:22 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
carbon tax, eco-millionaires, environment, environmental stewardship, stewardship, subsidies

National Security and Energy Policy

Monday, July 23, 2007

Over at the Becker-Posner blog, the gentlemen consider the question, “Do National Security and Environmental Energy Policies Conflict?” (a topic also discussed here.)

Becker predicts, “Driven by environmental and security concerns, more extensive government intervention in the supply and demand for energy are to be expected during the next few years in all economically important countries. Policies that meet both these concerns are feasible, and clearly would have greater political support than the many approaches that advance one of these goals at the expense of the other.”

Posner observes the difference between a gasoline and a carbon tax, noting that the former would “have a direct effect in reducing demand for oil, thus reducing, as Becker points out, the oil revenues of oil-producing nations.”

But for a policy that addresses both national security and environmental concerns, “a gasoline tax would be inferior to a carbon tax from the standpoint of limiting global warming, because producers of oil, refiners of gasoline, and producers of cars and other products that burn fossil fuels would have no incentive to adopt processes that would reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per barrel of oil, gallon of gasoline, etc. A carbon tax would create such an incentive and would also have a strong indirect negative effect on the demand for fossil fuels.”

There’s a lot more to these posts worth mulling over.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Environmental Stewardship at 08:41 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
carbon emissions, carbon tax, climate change, energy, gasoline tax, global warming, national security

The Annotated Inbox

Thursday, October 19, 2006

A number of interesting links, but no more time than to pass them on with perhaps a bit of a comment before they pass into the ether:

“The Fate of the Earth in the Balance: The Metaphysics of Climate Change,” by Steven F. Hayward, finds the spirit of Martin Heidegger in the work of Al Gore and Jonathan Schell on views of impending cataclysm. (HT: Commons Blog)
Marketplace commentator David Frum argues that a carbon tax is advantageous, and says his argument is not based on any particular view of climate change. Instead, national security and other concerns dominate, so that “taxes on carbon-based energy help move us toward a future in which the Persian Gulf region reverts to the obscurity it so richly deserves.” I agree that we need to move toward a “post-petroleum economy.”
A misanthropist’s paradise: “Imagine Earth without people,” expounding the view that the Earth would be better off without us. Sound familiar? Call me “Ishamel.” (HT: Slashdot)
The “World’s 10 Most Polluted Places.” What do they have in common? They are poor. A clean environment is a costly good.