The new high taxation consensus (otherwise known as 'saving the planet')

Leader-writers at the Independent on Sunday are excited.  They warmly welcome the pressure that David Cameron has brought to bear on global warming and the fact that Labour are now joining the Tories and the LibDems in devising 'a new menu of eco-taxes'.

This morning's Mail on Sunday publishes the secret Miliband-to-Brown memo recommending new taxes that will be imposed on families to 'save the planet' (full story here).

The taxes include:

• A Chelsea tractor tax that would see the annual road tax disc on a Toyota landcruiser, for example, raised from £210 to £630;
• A new mechanism whereby any reduction in the price of oil won't feed through to the petrol pumps but will produce more revenue for the Exchequer;
• A new 1p to 2p per mile pay-as-you-drive tax;
• VAT on EU airline fares that "would increase the typical £500 bill for family of four to fly on holiday to the Mediterranean to £587.50";
• New levies on inefficient white goods - washing machines etc - and a £1.50 levy on old-fashioned, energy inefficient light bulbs.

Reflecting on these taxes the blogger 'Dizzy Thinks' writes: "It's not so much a stick as a baseball bat, and there is no carrot."  Tory environment spokesman Peter Ainsworth is quoted in the MoS as calling for green taxation to be executed in "an upfront way instead of bringing in stealth taxes by the back door."  There's certainly no Tory opposition to green taxation.  The 'clear blue water' between the Tory attitude to green taxation and Labour's attitude is that Tories will deliver offsetting cuts in business taxation.  The LibDems are promising compensatory cuts in personal taxation.  Labour has yet to make it clear whether it will use green taxes to raise total revenue or it will act to neutralise the effect on lower income families who will pay most heavily if these plans were enacted.

The Mail on Sunday is certainly unimpressed with Labour's green tax plans that could cost families with an average car £750 and some families could pay £1,300:

"The proposals we report today for wide-ranging new tolls and tariffs on everything from air and road travel to household appliances will have a negligible impact on the environment.  What they will unquestionably do is add a further burden to a country overtaxed and overburdened by petty regulation."

Fraser Nelson in his unmissable News of the World column is even more unimpressed:

"Brace yourself for a tide of green guff next week as Westminster gets all pious about climate change.  Talk to the Indians and Chinese guys... the UK generates just 2% of world green house tax emissions.  Taxing Britain's poor out of the sky won't change anything."

Fraser is surely right about the limited usefulness of unilateral UK action on global warming but there are benefits for Britain's energy security - regardless of the climate change issues - of weaning ourselves off dependence on Iranian and Saudi oil and Russian gas (see here).  The danger of arming Iran via the petrol pump worries some of us a little more than the longer-term danger of global warming but perhaps we end up at similar place in terms of policy action?

Comments

[Sally Rideout Baker]

“Although contemporary CO2 concentrations were exceeded during earlier geological epochs, present carbon dioxide levels are likely higher now than at any time during the past 20 million years [10] and at the same time lower than at any time in history if we look at time scales longer than 50 million years. NOAA (U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) research estimates that 97% of atmospheric CO2 created each year is from natural sources and approximately 3% is from human activities.”

See http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming

At the end of the day fossil fuels will run dry. Why worry?

[bee]

It is all rather pointless.

I just returned from the USA, which makes up fully 1/3 of the world's energy consumption.

In the US a small family car has a 3 litre engine (truly). The equivalent here is 1.6 litres.

Petrol costs $2.20/gallon (barely more than we pay for a litre). I heard an advert on the radio while I was there that said "Experts predict gas prices are gonna continue to fall, and could be $1.15 by next thanksgiving. These same experts say the SUV + truck market has overcorrected. So get your [6 litre 8mpg] Hummer H2 at $10,000 off at Walt's World of Trucks".

Some Democrats are campaigning for higher petrol taxes, but consumers don't want it. People like paying $0.35/gallon in tax, compared to our tax at well over $1 per *litre*.

In this context we really are wasting our time with this pious green campaigning. It's just pointless guilt-creating.

[Richard]

CONTROL, REGULATE, PLAN

Comrades, it is clear that the people have been brainwashed into a false consciousness by consumer capitalism. We, the vanguard of the proleta-, I mean, the environmentalist movement, must take power and bring about the establishment of the commun-, I mean, Green state.

Should we fail to do so, the consumer capitalist system will result in economic and ecological disaster, the sort of which has never been predicted and proven wrong before.

Ok, admittedly I'm being flippant about a serious issue but it does seem as though this is yet another "the world is going to end" prediction which is being used as an excuse to extend government control over our lives. Just how reliable is the research into this? If climate change is a natural event then is there any point to all this?

[Dontmakemelaugh]

Another day, another day for politicians to jump on a the Green bandwagon, another day another dollar.

