Austria to introduce new carbon tax next year
apnews.com
apnews.com
Does that sound idiotic only to me? You reduce taxes for these companies... so they can afford to keep polluting the same as before, and place the burden on the end consumer? Uhh, what?
That's for Europe, of course. The US is king of pollution per capita and they don't give a flying fuck.
Ethanol from corn.
Tons on the "hydrogen superhighways".
etc
In California, the last nuclear powerplant was shutdown this week. I am going to do what I can as a responsible citizen for climate change but I am not a fan of this asymmetry.
Do you realize how myopic it is to have nuclear power-plants along the San Andreas fault line? Have you lived in California for very long? Do you not realize that CA is in a very unique position when it comes to renewable energy? And for what 9% of CA's energy needs? More could and should be done to increase it's reliance on renewables (~33% but growing).
San Onofre was the most dangerous of all nuclear plants in the US and was left operational only due to industry standard vow of secrecy, and it had tons of violations prior to it being decommissioned. Diablo Canyon couldn't keep it's emergency cooling system operational for extended periods of time [0]. This should be a major red flag if you understand what occurred in Fukushima and caused not just the melt-down, but the melt-through and how they had to rely on external water sources to continuously douse the reactors then inevitably ended up in the Pacific Ocean.
I am anti-nuclear, or better said, I'm anti 20th Century Nuclear plants, because of how incredibly bad things get when they do go wrong.
Not to mention the profoundly stupid approach entities like the NRC have taken towards incredibly inept nuclear waste storage policy--paying NC to store it, and leaving what they can't send out in canisters along the Pacific Ocean or in the decommissioned pools.
0: https://calcoastnews.com/2016/12/pge-cited-cooling-system-fa...
If you pass a new tax that causes a wave of corporate bankruptcies, job losses, unemployment, and other disruptions, that's a great way to ensure the policy is unpopular.
If adapted by the whole world it would be such a wonderful thing both for environment and economies because it would incentivize development and adoption of new clean tech. Because otherwise people would simply “outsource” the pollution which is, of course, a ridiculous concept.
The duty can be a flat rate or an average emissions per economic output for the country.
For instance, it does not say that in TFA, but it is implied that some sort of fund would have to be created to manage and distribute all that new money. Let's consider that, as a natural consequence, a big part of that money goes to buying carbon credits/offsets; that's a billion euro bill that is going to make "the right person" very rich, very fast.
And before one says something like "but we are not like that", just remember Austria just came out of a huge political crisis a few years ago. Imagine what would happen to this money in other least developed countries.
A possible solution would be to keep things as democratic and transparent as they could possibly be.
> Each resident in Austria will get an annual reimbursement, with the exact amount determined by where they live to ensure those in rural regions without good public transport don’t lose out. Children are entitled to half their parents’ amount — so a family of two adults and two children in Vienna could expect to get 300 euros ($358) for example.
While the term "tax" is used proverbially, if the government does not keep the money, it is actually a tax?
This was a constitutional question in Canada, and the majority of the Supreme Court ruled that it was not:
> As a final matter, the fuel and excess emission charges imposed by the GGPPA have a sufficient nexus with the regulatory scheme to be considered constitutionally valid regulatory charges. To be a regulatory charge, as opposed to a tax, a governmental levy with the characteristics of a tax must be connected to a regulatory scheme. The first step is to identify the existence of a relevant regulatory scheme; if such a scheme is found to exist, the second step is to establish a relationship between the charge and the scheme itself. Influencing behaviour is a valid purpose for a regulatory charge and regulatory charges need not reflect the cost of the scheme. The amount of a regulatory charge whose purpose is to alter behaviour is set at a level designed to proscribe, prohibit, or lend preference to a behaviour. Limiting such a charge to the recovery of costs would be incompatible with the design of a scheme of this nature. Nor must the revenues that are collected be used to further the purposes of the regulatory scheme. Rather, the required nexus with the scheme will exist where the charges themselves have a regulatory purpose. There is ample evidence that the fuel and excess emission charges imposed by Parts 1 and 2 of the GGPPA have a regulatory purpose. They cannot be characterized as taxes; rather, they are regulatory charges whose purpose is to advance the GGPPA’s regulatory purpose by altering behaviour.
