[Editor note: This is a repost from Marlo Lewis, Jr.’s piece from last year, published at the CEI blogsite. It is particularly relevant given the increasing isolation of R Street and the Niskanen Center in the climate-change debate.]
…“… it is untrue that conservatives have been trying to beat something with nothing. Our “something” is climate realism and an energy sector free to power a growing economy because government eschews all forms of market favoritism.”
“The 2016 elections have given conservatives and free marketers an unexpected and rare opportunity to help a bold president change the direction of national policy. We squander that opportunity if we instead legitimize the progressive movement’s anti-fossil fuel crusade and promote an economically-destructive tax that would actually grow government under the pretense of streamlining it.”
“The chief reason BC is not an appropriate ‘model’ for the U.S. is that the province’s geology, climate, and electric supply system are dissimilar to those of most American states. BC’s peculiar electricity fuel mix sharply limits the damage that a $30/ton carbon tax can do to the province’s economy. Nearly all of BC’s base load electricity is zero-carbon hydropower…. Natural gas is the only part of BC’s electric supply system subject to the tax …. and generates less than 6% of BC’s electricity.”
To persuade Americans — especially conservatives and libertarians — that a carbon tax can “work” (reduce emissions) without harming the economy, some proponents tout British Columbia’s carbon tax, enacted in May 2008. How relevant is the British Columbia (BC) “model” to U.S. climate and tax policy debates?…
“The Nobels assert that, ‘The myth that tar sands development is inevitable and will find its way to market by rail if not pipeline is a red herring.’ But alternate delivery via rail is not a myth; it’s a massive and growing reality. Maybe before writing to Secy. Kerry, the Nobels should read the State Department’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) on the KXL, especially Chapter 4: Market Analysis.”
It is the common tale of two presidents who both declared war on fossil fuels. In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter’s petroleum price and allocation regulations, premised on the belief that we were running out of supply, put America in the gasoline lines. Thirty-five years later, depletion fears refuted, Carter champions a letter to President Obama urging rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline segment (the last of four legs) on easily refutable arguments, discussed below.…