Read page 4 of 'Gilt-Edge Profits' by Ross Clark in today's Sunday Telegraph and find out who is making money out of the global warming hysteria and then read Euroenvironmentspin blog. D'Inacoma talks about a consensus - Rubbish we are not allowed to listen to the other side of the debate.
What does Stern know about climatology? He is an economist.
Why do politicians hate us so much (they love raising taxes) and are so slavishly in love with the EU?

[Mike Segal]

There's a danger that we could be following an anti-freedom agenda here.

Personally I hope David Cameron will rein in this campaign.

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

On the positive side, this would seem to indicate that we are outflanking Labour on the issue of environmental responsibility.

[Christina]

Environmental responsibility involves making a choice. Taxes are not choices. To equate higher taxes as 'environmental responsibility' is an Orwellian use of language. Making the Government responsible for everything is not conservative, but socialist and authoritarian. It takes away freedom and responsibility from people.

On the one hand, Cameron wants us to trust people, on the other hand, he does not trust people because he believes the only way to curb emissions is through higher taxes.

[Green Conservative]

Sally Rideout Baker:

"At the end of the day fossil fuels will run dry. Why worry?"

Because there is still enough coal to last us two to three hundred years -- and to send the atmospheric concentration of C02 levels unprecendented in human history (and this is the only timescale that matters here).

The oil and gas will run out sooner and we really need to be weaned off fossil fuels by then!

Richard -- does it not occur to you that the realisation that there may be some natural limits on human agency is a profoundly conservative idea not a communist one?

[Josh]

This won't save the environment but it will fulfil the more important objective of putting the masses in their place.

The problem for DC is that he is running so scared, he will do anything the Beeboids tell him to do.

That includes supporting slavish taxation while at the same time rejecting nuclear energy.

[Sean Fear]

Public sector bodies will always argue for greater powers to tax, regulate and control the citizen (always for our own good of course). Saving the environment offers them an excellent excuse for doing this.

[Sally Rideout Baker]

Green Conservative

"The real greenhouse gasses include nitrogen 78%, oxygen 20% and water vapor 0-3%. They absorb and reemit infrared radiation just like CO2 does, and they conduct and convect heat which the sun produces. Nitrogen and oxygen do not absorb radiation as effectively as CO2, but they make up 2,500 times as much of the atmosphere. Water vapor absorbs in a comparable way to CO2, and there is up to 100 times as much of it in the atmosphere. Water vapor varies greatly, while CO2 changes slightly."

The change of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere maybe indicative of global warming but not necessarily a cause. More research is needed.

[Andrew Woodman]

Wonder what the economic effects of this will be. I've no real problem with many of the measures regarding neergy efficency but I have great reservations over this pay as you drive tax is it will mean having a black box in your car reporting your every move to the government. That really is the ultimate Big Brother move.

[Richard]

"Richard -- does it not occur to you that the realisation that there may be some natural limits on human agency is a profoundly conservative idea not a communist one?"

Indeed it does. Yet it is also notable that the Green Lobby, with its desire to control and regulate, seems to have a lot in common with various forms of statism. It has frequently been said that environmentalism has replaced Marxism as the primary dogma of the Left. I'm sure you've heard the quip about how the Green Lobby is like a watermelon - peel away the green and you find red.

Now, assuming that there are limits to human agency (which I accept there amy well be) then some form of state action may be required, although we shouldn't ignore market-based systems of rationing and conservation i.e. the price system and private property rights.

If state action is required, then we need to ensure it is applied in a way that isn't too draconian or forces people to say "I'd rather be wiped out in an environmental catastrophe than endure this". For example, how would carbon rationing be enforced? I confess to being rather ignorant as to the mechanics of this so forgive me if I seem unduly concerned by the thought of a carbon gestapo spying on everyone.

[TomTom]

Socialism returns in new guises.........new taxes for new revenue. Currently the big revenue raisers are Income Tax, VAT, National Insurance.........Corpration Tax brings in round £28 bn or around a third of Income Tax revenues.

If you want to control CO2 control immigration, stop housebuilding and encourage people to keep appliances and cars - making new ones costs more energy than retaining old ones.

Instead cheap Chinese imports make it cheaper to junk than to repair. They only want more money so they must tax things that are demand-inelastic like food, water, electricity, gas, petrol

[TomTom]

He was knighted and recruited by Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, to work for the British government where, in 2003, he became second permanent secretary at H.M. Treasury, initially with responsibility for public finances, and head of the Government Economic Service.

This is Sir Nicholas Stern who was chosen to produce a Government Report..............I wonder if a Treasury Permanent Secretary could propose lower taxes ?

[David Cooper]

While few would question the merits of approaching this issue via incentives - one simple example being the provision of recycling bins - it is becoming difficult to resist the conclusion that the current trend towards coercion via "green taxes" is verging on a colossal scam, and that our leadership's implicit support for this is at best naive and at worst tantamount to collusion. Surely our way forward is to keep firmly to the incentive line rather than to risk boosting the ranks of the stay at home party even further?

[RodS]

More totally irrelevant 'grandstanding' by all the political parties.

