Green taxes

Well here we go. Apparently our warnings that politicians were using the global warming issue as a pretext to impose a whole array of new taxes was spot on. Today's UK Sun reports the British Parliament is considering a whole passel of new bills to impose new taxes to "fight" global warming.

"HARD—WORKING families face crippling new bills as the Government fights global warming with a raft of stinging taxes" Gee, and I thought these taxes were only going to levied on rich jet setters like Richard Branson, Al Gore, John Kerry and new Treasury secretary and ex Goldman hand Hank Paulsen. Evidently, this is not what the British legislators have in mind.

According to the Sun, British Environment Secretary David Miliband has  drawn up massive green tax plans and dispatched them to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. In a letter to the Chancellor he wrote: 'As our understanding of climate change increases, it is clear more needs to be done.' According to unsourced estimates a typical family with two children could have to pay up to £1,300 more every year.

This amounts to more than a 15% of the per capita gross domestic purchasing power of  $29,600 (2004 est.) Talk about a crippling tax burden.

The piece ends with a quote from some professor who calls himself an "Environmental Economist" named Julian Morris from the University of Birmingham (UK). Professor Morris recites all of most sensational claims of the global warming lobby.

Tellingly, the reporter never gets around to saying where the government plans to spend all this booty. Or how this spending is going to alleviate global warming.

Christopher Alleva  10 30 06

Update: Professor Morris writes us:

i think you may have misconstrued the comments i made to the political editor of the sun. my point was that i don't think people should be forced to change their way of life drastically in order to achieve a minuscule change in the world's climate. i am actually rather skeptical of the whole push for global carbon control —— and have written as much.

and i realise that you were intending to be sarcastic by saying that i call myself an 'environmental economist' but i do have a masters degree in environment and resource economics and i have written extensively on the economics of environmental issues. the sun felt that was relevant to the piece —— so they included it.

bes[t] regards

julian

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