Posted on 03/15/2014 11:58:06 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
.................Premier Li Keqiang last week declared war on pollution, which is expected to speed up the process of turning China's limited environmental levy into a full-blown tax targeting the nation's major polluters.
But the all-out efforts to combat China's disastrous pollution levels might get in the way of plans to tax carbon dioxide emissions in a bid to stunt the rapid growth of greenhouse gas emissions, Zhu Guangyao, the vice environment minister, said......
A carbon tax is increasingly controversial among lawmakers, said Zhu, adding that an environment tax would be easier to push through without carbon in the mix.
The carbon and air pollution taxes would target mostly the same sources, and in difficult economic times China is wary of hitting companies with too many costly regulations.
Zhu also referred to the fact that Australia, under a new conservative government, is trying to abolish its carbon tax, while a price on carbon has been blocked in the United States.......................
(Excerpt) Read more at businessspectator.com.au ...
The Left will never admit that the Carbon Tax is in reality a tax on Capitalism. It is a tax to stifle economic growth. It is a tax to create more economically deprived people so as to increase the number of Leftist voters.
Global Warming is a scare tactic being used to justify limiting or retarding economic growth in the name of environmental protectionism.
AND governments must be realizing that the “carbon” boogieman isn’t as sustainable in the long run as a generic “environment” tax.
The carbon and air pollution taxes would target mostly the same sources, and in difficult economic times China is wary of hitting companies with too many costly regulations.
China has spent the last decade chasing and securing contracts for fossil fuel supplies specifically to fuel economic growth.
China has several billion people that want good paying jobs and China’s leadership know that carbon based fuels like oil and coal are what fuel economic growth. Cheap transportable BTU dense fuel is necessary for a growing economy.
Carbon Taxes are designed specifically to punish the use of these cheap easily accessible and easily transportable energy sources.
If tax income is the goal then a general environment tax would be as Zhu said easier to push through because it would have less impact on the production side of the economy. But from the ideological environmentalist perspective it would not produce the desired result of stunting economic growth.
Indeed! But they’ll happily “settle” for a default “environmental” tax and massage it however they want - bury “carbon” in a sub-heading of the taxing dictates [so they’re not leading with their chin, as this carbon thing is not driving this socialist circus like they had hoped]. imho
I’ve lived in China for two years and have traveled extensively around the country. And, I can say first hand that they’ve got to do something about pollution. You can actually see the air you’re breathing there. Looks like black snow. And, the rivers and estuaries are dead. But, they’re in a box. On the one hand, they desperately need economic growth to continue. But, on the other hand the pollution problem is of such magnitude that it’s an imminent health problem for much of the population. China has huge coal reserves. So, it’s a cheap on hand source of energy. In fact, a new coal fired power plant comes on line each week there. China’s industrial base is where we were 100 years or so ago, except on an exponentially larger scale. Frankly, I don’t know how their problem can be fixed anytime soon.
We are exporting massive amounts of coal to China as the EPA/Obamanoids make it unaffordable to build new coal powered electrical plants (or update old ones) here in the U.S.
Yes. China’s in a fix. They’re moving people into the cities to mass produce all the crap we’re buying from them. Then they loan us money with those profits to finance our social welfare spending because so many jobs in the U.S. have being shipped to China and other countries our workers can’t find work [so we’re in a fix too].
It stinks.
ChiCom’s government needs money so they are going to squeeze business. Sounds a lot like that deal that went down during their “Great Leap Forward” where they said dogs and cats ate to much so they killed them, then the rat and bird population ran wild eating the crops so they killed them, then the bugs ran out of control so they killed them and the crops ended up failing for lack of pollination and the famine killed the people.
“It stinks.”
Agree with all you said for sure.
This coming from a the Chinese, who have been putting one new coal fired power plant on line every two and a half weeks for several years now.
Most of them burring high sulfur coal.
Where the haze is so thick that a significant percentage of the population wears masks when walking outside... visibility on a cloudless, fogless day is often under 5 miles in many places.
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