As climate change is caused by 'climate changers' the logical Green tax would be a tax on families with more than one child and an end to the financial and tax credit support for large families. Another sensible 'Green Tax' would be a higher level of personal taxation on new immigrant (for a defined period)

Through family benefits and immigration all governments have inflated population beyond the capacity of the planet to cope.

World population will rise by 40% over the next 45 years to 9 billion (it will have trebled in a lifetime) More poverty, more climate change, more pollution and more war s over scarce resources.

This what we need a Kyoto Agreement not fiidling about with Wind Farms.

[Ismail]

I don't why Conservative Environmental policy is being dictated by a bunch of eco-terroist organisations, namely Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. This is the same FoE whose leader said in the 1970s that coal energy was the solution to all our "global warming" problems. The only reason why the public is supposedly concerned with "global warming" is becuase they are being brainwashed and scarmongered by BBC News (especially Newsnight's left-wing "ethical man"), night after night about how our planet is being destroyed now, by "global warming." There is never any other viewpoints regarding "global warming" and if there is, the BBC just redicules them, as seen on Newsnight when they criticised the Competitive Enterprise Institute. No wonder we haven't seen the legendry ecological presenter, David Bellamy on the BBC for the last decade as he has publicly said many times that "global warming" is a myth. What David Bellamy has said that the greatest threat to our environement is over development especially building homes in green belt areas, which ironically David Cameron does support.

[Dave J]

This is really truly and patently idiotic. It's self-righteous hairshirt moralizing and condescending Tory Wet paternalism all rolled into one, and it's neither a way to win votes nor (by orders of magnitude) good policy.

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

"Environmental responsibility involves making a choice. Taxes are not choices. To equate higher taxes as 'environmental responsibility' is an Orwellian use of language."

Economic disincentivisation of harmful practice would not deny people choice.

People would be free to choose to pursue environmentally irresponsible behaviour if they wish, but on the understanding that there would be a small premium to pay to contribute to measures to off-set the harm caused by their actions.

[John Moss]

All the hot air about taxing travel misses the very real point that 65% of greenhouse gas emmissions are caused by generating electricity from coal, gas and oil and using gas to heat our homes and water and for cooking.

France has 10% more people yet generates 1/3rd of the GG emmissions we do, why, because nearly 70% of its electricity is generated from nuclear power.

We should commit now to 20 new nuclear plants, built on the car parks of existing nuclear power stations, so no need for new planning consents, and get these up and running by 2015 at the latest. If we haven't cracked fusion by then, we should commit to build another 20 in the 15 years afterwards as well.

Then we can stop generating electricity from oil/coal/gas and ban gas fired central heating and cooking.

We should also sell nuclear power technology to India, Brazil, Africa and anywhere else that needs it. (China will if we don't).

[TomTom]

If we put a 50% tariff on Chinese goods that would do wonders for the environment. China pollutes like crazy; Indonesia with illegal logging and burning forests pollutes like crazy.

There should be a refusal to accept Chinese imports which could bne made in factories in Europe more environmentally efficiently.

VAT should be abolished on repairs to encourage Service sector employment in repairing existing cars and goods and penalties on new ones.

The logic of this green fetish is that we make things last longer and tax cheap shoddy goods into the ground and reduce taxes on quality items.

Since 66% all Rolls-Royces ever made still run on the road these cars are more total energy efficient than new Range Rovers since most energy goes into manufacturing cars not running them, and low-revolution engines put out less rubbish than high-revving small engines which need replacing at 60.000 miles

[James]

Chelsea Tractors will fly before Cameron meaningfully objects to this plan, in or out of office. In reality, this a great way to add more cow to (any) governments wallet by taxing things that are deemed "anti-green" - meaning the government has us in moral checkmate. How else does he intend to finance the inevitable growth of government that must result from his pledge from among other things, to keep increasing funding for the NHS to levels higher than they are now?

Which is politically more expediant: raising taxes directly, which has the benefit of honesty but would probably tip any opposition to his rule embarrasingly into the open or worse; or raising taxes indirectly that are more defendible to your party in the context of a country hot for green guilt, and that really harm lower income groups who in any event either against you or not at all.

?

[James]

The word "vote" should be before "against" in the last sentence of the above rant lol

[Penultimate Guy]

If the majority of the sentiments expressed here accurately reflect the opinion of the wider membership, how can Cameron credibly continue with the "green taxation" line? How can he be taken seriously if he and his front bench say one thing but the party he is supposed to be leading say the exact opposite?

[ukfirst]

It is only a pretence (whether by Dave or Labour) that environmental policy is set by th UK government.

The EU dictates the detail of environmental policy now, and is positioning itself for an ever stronger grip on taxation too.

[Penultimate Guy]

Re: Ismail @ 15:06

What David Bellamy has said that the greatest threat to our environement is over development especially building homes in green belt areas, which ironically David Cameron does support.

As does the Adam Smith Institute, IIRC.

[Jaz]

The Uk citizens might want to be "green", but the sad truth is people are very selfish when it comes to actually doing something about it.

