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Page added on January 1, 2019
Global Revolt Against Climate Change Policies
- 2018 saw a global revolt against policies aimed at fighting global warming
- Australia, Canada, France and the U.S. have all seen push back against global warming policies
- That included weeks of riots in France against planned carbon tax increases
Despite increasingly apocalyptic warnings from U.N. officials, 2018 has seen a number of high-profile defeats for policies aimed at fighting global warming. Politicians and voters pushed back at attempts to raise energy prices as part of the climate crusade.
It started in June with election of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Ontario residents overwhelmingly voted Ford’s conservative coalition into power on a platform that included axing the Canadian province’s cap-and-trade program.
Ford said his first priority upon taking office would be to “cancel the Liberal cap-and-trade carbon tax.” Ford then joined a legal challenge led by Saskatchewan against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s policy of a central government-imposed carbon tax on provinces that don’t have their own.
Carbon tax opponents called Trudeau’s plan an attempt to “use the new tax to further redistribute income, which will increase the costs of this tax to the economy.”
Roughly ten thousand miles away in Australia another revolt was brewing. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull saw his power base crumble within days of failing to pass a bill aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to the press following the First Ministers’ Meeting in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, December 7, 2018. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi.
Turnbull’s so-called National Energy Guarantee to reduce energy sector emissions was opposed by a group of conservative members of Parliament led by former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Turnbull tried to delay the vote on his climate bill in response to the opposition but was too late. Turnbull stepped down in late August and has since been replaced by Scott Morrison.
Back in the U.S., $45 million was being pumped into the battle over a Washington state carbon tax ballot measure. Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who has 2020 presidential ambitions, supported the measure though refiners, but other opponents outspent carbon tax supporters.
The Inslee-backed measure called for taxing carbon dioxide emissions at $15 a ton in 2020, which would increase at $2 a year above the rate of inflation until the state meets its emissions goals. (RELATED: Greenpeace’s Iconic ‘Rainbow Warrior’ Ship Chopped Up On A Third-World Beach, Sold For Scrap)
However, Washington voters rejected the carbon tax measure in the November election despite Inslee’s support. It was the second time in two years that Washington voters rejected a carbon tax ballot initiative.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee speaks during a rally at the beginning of the March For Science in Seattle, Washington, U.S. April 22, 2017. REUTERS/David Ryder.
The November elections also saw the defeat of a group of Republican lawmakers in the House Climate Solutions Caucus. Among those defeated was caucus co-chair Florida GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who introduced carbon tax legislation in July.
Curbelo’s legislation called for a $23 per ton carbon tax that would primarily fund the Highway Trust Fund. Despite this, environmentalists funneled money to his Democratic challenger Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
Shortly after the U.S. elections, it became clear trouble was brewing across the Atlantic in France. French President Emmanuel Macron’s economic reforms, which included planned fuel tax increases, were not winning over much of the population.
Macron spent years styling himself as a staunch supporter of efforts to tackle global warming, including the Paris agreement. Indeed, raising taxes on diesel and gasoline was part of Macron’s plan to meet France’s Paris accord pledge.
It backfired. Angered over the new carbon taxes on fuel, tens of thousands of protesters, called “yellow vests” for the vests drivers are required to have in their cars, took to the streets calling for an end to the taxes and for Macron to resign.
French President Emmanuel Macron attends a joint news conference with President of Burkina Faso Roch Marc Christian Kabore (not seen) at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, December 17, 2018. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Pool.
Macron initially resisted, arguing France needed to do more to address global warming, but the French government capitulated in December and scrapped the planned tax increases. Macron also said he’d increase the minimum wage and begged companies to raise salaries, if possible.
Macron’s backpedaling on climate policy couldn’t have come at a worse time for the climate-conscious president. The U.N. annual climate summit was being held in Poland as Macron conceded to the “yellow vests.”
France’s carbon tax revolts sent a clear message to Democratic lawmakers across the Atlantic Ocean. Democrats will take control of the House in 2019 and want to make global warming a central part of their agenda.
Democrats and even environmentalists distanced themselves from carbon taxes in the wake of French riots. However, far-left Democrats are pushing “Green New Deal” legislation, which could become the largest expansion of government in decades.
15 Comments on "Global Revolt Against Climate Change Policies"
Uncle Bill on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 7:50 am
Wow, an article from the “Daily Caller”, no less….would I expect anything else being written!? Messages like these in the media are the problem….thank you Koch Brothers, Republican benefactors, Big Oil and Coal,, and all the deniers here on this comment forum…You are doing a fine job killing the very life on the Planet…give yourselves a tax cut and corporate bonus….
Duncan Idaho on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 10:53 am
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-x655aAliHB8/WaQ_DcJjI0I/AAAAAAAAkss/8pLKy7QCKCcGqvofaS3jBGawwoDRFOt5ACHMYCw/Houston%2Bbefore%2Band%2Bduring%2Bflood%255B6%255D?imgmax=800
Greed and stupidity are a bad combination.
Throw is some sociopathic and psychopathic people, and you can kiss your ass goodby.
Half Full on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 3:04 pm
Okay – on to collapse. It will be much easier to make the cutbacks once we’re circling the drain.
dissident on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 3:27 pm
The yellow vest protests in France are about the collapse of the French middle class which is becoming poorer by the day thanks to high taxes and globalist job exports. This is happening at the same time that the SJW regime in charge is opening the floodgates to hundreds of thousands of migrants. So French taxpayers have to pay through the nose for welfare when they are barely making ends meet themselves.
