Taxing, Subsidizing, Regressiveness, Anti-Consumer Choice

Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

That's what describes the bulk of the proposals that are coming out of (mostly gubernatorial) state-level climate commissions these days, as pushed by global warming alarmists and their consultancy vehicle, the Center for Climate Strategies. My John Locke Foundation colleague Daren Bakst has reviewed all 56 recommendations that came out of the commission in North Carolina, the Climate Action Plan Advisory Group, and he analyzes them in a policy report titled, "Taxes, Subsidies and Regulation: A Guide to North Carolina's Proposed Global Warming Policies."

CAPAG’s proposals assume reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will affect climate change, Bakst said. “This assumption should surprise no one who’s skeptical of this process,” he said. “It’s well-established that there is nothing the United States — or an individual state — could do to have any measurable effect on temperature. Rather than admit that fact, CAPAG tries to get around the ‘temperature problem’ by ignoring the goal of reducing temperature. Reducing CO2 becomes the goal, and reducing temperature is simply never mentioned again.”

Again, these commissions are sprouting up in states everywhere, but the outcomes they produce are almost always identical: Anti-freedom, anti-consumer, and pro-government control.