“The beauty of [a global carbon tax incentive fund] is that it penalises the richer nations for their profligate lifestyles, and it incentivises developing nations to avoid fossil fuels and to develop their energy infrastructure using low-carbon technologies.”
“… there needs to be a supplementary tax that penalises environmentally irresponsible governments such as Brazil’s, which seems to regard trashing the planet as a political accolade.”
Robin Russell-Jones, a dermatologist turned environmental activist, and currently chair of Help Rescue the Planet, has come clean on what is needed to phase-out fossil fuels. His article, “Will the Cop26 climate conference be a national embarrassment for Britain?” (The Guardian: September 7, 2020), advocates a massive global energy tax. And he advocates tax penalties (think global international trade tariffs) for the non-compliant.…
Continue Reading“Climate change, for many conservatives, is associated with fringe environmentalism and a political nemesis, [Al] Gore.”
“Climategate showed us what was behind the curtain,” said Robert Bradley…. There’s a whole lot of alarmism and a whole lot of scientific intolerance toward other views.”
– Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle, January 24, 2010.
Think back ten years ago, when a federal cap-and-trade bill passed the House and was before the Senate. And Climategate was just a few months old.
Today? Cap-and-trade remains dead as federal policy, and proposals for a carbon tax are not being pushed by Biden/Harris (Harris/Biden?) in the current debate. Climagate? Its ten-year anniversary last year brought forth numerous retrospectives, apologetic, critical, and harshly critical.
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All this brings me to a January 2010 piece by Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle, Climate Change Activists Work to Regain Momentum.…
Continue ReadingMasterResource focuses on the political economy of the energy industries. But there is also the unheralded, underappreciated progress of market entrepreneurship in free societies to make modern energies affordable and available for myriad uses.
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS), under the direction of Bruce Wells, is dedicated to the preservation of such history. With permission, a number of data points for September are reproduced below (see here, here, and here).
September 1, 1862: Union Taxes Manufactured Gas
To help fund the Civil War, a new federal tax was placed on manufactured gas, a popular fuel for street and residential lighting. Manufactured gas companies provided street and residential lighting.
Manufactured gas (produced by heating coal) was taxed up to 15 cents per thousand cubic feet. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle quickly accused the local gas company of passing on the tax, which “shifts from its shoulders its share of the burdens the war imposes and places it directly on their customers.”…
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