In my local area, to reduce "waste" they changed general waste collection to every two weeks, and putting in a "green waste", "paper, glass and metals" collection every two weeks to. This lead to protests...

Good work by Cameron to make the UK people DO something rather than just talk and moan about China and the USA.

Miliband is just jumping on the bandwagon, he, I believe will run for the labour leadership...in the hope that he is the true heir to blair rather than Cameron.

[Crighton]

At last the real story behind the major parties interest in the 'green agenda' starts to emerge - it's a tax scam!

If Labour or Tories are to have any hope of fulfilling their plans, both will need to raise more in tax, much more than any fiscal drag effect can offer.

Green taxes play on people's general desire to support good causes and, even better for the politicians, there's no deliverables to worry about!

Fraser Nelson has it right, the UK could stop all carbon output and the difference it would make to the overall global output wouldn't be noticeable.

If politicians really believe in 'saving the planet' by reducing carbon emissions - and incidentally, in spite of what they may say, there is no scientific concensus on this - the way forward is to find the technology that will enable continuing improvements in the standards of living whilst bringing about the reductions, globally, that they desire. For politicians, the problem is that this is much, much harder than playing on people's good will.

What is being proposed by it seems now all the major political parties is the speeding fines scam writ large, very large.

It's high time this scam is exposed for what it is - just another tax grab.

[TaxCutter]

The level of fuel duty and VAT on petrol that exists for motorists in this country means that Environmental taxes already exist. If Dave really cares about the environment shouldn't he be trying to persuade other countries to put fuel duty up to UK levels.

[David DPB]

I blame Thatcher. She started the rot by banning CFCs.

[Off Message]

If we are to create incentives for people to choose a lower carbon lifestyle then taxation is, obviously, a part of that. The Tory plan, as I understand it, is to make green taxes fiscally neutral ie to reduce taxes on goods (like employment) and increase taxes on bads (environmentally damaging choices) by the same amount. So taxes won't go up, so all the alarmist nonsense can be ignored.

This is sensible, precautionary policy making which will encourage us to behave more sustainably without increasing the overall tax burden. There is enough evidence that man is contributing to climate change to want to move in this direction whether it is ultimately right or just another false scientific scare.

[Rachel Whiteside]

Ismail is right to call these people eco-terrorists.

Do we really want to be jumping into bed with FoE etc?

[Blue-Green Pete]

Hi Sally,

I'd like to make two points:

Re. your first post - saying that humans only contribute 3% to CO2 emissions is misleading. I'll assume its factually correct, but the key figure is how much does our input change CO2 levels? If the 97% that is "natural" was offset by the same amount being removed via photosynthesis and dissolution in the oceans, then our 3% would be the difference and hence we would create all of any observed rise.

In a later post you put in quotes "The real greenhouse gasses include nitrogen 78%, oxygen 20% and water vapor 0-3%..." Where does this quote come from, please?
Nitrogen and oxygen don't act as greenhouse gases. Water vapour does vary greatly and is a greenhouse gas, but what does this have to do with human CO2 emissions - I take it you were impliying a link?

Cheers,
Pete

[Given Up]

Good to see that the consensus here is that it is all nothing but a tax scam .......which is what it is and even worse based off bogus science.

Add all these Green proposals to the comming Council Tax increases and your looking at nasty rises, that are going to hit the poor and pensioners very, very hard....plus the middle income earners are going to have to forgo a lot as well.

The Modernisers by making a big play on being green, have fallen into the trap, that you can never be green enough. There will allways be some extremist demanding even more tax/cutbacks etc and telling you that are killing the planet, no matter what you say or do.

[Josh]

"France has 10% more people yet generates 1/3rd of the GG emmissions we do, why, because nearly 70% of its electricity is generated from nuclear power."

Ahem, that would be 78%. Being majority nuclear is clearly a practical option. France is the largest exporter of electricity in the world. I believe something like 3% of our electricity needs are met by French nuclear electricity. That's more than all renewables sources (excl HEP) generate combined!

Flamanville-3 was just approved so France's nuclear dominance will continue. They are also significantly more advanced in fuel cycle progress such as reprocessing and final disposal. We allow bureaucracy and interest groups to keep our system in complete mess.

" If the 97% that is "natural" was offset by the same amount being removed via photosynthesis and dissolution in the oceans, then our 3% would be the difference and hence we would create all of any observed rise."

It's a fair point theoretically, though that 3% is smaller than the uncertainty in the scale of the natural carbon cycle processes.

"Nitrogen and oxygen don't act as greenhouse gases. Water vapour does vary greatly and is a greenhouse gas, but what does this have to do with human CO2 emissions - I take it you were impliying a link?"

I too have never heard of nitrogen and oxygen being greenhouse gases. I know oxygen is a carcinogen, but not a greenhouse gas. Water vapour accounts for something like 60-95% (depending on who you ask) of the total greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide is the second biggest, but not much bigger than methane, hence New Zealand's obsession with cow farts.

