Energy Companies Plan for Carbon Costing

December 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

As with the big insurers, some of the big energy companies know climate change is going to change the way they’ve been doing business– and they’re planning for it.

More than two dozen of the nation’s biggest corporations, including the five major oil companies, are planning their future growth on the expectation that the government will force them to pay a price for carbon pollution as a way to control global warming.

The development is a striking departure from conservative orthodoxy and a reflection of growing divisions between the Republican Party and its business supporters.

A new report by the environmental data company CDP has found that at least 29 companies, some with close ties to Republicans, including ExxonMobil, Walmart and American Electric Power, are incorporating a price on carbon into their long-term financial plans.

Both supporters and opponents of action to fight global warming say the development is significant because businesses that chart a financial course to make money in a carbon-constrained future could be more inclined to support policies that address climate change..

One of the corporations not preparing for necessity is that owned by the birthright John Birchers, David and Charles Koch

Koch Industries, a conglomerate that has played a major role in pushing Republicans away from action on climate change, is ramping up an already-aggressive campaign against climate policy — specifically against any tax or price on carbon. Owned by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, the company includes oil refiners and the paper-goods company Georgia-Pacific.

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West Coast Pact on Climate Change

October 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Big headline in the SF Chronicle this morning about three western US states and one Canadian province doing what the feds haven’t done

 

With climate-change legislation stymied at the federal level, a coalition of West Coast states and one Canadian province on Monday signed a regional pact to rein in greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming.

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington, along with the premier of British Columbia, agreed to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions across an area that includes 53 million people.

Under the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy, the four West Coast governments will also use similar rules to encourage the use of alternative fuels and the adoption of electric cars. And they will hunt for ways to deal with ocean acidification, a side effect of rising carbon dioxide levels and a deadly threat to shellfish.

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Irish Embrace Carbon Tax, Dent the Deficit

December 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

You’d think our right wing deficit hawks would be all over the Irish example:

…when the Irish were faced with new environmental taxes, they quickly shifted to greener fuels and cars and began recycling with fervor. Automakers like Mercedes found ways to make powerful cars with an emissions rating as low as tinier Nissans. With less trash, landfills closed. And as fossil fuels became more costly, renewable energy sources became more competitive, allowing Ireland’s wind power industry to thrive.

Even more significantly, revenue from environmental taxes has played a crucial role in helping Ireland reduce a daunting deficit by several billion euros each year.

The three-year-old carbon tax has raised nearly one billion euros ($1.3 billion) over all, including 400 million euros in 2012. That provided the Irish government with 25 percent of the 1.6 billion euros in new tax revenue it needed to narrow its budget gap this year and avert a rise in income tax rates.

Carbon Taxes and Ireland

Of course in the U.S. where living off of the future is a way of life, no tax –aka payment for natural resources used– is thinkable.  Like the folks downstream from a pig farm our descendants will be left to suck up what we have left.

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