[…]
> [219] In the instant case, there is ample evidence that the fuel and excess emission charges imposed by Parts 1 and 2 of the GGPPA have a regulatory purpose. Ontario does not assert, nor would such an assertion be supportable, that the levies in this case amount to disguised taxation. The GGPPA as a whole is directed to establishing minimum national standards of GHG price stringency to reduce GHG emissions, not to the generation of revenue. As Richards C.J.S. aptly observed, the GGPPA “could fully accomplish its objectives . . . without raising a cent”: para. 87. This is true of both Part 1 and Part 2. The levies imposed by Parts 1 and 2 of the GGPPA cannot be characterized as taxes; rather, they are regulatory charges whose purpose is to advance the GGPPA’s regulatory purpose by altering behaviour. The levies are constitutionally valid regulatory charges.
* https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2021/2021scc11/2021scc1...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_Gas_Pollution_Prici...
Canada is a federation, and the national and provincial governments each have their areas of responsibility. There were challenges whether there was federal over reach, and the court said there was not given the structure of the legislation.
* https://elc.ab.ca/i-read-the-carbon-tax-decision-so-you-dont...
The nuance here is Canada's constitution offers a framework to make a technical distinction argument and say
(i) the federal Canadian govt.
(ii) can impose this "tax" because it's a "regulatory scheme" via a catch-all authority provision outside its enumerated powers.
The SCC ruled that it was under the federal government's enumerated powers, or rather the "peace, order, and good government" (POGG) provision:
> Notably, the POGG power is a little different from the other subject matters listed under sections 91 and 92 of the Constitution, because it is a residual power, meaning that it allows the federal government to legislate over any subject that is not otherwise assigned to the federal or provincial governments under sections 91 and 92. To sort out exactly what this means, the courts have identified three possible uses of the POGG power, which are referred to as the three branches of POGG. They are: the emergency branch, the gap branch, and the national concern branch.[8]
* https://elc.ab.ca/i-read-the-carbon-tax-decision-so-you-dont...
Different legal and constitutional traditions/fraem works may work differently. (Tautology is tautological…)
To clarify, I said the POGG was the catch-all provision. This is semantics and we directionally agree, but I wouldn't characterize the POGG as an "enumerated power". If the CA constitution explicitly said the CA federal govt. has the ability to place a federal carbon tax, then that'd be an enumerated power. Due to a lack of an enumerated federal carbon tax power, advocates had to rely on the [implied power from the] "catch all" POGG provision.
Your article goes into why it's not an enumerated power (and consistent with my interpretation):
> Very briefly, the federal and provincial governments get their power to pass legislation from sections 91 and 92 of the Constitution Act, 1867 respectively.[7] These two sections list a bunch of subject matters and, essentially, each government can only pass legislation dealing with the subjects that it has been assigned. This is why the provinces deal with health care and education, whereas the federal government deals with the criminal law and the military.
All of your articles were interesting. Thank you.
edit:
Checking wikipedia about the context of Canada's POGG provision[0], there's more explanation as to why POGG's not an enumerated power, but this is all semantics and above my intellect.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order,_and_good_governm...
The province of Ontario originally had a cap-and-trade system where the fees collected would be used towards transit and other 'green' projects. There was an election and that was rescinded, so the province default to the national plan (which they challenged legally, and lost per the above).
If people want "market" solutions, then carbon pricing and cap-and-trade are the two ways to do it. The latter was used by the US and Canada in ~1990 to successfully deal with acid rain.
> It's one thing to pay a carbon tax as a Calvinistic Punishment for carbon sinning.
It's not a sin tax: it's paying for the pollution that is currently externalized. Price signalling is hardly moralistic.
As far as I can see, the text you quote does not answer your question. It presents an argument based on whether a regulatory scheme exists (step 1) and whether the charges imposed serve to alter behavior (step 2).
It's easy to come up with examples which do answer your question: a large part of tax revenue (especially in Europe) is used to finance social welfare programs, including direct payments to individuals.
As an aside, a government literally keeping tax money (beyond personal compensation packages) is probably not what you have in mind.
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/price-on-carbon/
This is something even conservatives can get on board with.