"Ismail is right to call these people eco-terrorists.

Do we really want to be jumping into bed with FoE etc?"

I agree. They keep torching fields of GM crops, holding back research, which could lead to demonstrably safe, environmentally efficient, and nutritionally rich food. If the current strain of GM crops are not safe (and I believe many are) then using terrorism to hold back research will not help them to become safer.

It will just continue the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides since organic food is nothing more than a chattering class indulgence and not a real option for feeding the vast bulk of this planet's 6 billion+ inhabitants plus pets and beasts of burden.

[Josh]

"The Modernisers by making a big play on being green, have fallen into the trap, that you can never be green enough. There will allways be some extremist demanding even more tax/cutbacks etc and telling you that are killing the planet, no matter what you say or do."

Absolutely, arse paralyzingly true! If DC tries to go Green by slapping £100 on SUV road tax, the Lib Dems respond by trying to slap £500 on it. When it gets to the point when DC says, "Hang on there, I think we're getting just a little bit carried away with the magnitude of our Green tax ideas," he will be berated as an environmental pariah for failing "to take tough action."

When you try to out-Green everyone, you will never succeed. A more Worstallian approach to environmentalism would have been a more sensible, practical and Conservative approach. Unfortunately, as Portillo says, trying to convince people of something more sophisticated than "Duuuh, taxing pollution is goooood!! I'm hungry!"

I'm sure plenty of smart people in the British electorate would buy it, but the media don't want to hear it and they would never give DC the chance to advance it.

This may be the key to the Shy Tory Factor. Sure, the Tory policies work better, but left wing policies just sound so damn cuddly that when faced with a pollster, some people, despite supporting the Tories, won't admit it.

[Blue-Green Pete]

Hi Josh,

>> "If the 97% that is "natural" was offset by the same amount being removed via photosynthesis and dissolution in the oceans, then our 3% would be the difference and hence we would create all of any observed rise."

It's a fair point theoretically, though that 3% is smaller than the uncertainty in the scale of the natural carbon cycle processes."<<

Sure, those are arbitrary figures, but my point was that it is dangerously misleading to quote the 97/3 split as if amount of throughput is relevant. Its like a company quoting a really high turnover as proof of success when its making crippling losses.

I'm not aware of margins of error in C cycle models, but the take-home point, as it were, is that CO2 in the atmosphere is rising and there is absolutely no dispute about that.

Cheers,
Pete

[Blue-Green Pete]

>> "Good to see that the consensus here is that it is all nothing but a tax scam .......which is what it is and even worse based off bogus science." <<

Climate change is not my speciality by any means, so I don't pretend to be an expert, but I do have an environmental science background.

I am interested in the justifications people have for saying climate change is "bogus science", by which I don't mean Mail/Telegraph editorials (I'm a Telegraph reader, btw, so that was not a generic "tory press" bashing). Tom Utley the other week decided that his observation that ice floated in his G&T was sufficient to cast in to doubt the combined work of climatologists, oceanographers, physicists and the many others who actually spend their time studying climate change issues over many years. I also don't mean Ruth Lea. I mean actual studies by actual environmental scientists.

Being such a complicated subject, there will always be valid research saying x isn't due to human activity or y won't be a problem, but the consensus, and it is a consensus, is that climate change is real and substantially man-made.

I know that there is a strong element of apocalyptic talk from many environmentalists, and that they can get frustratingly puritanical about the whole thing, but that does not mean that the underlying science is wrong.

Cheers,
Pete

[James M]

Some of these ideas I think have merit - but there are important caveats, of which I am not convinced politicians will be able deal with.

--> Pay per mile is a policy that will cause a lot of problems for those people in rural locations and who rely on their own transport for their livelihood. We are going down a dangerous path taxing those people who most rely on their vehicles to survive. This policy could work if public transport systems were fully up to scratch, but that is not yet the case.

---> As well as tax, we need to focus on long term means of changing behaviour. That is in education, but also investment in technology is essential. We only produce a small percentage of world pollution - yes it is too much and we should be leading the world in showing how a successful country can be environmentally friendly, but lets not pretend China et al will blindly follow. We need to have new technologies that can help the environment and allow economic development - we polluted the world for decades as we grew, unless we offer workable alternatives developing nations may question (perhaps with legitimacy) that we are being a little cheeky - wanting them to be environmentally friendly, however damning the evidence.

---> The key to these environment tax is that they must be matched with reductions elsewhere. I have no major problem with us taxing elements of environmentally threatening behaviour (this is tough as I am sceptical of the state's right to do this in general, but am making an exception) but the overall tax take must not increase. If these taxes are matched with reductions elsewhere - and in taking millions of the lower earners out of taxation altogether, the plan would be more workable and acceptable.

---> Finally a political point. With the two major parties taking these policies onwards, isn't the Liberal Democrats golden goose now removed? With the Iraq War perhaps lower on the electorates concerns list in 2009/10 and with environmental taxes on offer by all the parties, why would people vote for the Lib Dems - even as a protest?

