Columnists and editorial boards of national news outlets hope President Donald Trump will institute taxation of carbon dioxide, citing “prominent” Republican support for such “climate action.”
In February, The New York Times editorial board, a Washington Post columnist, Time magazine and a CNN.com opinion columnist all ran pieces endorsing a carbon tax. Post columnist Robert Samuelson cried “two cheers for a carbon tax” in his headline. In order to sell the idea, the media used descriptions like “blue-collar climate plan” and labeled it a tax that “could win over” Trump.
The general premise of a carbon tax is that energy companies will be taxed for every ton of carbon they emit, making the price of carbon based energy increase and the demand decrease.
Those liberal media outlets had a specific reason for bringing the issue up again. Time published Yale economics professor Matthew Kotchen’s endorsement of the idea on Feb. 21. As Kotchen noted, a plan was put forward recently by people he called “conservative giants.” The list included James Baker, Henry Paulson, Jr. and George Shultz. On Feb. 8, those men held an event to explain their plan to repeal Obama’s Clean Power Plan and replace it with a carbon tax.
But the “conservative giants” he listed weren’t exactly household names. More well-known conservatives including Sen. Ted Cruz, and radio hosts Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh have all opposed carbon taxes.
CNN columnist John Sutter claimed the plan would be “simple, popular and effective.” He also lauded carbon taxes as the “holy grail” of “climate policy experts.”
Many disagree with that assessment. Mercatus Center senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy condemned the Republicans’ “misguided” attempts to implement a carbon tax. She called the idea that it is economically “advantageous” a “seductive but ultimately unconvincing argument.”
“History has repeatedly shown that when new taxes are adopted in exchange for reducing the scope of government, we always get the tax increases and rarely see the promised returns,” de Rugy wrote at Reason.com.
A study from the Cato Institute had other objections. It cited MIT economist Robert Pindyck who criticized the methodology used to determine the negative effects of carbon emission. He argued their process is “close to useless” for determining policy.
Nevertheless, Kotchen asserted that if Trump’s GOP failed to adopt the carbon tax plan, Republicans would be a party of “destruction” rather than a party of “solutions.”
Even though Donald Trump opposed the carbon tax on the campaign trail, the liberal media were literally cheering for him to be persuaded to adopt one. Kotchen said Republican endorsements “may help Trump” buy into the idea. The Times described the proponents as a “gang of Republican elder statesmen.”
“They call themselves the Climate Leadership Council ... not made up of the usual environmentalists, which is why their proposal might gain traction, though probably not right away,” the Times’ editorial board wrote on Feb. 13.
Samuelson was the least enthusiastic. He wrote, “By all means, let’s have a carbon tax. It’s the best way to deal with global climate change ... But let’s not pretend that a carbon tax is a panacea for either climate change or too much debt.”
Kotchen mentioned that Trump’s Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the administration would not enact environmental laws that come “at the detriment of economic growth and job creation.”
The Cato study argued that the carbon tax would harm growth warning that “Even a revenue neutral carbon tax swap will probably reduce conventional GDP growth.”
