The Dallas Morning News editorial, “Conservative group’s carbon plan could lead to climate-change action,” (Express-Times, Feb. 25) embraces the old fantasy that plundering massive revenues in energy taxes out of the economy will change the weather. It won’t.
This is an academic exercise that collapses in the real world. Advocates insist the tax wouldn’t do economic harm because revenues would be fully returned to the citizens. That fantasy was shattered at a June 2015 Capitol Hill event by (now Senate minority leader) Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Schumer told environmental groups that we’ve been starving the government for revenues and a carbon tax is the best way to fund it. When the academic exercise reaches Congress, 536 legislators will be eager to carve out funds for their usual pet projects, especially “green” initiatives to satisfy their global-warming obsessions.
The energy tax theory makes a gargantuan leap from massive taxation to a world where our homes, cars, factories and businesses magically become so energy-efficient that their energy costs go down.
The editorial implies that renewable energy can replace conventional sources. It can only to a limited degree, and only when other entities prop up its erratic, unreliable and costly supplies. Countries such as Germany, Australia and others that were pioneers in “fighting global warming” are suffering badly for their initiatives.
Even if you believe the global-warming theory and climate models, you can see that the extreme programs the alarmists are advocating wouldn’t measurably change the weather.
James M. Policelli
Plainfield Township
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