Just so you know, we aren’t even going to get to the central point of the headline before seeing some very, very interesting information in this article by Vox
One weird trick to fix climate change: Close the offshore wealth loophole
How closing tax havens can fund climate policy.
Governments have long tried pricing carbon to induce companies to make the kind of serious emissions reductions actually needed to address the climate emergency.
They’ve done this by imposing a carbon tax, an additional fee for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted, or through “cap and trade†schemes, which give companies limited allowances for how much CO2 they can emit and then allow them to buy and sell those allowances to offer more flexibility. (3 more paragraphs on this, including how carbon taxes have failed. You know how Vox writers like to run on and on)
Jessica F. Green, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto whose work focuses on global environmental politics, argues that’s partly because focusing on the technicalities of carbon pricing is a good way to avoid addressing the harder problem of actually ending fossil fuel use.
“We’ve been working on how to measure carbon for 30 years and we’re still debating about or refining what it is because it’s easier to do that than it is to actually decarbonize,†Green told me.
Green argues in a new paper that climate change is not a “market failure†to be fixed through mechanisms like carbon pricing. Rather, she says, it’s “a problem of societal transformation†that requires “strong state intervention to reorganize the economy.â€
Surprise? I wonder what she wants to transform society to and what type of economy. Why is it that this supposed science problem always requires Government tyranny?
Green says countries should aggressively pursue taxation (one of the basic functions of the state), but of the rich — and use the money generated to fund climate policy.
And tax the rich. Do you get a paycheck? Then you’ll be considered rich. People said I was nuts back in the early part of this Century when I said the global warming/climate change issue had almost nothing to do with science and was mostly about empowering government, about taxing the masses out the ying yang, taking away freedom, liberty, and choice, and creating an authoritarian government.
Eventually Green gets into the offshore wealth loopholes. The beginning of the article tells you all you need to know.
