No to green taxes

A four-page pamphlet dropped into the letter box this morning with an outline of what Gordon MSP Nora Radcliffe has been doing and plans to do.

It bears the heading “Focus Special Edition: Environmental Special Inside” and unlike most unsolicited mail, it did not go straight into the bin and was read with interest.

Now, before I write further, I’ll say that the Other Half and I have a lot of time for Mrs Radcliffe as she’s helped us on a number of occasions and been interested in some of the things I’ve had to say via this blog or via email.

That’s not to say we’re Liberal Democrat voters. We tend to support politicians and parties who put the environment if not first, at least very high, and who also realise that they are there for their constituents - not the party hierarchy.

So, how does Mrs Radcliffe’s “environmental special” hold up under scrutiny?

Not terribly well, in my view.

The pamphlet feels more like an upholding of the party line than an honest reflection on what has been achieved and what could be achieved.

Yes, the Lib Dems are a little more green than the other parties but they appear to be veering more towards free-market liberalism and away from social liberalism.

And that brings me back to the Liberal Democrats’ position on taxes, where they are joining other groups and political parties in advocating green taxes, although unlike some they do also advocate a cut in income tax to compensate.

Mrs Radcliffe’s pamphlet includes a green tax pledge for people to sign and send back to the Liberal Democrats plus a link to Green Tax Switch.

The problem I have with this is not specifically with the Liberal Democrats’ specific policy, it is with the way politicans, lobbyists and the media have begun to promote green taxes as one of the measures than can be taken to tackle global warming.

If you accept that all peoples, cultures and societies must take strong measures to curb global warming, then the only way to ensure their widespread adoption is for the measures to be seen to be as fair as possible.

This is both a moral and a political necessity. People are much more willing to accept changes to their lives and curbs on their behaviour when they can see there is both a genuine need and a genuinely fair imposition of those changes across all tiers of society.

There are two fundamental flaws with attempting to curb climate change through green taxes.

First, the poor would be hit much harder than the rich. This can be seen with the UK council tax, where the tax takes up a higher proportion of a poor household’s income than it does a rich household’s.

Yes, a cut in income tax may moderate that effect to some extent but will people actually use that cut in a way that curbs climate change? Or will they use it to splash out on more consumer goods that, while more efficient, still contribute to climate change.

In other words, instead of no longer using a tumble dryer for example, a household may swap their old inefficient dryer for a new, more efficient one. They may have lowered their contribution to global warming a little but they have not changed their habits and addressed the real issue - unnecessary consumption of energy.

The second flaw with green taxes is that rich individuals and business can continue to consume as much energy as they want because they can afford it.

In effect, the government has given them a licence to pollute. Provided they can pay the “licence fee” (the green tax), then they do not need to change their behaviour at all.

These two flaws become even more apparent on a global level. A a global carbon tax would hit Third World countries the hardest and the industrialised West the least.

Wealthy countries could either afford the tax or the cost of the technologies to step around it in one way or another. Third World countries with already massive debits would fall even further behind as their already fragile agriculture and industrial bases collapsed without sufficient energy to operate.

A much more fair system was used in World War 2 - it was called rationing.

But instead of national governments deciding how much food, clothing and fuel is available and then dividing that into the population, there should be an international decision on how much human-emitted carbon the entire globe could emit in order to achieve the necessary reduction in carbon dioxide.

Climate control models show that rising carbon dioxide emissions will overwhelm the capacity of land and ocean to absorb carbon, so the best option would appear to be to set a target year based on these models, calculate how much carbon the biosphere will be able to absorb in that target year, and then cut current carbon emissions to that level by that year.

I’d have to do some research on the facts and figures before becoming more specific, but this seems plausible to my non-scientific but fairly common sense brain!

Once the maximum global carbon emissions were calculated, they could then be divided by the number of people inhabiting the globe.

This would tell us how much carbon each individual could emit.

Governments could then multiply the individual figure by their population to provide a national carbon allocation. While this would mean major cuts for the developing world, it would probably allow the poorest countries to develop further (again, I’ll have to some research on this but it seems plausible).

Of course, it would be far too complicated to give people their share of carbon emissions as they would then have to be traded in some way and everything we consumed would have to have a carbon price.

It also doesn’t allow for the needs of business, government services and the interests nation as a whole.

A better system would be to issue individuals with something like the old ration cards.

The government would allocate each person a carbon card and a proportion of their global allowance (somewhere between 30 and 50% would probably work).

The carbon card would then be used when purchasing energy directly - fuel and electricity. Individuals could then buy up to their carbon limit and spend it how they want.

This has the advantage of preserving people’s freedom to decide for themselves, while putting an upper limit on what they can use. So, you could still drive a racing car on weekends but you’d have to accept little or no heating in your house.

If individuals did not use all their carbon ration, then they would be free to trade it to people who wanted to use more carbon. If you walked everywhere and had an energy neutral house, then you could sell your carbon ration to the chap with the racing car but you would not then be able to buy more energy or fuel yourself.

But what of the carbon ration retained by the government?

The government would calculate how much carbon was required to meet national needs for areas like health, education, law enforcement, social services, defence, and so on.

The remaining carbon ration would then be sold at auction, either direct to businesses for their energy needs or via brokers who would then sell smaller carbon rations to smaller businesses and individuals who could not stay within their ration. Individuals with carbon to spare could also sell to the brokers.

This would allow the cost of carbon to filter through the economy, just as businesses pass on their other costs to the end consumer.

There would need to be caps on business purchases of carbon, probably on an industry-wide level and reflecting national priorities, to ensure that businesses with deep pockets did not outbid those with less cash. This would ensure that areas like agriculture and small-scale manufacturing did not lose out to multinationals.

A global rationing system along these lines would be much more fair than any number of green taxes - and would also be much less complex as there would be no need for the fees, subsidies, allowances and rebates that make almost all tax systems a complete mess.

And if a system is less complex, then it’s much easier to sell it to people as they can understand it more readily.

So no, I won’t be signing up to a green tax pledge - not matter which political party it comes from.

I’ll hold out for a global system that’s fair, equitable and simple . While carbon rationing in this form may or may not be workable, I’ll keep looking for a system that is.

And in the meantime, I might do a little more research to see how a carbon ration system could work.