Any piece that tries to paint these protests as only about global warming is nothing but propaganda.
Outcast_Searcher on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 4:18 pm
“The November elections also saw the defeat of a group of Republican lawmakers in the House Climate Solutions Caucus. Among those defeated was caucus co-chair Florida GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who introduced carbon tax legislation in July.
Curbelo’s legislation called for a $23 per ton carbon tax that would primarily fund the Highway Trust Fund. Despite this, environmentalists funneled money to his Democratic challenger Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.”
And as usual, the left will try to pretend like the problem in the US is purely a GOP based problem.
Great for dem fund-raising, but not so much for actually trying to solve the problem. And so it goes.
Outcast_Searcher on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 4:19 pm
Half full: But your ilk has claimed we’d rapidly be “circling the drain” since at least the 60’s. So what do further such claims, without any meaningful evidence, accomplish?
GetAVasectomyLoserLifeSuckAss on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 4:20 pm
The only people that care about global warming are the rich that have plenty of money and can buy all the food they wants and use their car to drive wherever and whenever the wants.
As mentioned by dissent, if you are poor and have barely enough money to either heat your home or eat and suffer of chronic pneumonia because of the lack of heat what do you have to lose protesting. You might lose your life protesting but pneumonia was kill you anyway. Might has well die fighting the government and get even by killing the politicians.
Global warming is an issue that only rich people care about. People with not money have not time to care about global warming, they are busy try to stay alive and healthy. People that push global warming will be lynched with the same politician that push global warming.
Outcast_Searcher on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 4:21 pm
Diss: But of course — any viewpoint other than our own is naturally, “propaganda”. Sigh.
How about some rationality and conceding that both you and the climate people are partially right?
Chrome Mags on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 4:28 pm
It’s called a conundrum, caught between a rock and hard place. Damned if you, damned if you don’t. Painted ourselves right into a corner.
It’s kind of hard not to laugh, really, because humankind has a such an attitude about mostly just being concerned about our immediate future, that ideas regarding GW really interfere with that mindset, because the really big trouble in farther out in the timeline.
But even beyond that the real bugaboo is declining net energy against a backdrop of needing wean ourselves off of the very energy source we’ve built all this stuff up with. With carbon taxing, the fall from grace is even harsher as austerity in different forms has to be initiated. At the same time politicians only know they should do something but are beholden to the angry mob. And it is that mob that is getting the short end of the stick as EROEI declines.
So what happens is pretty much nothing. Carbon taxes for the most part need to be very slight and therefore won’t do much to change the situation.
But that’s all before West Antarctica begins to slide, slide, slippety slide into the ocean and sea level rises rather quickly at some point sufficiently to push people back from the coasts. Then the magic show really begins to unfold as the lower ranks of society really suffer, yet even that much more needs to be done to wean ourselves off the stuff, the FF.
What a wicked web we weave when first we decide to ignore a scientist in 1890 that foresaw future problems if too much CO2 entered the atmosphere. Ignored because humankind lives for today, not tomorrow.
Antius on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 6:27 pm
Interesting article from Euan Mearns’ website discussing the unaffordability of large scale energy storage in batteries.
http://euanmearns.com/the-cost-of-wind-solar-power-batteries-included/
This strongly suggests that the bulk of adaptation to a renewable energy system will need to be based on demand management, rather than storage. We need to be working towards solutions that allow demand to adapt to supply, rather than the other way around.
makati1 on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 6:38 pm
As I have mentioned many times before, not ALL of humanity is going to feel the pain of GW as much as the 1st worlders. Nor will they feel the pain of peak oil, etc.
Who will hurt more:Filipinos that use an average of TWO CUPS of oil daily or…Americans that use more than TWO GALLONS per day?
Or the billions living on less than $2 per day vs Americans who need at least $30 per day to survive? A lot of the $30 is to keep warm in winter and buy food during the 8 months of non-growing season. A Filipino will not freeze or starve. The Pacific controls the temperatures in the Philippines. No deserts, and only two seasons, wet and dry. Even the “dry season” is not dry, just less rain. Not a bad place to be these days. Going up to 85F today and the sun is shining. A typical day here.
dissident on Tue, 1st Jan 2019 8:50 pm
BS logic about dissenting viewpoints being mislabeled. It is propaganda when the MSM spews only that one narrative and buries the other causes. Read the yellow jacket manifesto, sunshine.
DerHundistLos on Wed, 2nd Jan 2019 4:16 am
“Global warming is an issue that only rich people care about.”
Really? I suggest you and Outcast travel outside of the US for enlightenment. In Colombia, I have yet to meet a single person who denies the reality of AGW. Of course, the population of Colombia is far more attached to the land and the environment than most people. And the population is damn concerned. Compesino land owners at lower elevations are discovering that it’s now too hot to grow coffee and new diseases are emerging due to hotter and drier conditions.
You pulled this straight out of your ass.
DerHundistLos on Wed, 2nd Jan 2019 4:18 am
Excellent point, Duncan, and there are plenty of examples here at PO.com.
“Greed and stupidity are a bad combination.
Throw is some sociopathic and psychopathic people, and you can kiss your ass goodby.”
Dredd on Wed, 2nd Jan 2019 12:00 pm
They want a new world odor (New World Odor).