The real motivation behind the worldwide Global Warming Cult is becoming clearer.
US Senate EPW | Marc Morano | Dec. 13, 2007
BALI, Indonesia – A global tax on carbon dioxide emissions was urged to help save the Earth from catastrophic man-made global warming at the United Nations climate conference. A panel of UN participants on Thursday urged the adoption of a tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”
“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, told Inhofe EPW Press Blog following the panel discussion titled “A Global CO2 Tax.” Schwank is a consultant with the Switzerland based Mauch Consulting firm
Schwank said at least “$10-$40 billion dollars per year” could be generated by the tax, and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.”
The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”
The UN was presented with a new report from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment titled “Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation.” The report stated there was an “urgent need” for a global tax in order for “damages [from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels, especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world.”
The tens of billions of dollars per year generated by a global tax would “flow into a global Multilateral Adaptation Fund” to help nations cope with global warming, according to the report.
Schwank said a global carbon dioxide tax is an idea long overdue that is urgently needed to establish “a funding scheme which generates the resources required to address the dimension of challenge with regard to climate change costs.”
‘Diminish future prosperity’
However, ideas like a global tax and the overall UN climate agenda met strong opposition Thursday from a team of over 100 prominent international scientists who warned the UN that attempting to control the Earth’s climate was “ultimately futile.”
The scientists wrote, “The IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions.” The scientists, many of whom are current or former members of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sent the December 13 letter to the UN Secretary-General. (See: Over 100 Prominent Scientists Warn UN Against ‘Futile’ Climate Control Efforts)
‘Redistribution of wealth’
The environmental group Friends of the Earth, in attendance in Bali, also advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations on Wednesday.
“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.
Calls for global regulations and taxes are not new at the UN. Former Vice President Al Gore, who arrived Thursday at the Bali conference, reiterated this week his call to place a price on carbon dioxide emissions.
In 2000, then French President Jacques Chirac said the UN’s Kyoto Protocol represented “the first component of an authentic global governance.” Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, “Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide.” Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed Kyoto as a “socialist scheme.”
‘A bureaucrat’s dream’
MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen warned about these types of carbon regulations earlier this year. “Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life,” Lindzen said in March 2007.
In addition, many critics have often charged that proposed tax and regulatory “solutions” were more important to the promoters of man-made climate fears than the accuracy of their science.
Former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth reportedly said in 1990, “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
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Global Warming skeptics stand on the firmest ground in questioning the proposed remedies for climate change. Pope Benedict has warned that sweeping regulations to curb carbon emissions should not harm the poor. Likewise, Danish writer Bjorn Lomborg has argued very persuasively, that moving to drastically curb emisisons before we develop cost-effective alternative energy technologies is putting the cart before the horse.
Likewise, a gasoline tax that would encourage people to use public transportation or car pool sounds good in theory. However it could have a punitive effect on people in rural areas and/or without access to other forms of transportation. What about the poor 18-Wheel Truck Drivers trying to eke out a living driving 60 hours a week? Should we punish them economically for the type of transpotation system this nation has grown to depend on these last 50 years?
Conservatives who have concerns about global warming “alarmism” have an important role to play in helping society craft the remedies that inevitably must be implemented. For example, if Conservatives are concerned that global warming solutions will lead to greater ‘statism” they should have market-based solutions that they can offer as alternatives.
Conservatives should not throw away their opportunity to influence policy and leave thier seat at the table vacant by stubbornly insisting that there is no such thing as global warming or that it isn’t man made. They might as well insist that the earth is flat or the moon is made of cheese, and they will be taken just as seriously.
Spoken like a true adherent of the Global Warming Cult:
Thanks for proving the point once again! Don’t forget to send in your offering to your high priest, AlGore, and your taxes to the IPCC high council.
Chris: Take yes for an answer. I’m trying to acknowlege the strongest and most credible portion of the argument you are making against Global Warming “alarmism”. That is: we have to be careful how we proceed with climate change mitigation because large-scale economic intervention by government always carries the potential to create perverse incentives and cause unintended consequences. If not implemented correctly environmental regulations could end up making things worse. Conservatives have a legitimate and compelling case to make on this point.
But even Bjorn Lomborg the author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001)” and “Cool It: the Skeptical Environmentalist’s guide to Global Warming (2007” recognizes that global warming is a real, man-made phenomenon:
Q&A: Bjorn Lomborg: Let’s Chill About Global Warming
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1666772,00.html?imw=Y
Dean, it’s “Time”. Why are you citing them? Time is always a year to a year and one half behind the forefront of most issues. I don’t have time to look this up but I would bet that last year at this time they were asserting that man-made global warming was settled science.
Here’s the salient fact you can draw from the article: If Time is positing that man-made, carbon-based, global warming needs “two conversations”, then the global warming cult (Al Gore and crew), are starting to lose the debate. Remember, the weeklies don’t exist to report the news as much as drive the debate.
Even if global warming is not a certainty, but only a possibility, like an earthquake or tornado, the principles of risk management require that a rational person take prudent precautions. You may not believe that you are are going to have a car accident or a house fire this year, but in the remote possibility that one occurs you want coverage that protects you against loss. Accordingly, in the remote possibility that sometime 20 or 30 years from now, the world experiences multiple environmental disasters in a short period of time, we want to know that we have made some preparations to protect human lives.
However, even if there were no such thing as global warming, every American, liberal or conservative, would consider efforts to lessen American dependency of foreign oil and move to cleaner alternative energies to be in the national interest.
– Pollution from gasoline and coal increase the amounts of harmful airborne particulate matter increasing rates of respiratory disease and cancers and raising the nation’s health care bill. I’m sure even politically conservative parents must dread watching their child suffering through an asthma attack.
– Massive imports of foreign oil increase our nation’s trade deficit, a deficit that must be financed with debt, and make our economy vulnerable to sudden spikes in the price of oil.
– Internationally, our nation’s dependence on foreign oil causes us to financially enrich hostile regimes in nations like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and requires that we maintain a costly military presence in dangerous places around the world.
– With India and China rapidly advancing economically, we know that growing demand for oil from those countries will outstrip any gains we can make on current levels of production, eventually pushing the price of gasoline through the roof.
So we all agree we have to develop cleaner, alternative energy technologies whether there is global warming or not. And the sooner the better. For this reason I find this entire debate about Global Warming so tiresome, absurd, wasteful and counter-productive. Who cares if Al Gore has a big neck for heaven sake?
Truthmeter writes:
Straddling the fence? I thought the evidence for man-made, carbon-based, global warming was irrefutable.
What’s that I hear? Common sense and reasonableness are breaking through! Hold the presses, Truthmeter is starting to look at the issues more objectively and tempering his judgment of “human caused” warming. He’s on his way to becoming a conservative. 😉