In the last 6
months there were some encouraging developments as follows:
1) Many more companies demand global carbon
pricing
In 2013 just over 100 multinational companies had signed
the Carbon Price Communiqué. They were frustrated by the slow progress of the
UN negotiations to obtain a fixed price for carbon which would allow better
planning and eliminate unfair competition. In 2014 the Trillion Tonne
Communiqué was added. It points to an environmental tipping point unless a
global carbon price is established. By
now over 1000 business leaders from more than 60 countries have signed one of
the communiqués. Among the signatures
are those of the world’s largest oil company, 2 other major oil companies, the world’s third largest airline
and major multinational companies in petrochemical, construction, insurance,
food processing and electronics. Post 12 of my blog shows how some
companies will profit from a global carbon tax. It is hoped that the
politicians will start paying attention to all those advantages and reach at
least a partial agreement at the 2015 conference. For details seehttp://www.climatecommuniques.com/andhttp://www.climatecommuniques.com/Trillion-Tonne-Communique.aspx
2)
Carbon
tax development in the US
In the US quite some progress has been made following
proposed EPA rulings. These are aimed at cutting carbon-dioxide emissions from
the nation's power plants as much as 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Some
influential Republicans now realize that they can’t block the EPA rulings.They also realize that it will hit the coal industry hard without having
any defined compensation.They rather have a revenue neutral carbon
tax which achieves a lot and would
allow taxing imports from countries without carbon tax. It may sway opposition Republicans to vote
for a recently introduced carbon tax
bill, which is superior to previous cap and trade bills. If accepted this could lead to serious
discussions with China, who previously dismissed cap and trade but considered a
carbon tax. They obviously want to see first what the US will do. For
details see http://www.vox.com/2014/6/1/5770556/EPA-power-plant-rules-explainer
,http://www.carbontax.org/progress/carbontaxbills/andhttp://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/revenue-neutral-carbon-tax-would-improve-on-epa-regulations-b99282755z1-261548361.html
3)
Environmentalists
can be persuaded to think about carbon tax
Lately I have been reading quite some on-line articles
about pipeline protests and note that the people opposing new pipelines
complain about the potential GHG emission of our oil without realising that
demand will keep rising until a global carbon tax has been established. I try
to reach them by placing comments where possible. When I simply state that a
carbon tax is essential to curb the oil flow, the word tax alone puts them off
and 80% disagree with me. Hence I explain with specific examples from my blog
that:
--- A revenue neutral carbon tax does not hurt. We get all
the money back and gain if we buy less than average carbon
--- World demand for fossil fuel will increase until a
global carbon tax is in place, allowing taxing of exported carbon.
--- Our export of that extra fossil fuel does not increase
the world’s GHG emissions. If we don’t supply it, others will.
Since the media still ignores many important aspects
affecting climate change I hope that you also will be able to spread the word
via on-line newspapers. Not all papers count “agree” and “disagree” markings
and not all people who read my comments will bother to mark.From my comments on the articles below I randomly selected a
block of 24 and at that time at least 2705 read the comments and 63% agreed,
which is quite encouraging. Since that time I updated the list and will keep
doing so. Just by title alone you can see that there is a lot of opposition to
pipelines.
On
!7 October 2014 another count showed that of the comments on 29 articles since
13 April 2014 at least 7515 had been read with an agree rate of 60%. A very
promising trend is that the comments are still read well after the articles are
published. The most astonishimg example is that the 3 comments dealing with
carbon tax on a 17 May article in http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/thousands-rally-against-enbridge-northern-gateway-photos#comment-259326
were read by at least 809 people on Aug 3 and at least 3953 people on 17 October.
The next day another 101 had rated it. The agree rating dropped from 68% in August
to 60% in October
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/preston-manning-gives-enbridge-advice-winning-big-oil-campaign
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/anti-pipeline-protesters-march-through-downtown-vancouver
140502
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/earthmatters/hundreds-protest-against-port-metro-vancouver-%E2%80%9Cclosed-door-decision-making%E2%80%9D#comment-252494
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