[comstock]

If VAT is a tax on luxuries then surely flights come into that catagory.

Can't believe they are VAT free, to be honest.

[The Last Toryboy]

I couldn't give a monkeys about Kyoto or greenhouse gases. The only reason people do is because they are brainwashed into thinking that the tiny amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere caused by us is somehow going to cause global doom.
At worst, all these fossil fuels we burn simply return carbon to the atmosphere which was locked away in the aptly named Carboniferous Period, and that time was far from barren.
Though it seems far more likely to me that natural causes far outstrip what we as a race can do. In the Middle Ages we were growing wine grapes in England, in the 19th century it was like an ice age.

This environmentalism stuff is mostly dross, and its just an excuse to control our lives via coercive taxation. The G needs to stick it.

[Josh]

"Can't believe they are VAT free, to be honest."

Good thing you can't believe it, because it isn't true. There are plenty of taxes on the tickets you buy.

[Sally Rideout Baker]

"Jerry Taylor, an expert on energy and climate policy at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group in Washington, said (of) the wide range of cost estimates for cutting emissions “basically tells you we’re guessing.”

Overall, he said, he put more faith in academic analyses than one produced at a government’s request, particularly at a time when the public appears eager to see signs of action on the issue."

And that says it all!

[ToMtom]

am interested in the justifications people have for saying climate change is "bogus science"

I suspect the reasoning is that since these conclusions are derived from computer-simulations you are very much at the mercy of the input values in the equations.

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=878

The early Christians in 1st Century Judea were convinced that the world was about to come to an apocalyptic end and destroyed through Fire if not Flood.

Nowadays with the risk of harvest failure less of a problem than in previous times, when starvation was a real possibility, people seem to need an apocalyptic quasi-religious experience..............it has become the Pantheistic notion of running out of oil (Club of Rome 1969) which justified the Arab price rises which ended full-employment in 1973................or a new Ice Age (yes we have had that too) and now Global warming as a man-made phenomenon..............CO2 is produced when 1.5 billion Chinese exhale..........and this new religion requires a new pristhood, a new tithing system, and of course, obedience to new gods of the mountain, of the seas, and of the earth

[The Laughing Cavalier]

Environmental taxes should be designed to change behaviour. Two things occur to this old dog:

1. If they do indeed change behaviour there won't be any revenue coming in any mor.

2. If Brown imposes them they will just be used to raise even more revenue which will then be wasted.

[Dot Con]

Fair amount of wishful drivel above. Doubtless they would have seen the Victorian Thames as a cheap and convenient sewer and castigated the interfering busybodies who insisted on installing drainage rather than tolerating regular outbreaks of cholera.
Who are these profligate fellow Conservatives who have thrown the precautionary principle to the wind and want to give up conserving? Since when has it been good business (or domestic) practice to waste and mismanage resources? It should be perfectly possible to attach a price to carbon and to cut taxes on labour and income. It would stimulate a whole new generation of innovation and give consumers more choice over the tax they choose to pay. Even the most sceptical should be able to see the overall opportunity.
They should also remember that it was the scientist, Margaret Thatcher, who reminded a Conservative conference that we do not have a freehold on the planet but a full repairing lease. She identified this "Inconvenient Truth" almost twenty years before Al Gore got going, but your smugger correspondents seem to have forgotton it.

[ToMTom]

Margaret Thatcher The Scientist ? Well Dorothy Hodgkins at Somerville probably wishes she had attended a few more Chemistry lectures and fewer OUCA events............

It should be perfectly possible to attach a price to carbon and to cut taxes on labour and income.

It is impossible to reduce taxes on income because it is the largest single tax revenue stream available to the Govt and I doubt they will get £90 bn + anywhere else since there is another £70 bn or so from National Insurance too...........

Maybe raising the basic Tube fare to £10 to eliminate any subsidy and doubling train fares into London will encourage people to work nearer home ? Or destroying all diesel buses since it is public transport and construction vehicles that cause most pollution.

Time to shut down supermarkets then so produce and dry goods don't have such long journeys to the shelves

[comstock]

Maybe raising the basic Tube fare to £10 to eliminate any subsidy and doubling train fares into London will encourage people to work nearer home ?

Is this a serious policy suggestion or a wind up?

OK so the London C-tax would stop people driving into central London but firms would simply relocate around the M25, which would become gridlocked. The City would move out to Canary Wharf, surrounded by 3 miles of traffic jams. And the Tube would be deserted, and require more, not less subsidy, not to mention the impact on tourism

You haven't thought this one through, have you, TomTom?

[Given Up]

Blue-Green-Pete.

I'm no expert either, but one place to start is to look at who was promoteing the agenda to begin with.....the left anti west/big business crowd.

Then one can ask why the governments that are keenest, are also the highest taxing ones, especialy on fuel, ie the EU and their governments. Move away from Europe and the keeness seems to diminish fast.

