EPA Pushes for a ‘Significant Increase’ in Carbon Emissions Tax
Considering that life on Earth is carbon-based and how much we rely on carbon-based plants, animals, and fuels for life, health, and prosperity, I have to give the global bureaucrats props for finding a target that is ensured to line their pockets and increasing their power.
Hard on the heels that the Biden administration is directing $1 billion to what is essentially a United Nations climate reparations fundis news that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is pushing for an expensive new carbon tax.
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a significant increase in the social cost of carbon emissions.Policymakers use the social cost of carbon to calculate economic damages associated with a rise in greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.Federal agencies under the Biden administration have been using a value of $51 per metric ton of CO2 – which in itself was a steep climb from the Trump administration’s $1 per metric ton.Now the EPA is proposing to go even higher, at $190 per metric ton. Among other effects, raising this cost is likely to raise the prices at the gaspump.
The EPA suggested this new rate before a proposal from the Interagency Working Group (IWG) was recently issued.
The EPA made the new metric public before a highly anticipated proposal from the IWG, which includes the agency. The working group, which originally planned to release its proposal in April, streamlines the approach to calculating the metric across the federal government.The administration’s use of the IWG’s interim social cost of greenhouse gases has been challenged in parallel lawsuits led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans.It’s unclear whether the figures released by EPA reflect changes the working group is also considering. In the supplemental document, EPA noted that it was participating in the working group’s work and that the process is ongoing.EPA spokesperson Taylor Gillespie told E&E News that “EPA’s draft technical report is among the many technical inputs available to the IWG as it continues its work.” She referred further questions to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which declined to comment.EPA is requesting public comment on the estimate, which it made public when it released strengthened proposed methane standards for the oil and gas sector. The new social cost estimates were not used as part of the analysis of those methane standards, but they were included in a separate 137-page supplemental document dated September 2022.
In related news, Bloomberg recently published a detailed report on the large corporations and prestigious institutions greenwashing their image using “bogus” carbon credits.
Offsets are designed to allow companies to pay a small sum in exchange for removing carbon from their balance sheets. For years, researchers have been raising concerns that these transactions are letting polluters off the hook. Rather than actually reducing planet-heating emissions, they say, these offsets function like an accounting maneuver that allows more greenhouse gas to enter the atmosphere.A Bloomberg Green analysis of more than 215,000 offset transactions in public datasets over the past decade reveals for the first time that dozens of global brands have followed in the footsteps of Credit Suisse. Airlines, online retailers, industrial firms and energy producers now rely heavily on the cheapest and most suspect type of offset — those tied to renewable-energy projects.Most of these renewable-energy offset purchases are not credible, according to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at consultancy Carbon Direct and one of six researchers who reviewed the data. “I would consider these to be low-quality credits that did not avoid or reduce greenhouse-gas emissions,” he said.Purchasing credits tied to support of solar or wind projects sounds good for the climate. But experts consider these offsets largely bogus.
Looking at the data, one can only conclude that what the “carbon credit” dealers are actually selling are environmental indulgences to the companies complying with the narrative science behind climate crisis policies.
The social cost of the carbon emissions approach is no different.
Interestingly, climate reparations were discussed during my appearance today on Canto Talk.
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