EU Vote Sends Warning Signal on Carbon Tax
The European Parliament this week rejected a plan to further restrict carbon dioxide emissions, dealing a severe blow to global warming activists. The EU’s rejection of a measure that would impose higher prices on carbon dioxide emissions sends a warning signal to U.S. politicians being pressured by global warming activists to enact a carbon tax in the United States.
Global warming activists urged the EU Parliament to delay or cancel a planned auction of EU carbon emission allowances. Delaying or canceling the auction would keep emissions tightly constrained and provide more value to owners of existing carbon emission allowances.
Parliament, however, voted down the tighter restrictions on carbon dioxide restrictions. Carbon dioxide restrictions have already driven up energy prices throughout Europe, creating an affordable energy famine.
“Most green electricity sources cannot compete with coal and natural gas on their own and require subsidies that are passed on to industry and consumers,” the liberal New York Times conceded in a Wednesday article. “The more power they generate, the higher those costs. Direct charges for renewables add about 18 percent to German household electric bills, with indirect costs putting on more.”
“One of the great policy bubbles of our times has been cap and trade for carbon emissions, and on Tuesday it may have popped for good,” the Wall Street Journal reported this morning.
“With the U.S. shale fracking revolution, it’s now clear that the fastest way to reduce greenhouse gases is to let private drillers expand natural gas production. When even Europe recognizes the folly of artificially raising energy prices, the anticarbon obsessives have lost in their own climate-change temple,” the Journal noted.