[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] A market alternative to rationing

[Bill Totten]

Energy tax made easy

Modifying Human Excess with International Non Renewable Energy Taxation

by Peter Salonius

Culture Change (2003)


The labyrinthine political maneuvering that has been associated with the
Kyoto Protocol and the regulatory maze that this process will engender,
both within nations and internationally, in response to Kyoto's very
modest goals indicates that another approach is necessary.

An international agreement, similar to the 1987 Montreal Protocol that
addressed the effect of CFCs on stratospheric ozone depletion, should be
sought to increase the cost of finite energy (fossil and nuclear) in an
orderly fashion.

The starting point for discussions about the implementation of
International Non Renewable Energy Taxation would be to take as a
benchmark the highest taxation rates for energy, presently imposed by
the federal governments of countries with more than 35 million people.
Each country with lighter energy taxation rates would be asked initially
(year 1) to agree to raise its Non Renewable Energy Tax rates by five
percent of the difference between its present rate and the benchmark.
This taxation increase on non renewable energy would be most politically
acceptable if it were to be revenue neutral so that income from other
federal taxes decreased by the same amount as the new non renewable
energy taxes increased income (tax shifting).

In this manner countries such as the United States, which has the lowest
energy taxes on the planet, would raise federal Non Renewable Energy
Taxes by the greatest (though rather modest) amount in the first year,
while countries which are already at the benchmark or close to it would
not have to to alter their energy taxation at all initially.

After a number of annual renewals (perhaps twenty) of the International
Agreement on Non renewable Energy Taxation, when all countries had
finally reached similar tax levels for exhaustible energy, then future
annual conferences could focus on how rapidly taxation rates should be
escalated for all signatory countries in unison so as to achieve climate
mitigation and required shifts to renewable energy sources.

This process of international gradualism is designed to effect as
orderly a transition as possible from fuel sources that will
unquestionably be exhausted, toward those renewable energy sources upon
which humanity will ultimately be dependent. Slowly escalating non
renewable energy costs will encourage research, development and market
intrusion of sustainable renewable energy sources that have very little
chance of competing in the present marketplace where all energy is
priced according to its cost of production as opposed to its impending
scarcity.

[No doubt, some of the subsidy to fossil fuels, for example, would begin
to be reduced just by this tax. - editor]

The transition to renewables would be orchestrated by the market forces
of trillions upon trillions of purchase decisions based on price as
opposed to the command and control arrangements that have proved largely
unacceptable in connection with the Kyoto process.

Peter Salonius
Canadian Forest Service
Post Office Box 4000
Fredericton, New Brunswick
Canada  E3B 5P7
email:  psaloniu at nrcan.gc.ca

See also "Ration oil during war - Or is this a War on Conservation?" by
Jan Lundberg   http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-32.html

http://culturechange.org/energy_tax.html

TO POST A COMMENT, OR TO READ COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHERS, please click
on the word "comment" highlighted at the end of the version of this
essay posted at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/