Any idea/thinking where it's supporters will not allow dissent, should be treated with considerable concern.

For a one stop destruction of the whole Golabal Warming scam, read Michael Crichtons "State of Fear". He demolishes the whole thing as a scam and where he is very good, is showing how any natural disaster, is imediately claimed by the Global Warming crowd as more evidence etc....They fell right into that trap over Katrina.

This page has many links that question the idea.

http://www.akdart.com/warming.html

[Given Up]

Sally Rideout Baker

re Guessing the costs ...exactly....this ridiculous Stern figure of 3.68 trillion, why not 3.5 or go for 4.

To give such an exact figure is a pure attempt at spinning accuracy, where none exists.

[ToMTom]

s this a serious policy suggestion or a wind up?

Course it is a wind-up............but I have just heard a Treasury Permanent Secretary called Stern tell me additional taxes need only be 1% GDP which is a mere £10 billion.

We spend £6 billion a year subsidising railways and £12 billion on policing and £25 billion on Defence...............it is just another £10 billion in taxation and User Fees must of necessity change society and must reduce commuting

[Ismail]

If the government introduces all these green taxes to tackle the threat of "climate change," our low-cost airline (EasyJet, Ryanair) and car manufacturing (Land Rover) industries that we have in the UK will be destroyed which will make Britain less competitve against our European neighbours and especially India and China, who could care less about "climate change." More importantly thousands of jobs will be lost in the manufacturing industries, and will lead to a rise in unemployment.

The environmental elitists such as FoE, Greenpeace claim "climate change" is the biggest threat to the continenet of Africa. What a load of BS, the greatest threat to African which is happening today, is corrupt African dictators who are mishandling their economies, causing civil wars, and unwilling to build competent infrastructure that has led to millions of Africans fighting for their lives against starvation and AIDS. These far-left organisations with help from the taxpayer funded BBC, wish us to live in a communist utopian society where every move we perform is controlled by the state. They may finally be succeeding now that the three political parties are saying that we must change the way we live, thanks in part to David Cameron and his Notting Hill brigade.

[Blue-Green Pete]

Hi Tomtom,

Thanks for the reference. Since the guy was a senator and not a scientist, I didn't take him at his word but checked a couple of his references.

The Science article refuting the "hockey stick" graph was based... drum roll... on a computer simulation! There is nothing wrong with that but a lot of people seem to want to knock climate change science because its based on computer models. No doubt these same people will ignore this paper because it also uses simulations... or not.

"Doctor" Michael Crichton's book State of Fear, I have read, and as a fan was disappointed by the storytelling, the characterisation (thin even by his standards!) and the general sledgehammer way of getting his point across. By the by, of course. I put Doctor in quotes because he is a medical doctor - since when is it established practice to get an expert view of something from an expert in a completely different field?

With regards to your "early christians..." shtick - so, because other people have been wrong about other things, that automatically makes environmental scientists wrong about this? Finally, your chinese exhalation theory is just plain silly. Being sufficiently compos mentis to use a computer, surely you know that peoples respiration is totally balanced by the photosynthesis required to grow the food? I know you were being flippant, but really its beneath you!

Given up: Hi, see above for State of Fear comment. With regards to your other comment yes, some people will pick up any stick to beat business/capitalism with. That doesn't mean the stick is insubstantial. How about those who oppose? Are you seriously telling me that energy companies, high energy users, and those with a vested interest in the status quo have all really come to the conclusion, quite dispassionately and with no regard to their own interests, that its not worth worrying about? Obviously there are some genuine problems with vested interests, and environmental pressure groups have these but really, both sides can play at that game and it doesn't get anyone anywhere.

A final point. I'd be interested if anyone could look at their own response to this REALLY HONESTLY... I don't know how it would work but if someone came up with a tax-cutting, state-power-reducing response to climate change, the phrase "bogus science" would not be thrown around nearly as much on this message board as it has been. Vested interests, anyone?

Cheers,
Pete

[Peter]

Restricting petrol prices to only up is stupid as we will only ever see price inflation which I thought we were against?

[regular conservative]

"The Modernisers by making a big play on being green, have fallen into the trap..."

They don't deserve that noclamenture. A modern approach would offer incentives to reduce consumption of environmentally unfriendly fuels and other products. This is just old-fashioned, (no pun intended) Lib Dem high tax politics. Cameron and Osborne have nothing new to say on green taxes.

[Chris McLaughlin]

Its time to ask ourselves a few Stern questions:

When did the Lib Dems take over the Conservative Party?

What happened to free market economics and individualism - rather than Herd-like behaviour.

How did the Left consensus triumph on such a scant knowledge base.

Why would our insignificant gesture politics change the behaviour of newly industrialising countries.

And what will be the acceleration in economic decay as the green taxes advance un-opposed?

Is the choice really Blair or more Blair. After so long out of power is there no special interest group the Tories won't kow-tow to?

Has no one stopped to enquire how much Al Gore stands to make through his Global Consultancy. ( How much of our money is Gordon giving him by the way)

Or is that an " Inconvenient truth"?

