Fancy This - a Carbon Tax on Imports.

 

This would have the global freetraders howling in outrage.

Britain's environment minister is floating the idea of imposing a carbon tax on imported meat products.

[Environment secretary, George Eustace, said] said that in the long term a CO2 border tax – a levy on imports related to the amount of CO2 generated by meat production – might be necessary because otherwise emission trading schemes would not work.

It's hard to understand the logic of singling out meat imports but Eustace hinted that carbon import taxes might be needed for other products.

“Were you to introduce some kind of emissions trading scheme to try to reduce carbon emissions further … then you would also need to have some kind of carbon border tax to take account of those countries that maybe weren’t pulling their weight,” Eustice said, stressing that ideally this should be done multilaterally.

Eustice also said a CO2 border tax might be necessary to protect domestic producers. “If you don’t want to export pollution, then you do at some point have to consider something like a carbon border tax,” he said.

Asked if this meant higher taxes on goods coming from countries like China and India, Eustice said he would phrase it differently. “We would be saying, as countries taking the action necessary to deal with this global challenge, that we’re not going to allow those producers in this country to be undercut by those who aren’t doing their share,” he said.

Ah, but it's a slippery slope, isn't it? If you can justify a carbon import tax why not a carbon export tax. Just slap a suitable tax on every tonne of diluted bitumen pumped into the hold of a supertanker at the dock in Burnaby. Beautiful. 

Comments

  1. TrailblazerNovember 7, 2021 at 5:02 PM

    A tax on exported carbon is a wonderful idea.
    That said George Eustace is possibly acting to protect UK farmers not the environment.

    We really have reached the stage where the old adage of 'how do you know when a politician is lying ; is when his or her lips are moving.

    Fighting climate change is slowly becoming a never ending make work project with no apparent end game.
    Anyone that remembers this TV series will attest to that.

    https://www.netflix.com/cx/title/80063251


    Capitalism at it's best?

    TB



    ReplyDelete

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