Carbon Tax in Obama’s Second Term?

It makes sense that in one’s second term, their more radical tendencies can appear in the forefront and blaze a bolder path than in a first term. And that is what Obama supporters deep down understand, although none have expressed this feeling. And so now, in his second term, the current president, Barack Obama, now has the freedom to introduce and re-introduce policy outlines (ranging from taxes and regulations to war) that in his first term might have legitimately undermined his ability to ensure a Democrat in the Oval Office from 2012-2016. So, perhaps that is why HSBC Holding Plc. has cited Obama’s renewed consideration of a carbon tax in order to cut the US budget.

The tax would start at $20 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, and be raised 6% per year to raise $154 billion by 2021, according to Nick Robins, an HSBC analyst in London. In his e-mail, he cites the Congressional Research Service.  ”Applied to the Congressional Budget Office’s 2012 baseline, this would halve the fiscal deficit by 2022,” Robins stated.

In the lead into the 2012 presidential election, Hurricane Sandy renewed discussion on climate protection in the election. And so therefore, in spite of a Republican majority in the US House of Representatives, Obama will push legislation forward similar to cap-and-trade legislation which passed the House in 2009, only to be thereafter stalled in the US Senate.

It will predictably be a push towards a carbon tax littered with biased views regarding the science. For instance, despite a 1.3 percent drop in 2011 in North American emissions, China’s greenhouse gas emission rose more than 9 percent.

However, Richard Sandor, founder of the world;s biggest carbon trading exchange in Europe, said that it is unlikely Obama will push for such a program in his second term.  Instead, he argues, new carbon trading programs in California, China and Brazil will push US lawmakers to introduce and pass greenhouse gas trading by approximately 2020.

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions out of Arlington, Virginia said that Obama and the US Congress “should consider a carbon tax to help meet the government’s looming need for revenue.”  Please note the lack of any true environmental or moral impetus for the imposition of carbon tax precedents. Instead, it is an isolated state-economic question.

The tax would not necessarily add to the economy’s total tax burden, according to Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the research group. Such a tax may free up space for reductions in company taxes that dissuade employment, for example, Diringer said in an interview from Arlington.

“We have lots of need for new revenue to address our challenges,” Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the research group, said.

“While Sandy’s lessons are still fresh, the president should be clear about the urgency of cuttiing carbon emissions and strengthening critical infrastructure to protect Americans against the rising costs of climate change,” the CCES published.

As has been well-documented, the science behind “climate change” has been questioned by the scientific community at large. N ow, the biggest pushers of government-mandated solutions to “climate change” has fallen to insurance companies. As Spiegel writes:

Insurance companies have long been in the business of betting on the dangers of weather. And it has become commonplace for large insurance companies to mail out marketing flyers to potential customers warning of an increase in inclement weather. German global insurance giant Allianz is one of many companies that have created a market for policies that “reduce the risks associated with climate change.”

Meanwhile, Munich Re, the world’s largest re-insurer of insurance companies in the event of extreme damage payments, has also announced an important finding: Natural disasters over the past 30 years have already shown the initial “footprint” of man-made climate change in North America, the German company claims. Many media outlets promptly ran last week’s press release as news, stating that a prominent insurance company had warned of an increase in the number of natural disasters. But scientists have criticized the re-insurer for rushing to reach its conclusions.

 The truth is that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has in fact been warning of an increase in heat waves, torrential rains and floods. But in most cases, it has not been proven that climate change has made the weather any more extreme. In some instances there are facts to suggest this, but in most these conclusions are driven by perceptions. It is not a foregone conclusion that things will necessarily get worse. According to an IPCC report, there may be fewer cold weather disasters and storms in the future in some places.

So, it seems that, no matter where one turns, the impetus for carbon taxes has nothing at all to do with the preservation of the environment. Thus null-and-void can be rendered any debate starting from the axiom of whether or not man is causing climate change. For, because of the long-documented phenomenon of greed in the historiography, it is clear that any legislation or collective efforts to “combat climate change” will be motivated by profit.  Their usefulness for preservation of the environment an illusion.

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