[Given Up]

That would the same Al Gore who said he invented the Internet....the man allways was a total fool, he has now become a dangerous fool.

The Hockey Stick theory was based off eroneous data and that's being kind....as the wrong/missing data when put in came to a non alarmist result....not what the authors were looking for.

http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/hockey_stick/hockeystick01.html

[changetowin]

Read Stern!

This is a huge issue and one which David Cameron has led on. Those who say we should do nothing lack the courage to take the tough choices for our future.

[Dave J]

Changetowin, the alternative to this is not "do nothing." It's "do something productive rather than counter-productive."

[Pro-Car blogger]

What gives the game away that 'green taxes' are a scam more than anything is the ways those advocating them come up with to implement them.

Take this recent Richmond 'green' parking permit scheme. Its implications will hit many more than the oft-quoted 'wealthy' owners of large, polluting cars. Even small city cars like the Mini, Ford Fiesta and Nissan Micra are set for a 10% (ie. 4 x inflation) hike and very average family cars like 1.8 litre Mondeo and Vectra set for a massive 30% increase. I mean, what exactly are people supposed to use if not cars like these, particularly families? Such an idea doesn't realistically support change.

Or take the Lib Dem car tax policy announced at their conference. The repressive implications are the same for clearly middle-income users of small and average cars.

Then look at the hypocrisy of these people preaching to us. Richmond council not only offer parking facilities to their staff but even offer subsidies. Look at the government, planning to slap more taxes on us while taxing more efficient but expensive new fuels like BP Ultimate to the 70% hilt so few of us can afford to switch even if we wanted to.

BP claim that if every car used Ultimate it would have the same effect on emissions of taking 1 million cars off the road - ie. all the cars in, for example, Newcastle. If only the government would forego a little of their 70% slice of the forecourt price to bring the price down to on a par with the regular fuel. The environmental effect of people switching would be quick and instant, once the cost barrier is removed.

But no. They're not interested in such ideas - ideas that encourage, rather than punish. They whip up hysteria about the planet going to pot but maintain that they NEED their duty on biofuels, the full 70% tax on more efficient normal fuels, their VAT on energy-saving light bulbs, on insulation, on solar panels, on wind turbines, on double-glazing etc. And then they call US selfish and berate us for not forking out for more of these things!

Enough, please. Politicians advocating extra 'green' taxes so clearly just want MORE of our cash it's untrue.

[Chris McLaughlin]

Thank you for the helpful admonition to "Read Stern".

I'm sure there are tough choices to be made for the future; Do we let Iran go nuclear. Do we replace Trident. Do we build a couple of dozen nuclear reactors to avoid energy over-dependency on the Russians and Arabs.

Do we have enough reservoirs.Do we need a national grid for water supply.Should we be road charging. Is a green tax acceptable to the electorate.Should we be offering them counterbalncing reductions to offset these?

If changing to win involves the adult base of the party putting up with adolescent responses to valid debate, then the party will have failed its greatest challenge.

The electorate is not stupid,. They know a tax scam when they see one and they won't be voting to have their wallets emptied by any of the three liberal democratic pretenders to future Government.

In the opening years of the Blair ascendency we had the chance to speak up on amongst other things: education,environment,health,transport,the state sector, immigration and the EU.

We knew we were not coming back to power any time soon and we could have treated the electorate like grown-ups.

Truth as politicians frequently find, has a habit of creeping out. It finaly has for Blair and his discredited government. They are finished.

But are we "Built to Last"? We have failed to position ourselves, through honesty, to take advantage of the difference between idealogical cant and reality.

Change to win may be a catchy theme and I wish its sentiments well, but perhaps the contributor and others could do their own bit for reducing global warming by at least identifying themselves when they post splenetic hot air in the form of a parody of The Spectator's Tamzin Lightwater.

In passing,I'm reading Stern and hope to put it the the recycle bin my Council recently forced me to pay £25.00 for in time for Monday's collection.The box is made from oil-based plastic.

[Sean Fear]

"This is a huge issue and one which David Cameron has led on."

What he's done is give Labour an excellent opportunity to tax and regulate us still further.

[William Norton]

Change to win (welcome back, by the way): Read Stern!

I am in the process of doing so (although I can think of better uses for my evenings) and in return, I suggest you
read Worstall>

[tired and emotional]

There is no such thing as the environment.

[9Votes]

Since when has it been good business (or domestic) practice to waste and mismanage resources? It should be perfectly possible to attach a price to carbon and to cut taxes on labour and income. It would stimulate a whole new generation of innovation and give consumers more choice over the tax they choose to pay. Even the most sceptical should be able to see the overall opportunity.

Wholeheartedly agree with this. Being economical is surely an end in itself, and if we can engineer an environment where innovation flourishes, Britain can once more become a world leader in technology.

New technology and reducing fossil fuel use will also reduce our dependence on imported fuels which is desirable in itself.