Tom Friedman, the columnist for the New York Times, is out today pushing again for the imposition of a carbon tax. Friedman wants the federal government to impose a tax on every bit of energy derived from fossil fuels. He wants the price of gasoline to rise. He wants electricity rates to soar. He wants the cost of heating your home to increase. Friedman even has a plan for what to do with the resulting cash haul: half goes to reducing corporate and individual income tax rates, one quarter goes for infrastructure improvements and one quarter goes to deficit reduction.
There is no nice way to say this: Friedman is a dolt, an idiot, a moron. He doesn't have a clue what he is talking about.
Let's start with the problem being considered. That may seem outlandish to someone like Friedman who likes to begin with solutions, but any thinking person would want to consider the problem befire coming up with the solution. In truly amazing fashion, Friedman wrote his entire column without describing the reason why America needs a carbon tax. I am really not surprised, since the carbon tax is a methodology used to remedy the problem of global warming. My guess is that even an ideologue like Friedman understands that one cannot advocate fighting global warming when worldwide data shows that there has not been any warming for the last decade and a half. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to rise as before, but the temperatures stopped going up. All those predictions of melting ice caps have failed; the artic ice this year was larger than at any time in the last twenty years. The sea level has not risen to swamp low lying areas. There have not been any more storms and the severity of those that occured has not increased. Indeed, storms like Sandy or Katrina were remarkable not for their severity (Sandy was not even a hurricane when it hit land) but for their path. Katrina went straight towards New Orleans and hit at just the wrong place. Even so, it was the inadequate levee system that caused the bulk of the horror in Louisiana not the storm itself. Sandy hit head on into New Jersey, the first storm in over 50 years to do so. The simple truth is that the climate model that underlie the global warming theory have proven inaccurate, and global warming has stopped. THERE IS NO REASON TO TAKE MEASURES TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING IF IT PRESENTS NO THREAT.
So let's now look at the effect that a carbon tax would have. At the moment, the United States economy is stagnant. Our growth rate is barely positive. Unemployment is high. Millions have given up even trying to find work. In some communities, finding a job is almost as hard as winning the lottery. There are, however, a few bright spots in the fog of economic malaise. Perhaps the most important change in the American economy has been the discovery of huge new oil and gas sources right here in the United States. America now has the largest natural gas reserves in the world, a change made possible by fracking and horizontal drilling in shale formations. The same technologies have also increased domestic production of oil on private land all across America. Even the hostility to oil and gas production coming from the Obama administration and some state governments like California and New York has not managed to slow the march towards quickly rising production.
This great increase in energy production has given America a major competitive advantage. Natural gas prices in the United States are less than half of what they are in other industrial countries. This advantage is attracting new chemical plants that will use the gas as raw material for its processes. It is also making the cost of operating manufacturing processes much less expensive than would be the case in China or Western Europe. The same is true to a lesser extent regarding the price of oil which is helping to fuel a return of manufacturing enterprises to American shores. Beyond that, increased domestic production of energy means that less energy needs to be imported from places like Venezuela, Iran or Libya. Every dollar spent on domestic energy rather than imported energy is one that will flow through and strengthen the American economy instead of those of our enemies.
The carbon tax advocated by Friedman would destroy the competitive advantage the America holds in energy prices. His plan would take one of the few hopes for improving economic performance and replace it with a government program to build infrastructure. Everyone knows how that would turn out.
The truth is that someone needs to tell Friedman that it is time to retire.
There is no nice way to say this: Friedman is a dolt, an idiot, a moron. He doesn't have a clue what he is talking about.
Let's start with the problem being considered. That may seem outlandish to someone like Friedman who likes to begin with solutions, but any thinking person would want to consider the problem befire coming up with the solution. In truly amazing fashion, Friedman wrote his entire column without describing the reason why America needs a carbon tax. I am really not surprised, since the carbon tax is a methodology used to remedy the problem of global warming. My guess is that even an ideologue like Friedman understands that one cannot advocate fighting global warming when worldwide data shows that there has not been any warming for the last decade and a half. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to rise as before, but the temperatures stopped going up. All those predictions of melting ice caps have failed; the artic ice this year was larger than at any time in the last twenty years. The sea level has not risen to swamp low lying areas. There have not been any more storms and the severity of those that occured has not increased. Indeed, storms like Sandy or Katrina were remarkable not for their severity (Sandy was not even a hurricane when it hit land) but for their path. Katrina went straight towards New Orleans and hit at just the wrong place. Even so, it was the inadequate levee system that caused the bulk of the horror in Louisiana not the storm itself. Sandy hit head on into New Jersey, the first storm in over 50 years to do so. The simple truth is that the climate model that underlie the global warming theory have proven inaccurate, and global warming has stopped. THERE IS NO REASON TO TAKE MEASURES TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING IF IT PRESENTS NO THREAT.
So let's now look at the effect that a carbon tax would have. At the moment, the United States economy is stagnant. Our growth rate is barely positive. Unemployment is high. Millions have given up even trying to find work. In some communities, finding a job is almost as hard as winning the lottery. There are, however, a few bright spots in the fog of economic malaise. Perhaps the most important change in the American economy has been the discovery of huge new oil and gas sources right here in the United States. America now has the largest natural gas reserves in the world, a change made possible by fracking and horizontal drilling in shale formations. The same technologies have also increased domestic production of oil on private land all across America. Even the hostility to oil and gas production coming from the Obama administration and some state governments like California and New York has not managed to slow the march towards quickly rising production.
This great increase in energy production has given America a major competitive advantage. Natural gas prices in the United States are less than half of what they are in other industrial countries. This advantage is attracting new chemical plants that will use the gas as raw material for its processes. It is also making the cost of operating manufacturing processes much less expensive than would be the case in China or Western Europe. The same is true to a lesser extent regarding the price of oil which is helping to fuel a return of manufacturing enterprises to American shores. Beyond that, increased domestic production of energy means that less energy needs to be imported from places like Venezuela, Iran or Libya. Every dollar spent on domestic energy rather than imported energy is one that will flow through and strengthen the American economy instead of those of our enemies.
The carbon tax advocated by Friedman would destroy the competitive advantage the America holds in energy prices. His plan would take one of the few hopes for improving economic performance and replace it with a government program to build infrastructure. Everyone knows how that would turn out.
The truth is that someone needs to tell Friedman that it is time to retire.
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