Carbon
tax economists profoundly ignorant and/or cynical, by Mark Mathis, 1/25/19,
CFACT.
Sometimes
smart people can be astonishingly ignorant, or just being self-serving and
political. A bipartisan group of Nobel Prize-winning economists, former Federal
Reserve chairs and top economic advisers to recent presidents has endorsed a
carbon tax. Their reasons for supporting the tax demonstrate a profound
obliviousness to energy reality.
The idea of
a tax on carbon is that it will cause people to use smaller amounts of oil,
natural gas, and coal while driving innovation in the energy sector. But
there’s a big problem with this kind of blindered thinking. Energy is not like
any other commodity. It is the foundational component of all commodities and
our options are extremely limited.
Take
transportation as an example. Nearly all transportation is fueled by products
created through the refining of crude oil. Natural gas is also a small
contributor. Yes, we do have electric cars, buses, and trains, but their role
is tiny in the overall picture. Also, don’t forget that the electricity must
come from somewhere. Currently, it’s mostly created from coal, natural gas, and
nuclear power. And, there’s also the fact that much of the car, bus or train is
also made of products derived from oil and natural gas, such as the tires,
paints, fabrics, lightweight plastics, lubricants, etc.
On the
electricity side, the grid requires a constant flow of electrons. Sixty-three
percent of this power comes from fossil fuels, 20 percent from nuclear, and
about seven percent from hydroelectric. That’s 90 percent! Wind and solar
combined provide only 7.6 percent, but even this small number is deceptive.
Wind and solar are intermittent, so they require baseload sources (mostly
natural gas) to keep the electricity flowing when they aren’t performing. There
is currently no economic way to store electricity so it can be used when the
wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. Of course, manufacturing,
transporting and maintaining wind and solar installations requires considerable
amounts of fossil fuel.
Then there’s
mining, which is also heavily dependent on oil, natural gas, and coal. In order
to significantly ramp up wind and solar energy we correspondingly have to accelerate
mining. The key ingredients in renewable energy technologies are rare earth
minerals. It takes a large amount of fossil fuel to extract them.
Drastically
scaling up the number of wind turbines and solar panels will drive up the price
of everything else that uses rare earths, such as all of our electronic
devices. And then there is the really big problem; China owns 90 percent of all
rare earth mines.
Consider
that nearly all modern products contain some form of plastic or rubber, which
are made from oil and natural gas, and there are no good alternatives.
Fertilizers are also made from petroleum. The list goes on and on. Fossil fuels
are deeply imbedded in every aspect of the modern world. Trying to get people
to use less of them by making everything more expensive and then giving people
money back through an inefficient government-controlled program is a flawed
premise from start to finish.
Finally, the
people of France, Canada and a handful of other nations are giving us a glimpse
of what happens when people have more of their money taken away because of some
ethereal high-minded goal. They get unhappy, and some of them put on yellow
vests and begin destroying things.
There are no
viable alternatives to our foundational energy sources, two of which are also
totally enmeshed in virtually all products we use every day. What supplemental
energy technologies are available (wind and solar) are unreliable and more
expensive.
Even attempting to reduce our use of oil, natural gas and coal by a
modest amount is a gigantically expensive proposition that will cause many more
problems than it will solve. Pretending that a carbon tax will advance the goal
of reducing greenhouse gas emissions demonstrates astonishing ignorance or deep
cynicism, take your pick.
Mark Mathis is a CFACT policy
analyst, and founder of the Clear Energy Alliance located in Del Ray, Florida. This article originally
appeared at ClearEnergyAlliance.com.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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