I think to get conservatives on-board you would have to mandate that all income from such a tax is used to remove or reduce other taxes.
Former Federeal Reserve Chairs Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Paul Volcker, and Janet Yellen (now at Treasury)—plus thousands of economists and dozens of Nobel laureates—signed support for carbon pricing:
> V. To maximize the fairness and political viability of a rising carbon tax, all the revenue should be returned directly to U.S. citizens through equal lump-sum rebates. The majority of American families, including the most vulnerable, will benefit financially by receiving more in “carbon dividends” than they pay in increased energy prices.
* https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/
Not that logic is used much nowadays in the GOP, but if Greenspan of all people can sign onto it…
Why does every single policy lately lead to further consolidation…
In the end, a bunch of people will just have to die, it's the only real solution.
In a way, it really is a bit of a "no shit" observation: actually effective climate action is incompatible with democracy unless quality of life is broadly maintained or improved. And people shouldn't point at warm-and-fuzzy nonsense like polls claiming to show 80+% support for "saving the climate" and similarly vague statements. Imma just leave this here: https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1631,_Carbon_E...
In fucking Washington. By those margins. Support for climate action disintegrates as soon as people see the personal downside, so we need to figure out how to develop and present lifestyle-positive climate interventions (like the revenue-neutrality of this Austrian thing!) if we want any serious motion in the West. I'm starting to look at the more self-flagellatory proposals as likely false flags from those opposed to serious change: as long as the burden of decarbonization falls on the little guy and his evil evil burgers, they can rest assured knowing that no serious action will ever pass anywhere important.
People are getting refunded:
> Each resident in Austria will get an annual reimbursement, with the exact amount determined by where they live to ensure those in rural regions without good public transport don’t lose out. Children are entitled to half their parents’ amount — so a family of two adults and two children in Vienna could expect to get 300 euros ($358) for example.
The price on carbon is simply a price signal to show how much damage the environment something is doing. Presumably people will switch to cheaper, i.e., less damaging, goods and services.
Carbon pricing being regressive is by no means a foregone conclusion:
> The literature on the distributional impacts of climate policies provides ambiguous results. Many studies find an overall tendency for regressive impacts (Araar et al. 2011; Gonzalez 2012). Others detect mostly regressive findings for developed countries while developing countries show an inconsistent picture with a tendency towards proportional or progressive impacts (Verde and Tol 2009; Wang et al. 2016). Nevertheless, progressive impacts have also been shown for developed countries like Australia (Sajeewani et al. 2015), Canada (Dissou and Siddiqui 2014) and Spain (Labandeira et al. 2009).
* https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-020-00521-1
Implementation details matter, and there are ways for progressive results:
* https://taxjustice.net/2020/06/30/carbon-taxes-can-be-progre...
* https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/550691-econom...
> So if you’re aiming for the most net-progressive tax, you use the revenue for rebates — helps the low-income, raises taxes on the high-income. If you’re aiming to appeal to the middle class, you use the revenue for payroll tax reductions — helps the middle, increases taxes on either end.
* https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/7/20/1758437...
* https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/report/distri...
(Disclaimer, I'm Austrian.)
That is true, but grants for replacing old heating systems have been around for a long time. In many cases however people did not take advantage of them because the cost of their old oil heating systems and others were not that bad.
†caveat: looks like in Austria, rural residents will get more bonus than urban - to even out availability of public transport
Sports cars and private jets are only for the one percent, but there's a problem with taxing carbon exhaust alone because the poor can't afford a new all-electric SUV or a plug-in hybrid, they're driving around in 20 or 30 year old cars every day if they have a car.
I'm all for taxing those with unreasonable greenhouse emissions, but not being able to afford a cleaner car shouldn't be taxed. It's why I'm sceptical of proposed CO2 taxes because many (if not most) of them fail to consider this problem.
My point is that this will continue to unreasonably restrict the lifestyle of middle/lower class while the elites won't even notice a difference. They can happily pay more to continue doing what they've always done.
It's just like every single other "climate" policy that gets proposed. It is as if climate change simply doesn't exist for rich people. Just like covid. Which leads me to reasonably deduce that this is about consolidation and control. We can judge these policies by their fruit.