Exciting news from the Climate change Action Group of Central NY!!! We urge everyone to come to Common Council this Wednesday and speak out during the public comment period to urge the City to pass a resolution in support of a federal carbon tax. Details, talking points and a copy of the resolution below!!
The resolution is item 11. 3. However the public comment period is earlier (Item 6) so one does not have to sit through the meeting. Link to full agenda. Jeanne http://www.ci.ithaca.ny.us/vertical/Sites/{5DCEB23D-5BF8-4AFF-806D-68E7C14DEB0D}/uploads/{C651B061-CE2D-48CB-A783-BC999B680A49}.PDF 11.3 SUPPORT FOR THE ENACTMENT OF A FEDERAL CARBON TAX – RESOLUTION OFFICIAL NOTICE OF MEETING A Regular meeting of the Common Council will be held on Wednesday, February 6, 2008, at 7:00 p.m. in the Common Council Chambers at City Hall, 108 East Green Street, Ithaca, New York. From Sylvester Johnson A resolution in support of a federal carbon tax passed the Planning Committee of the City of Ithaca, NY on 01/16/2008 (“Ithaca joins nationwide debate on carbon tax, cap and trade”). There’s an excellent chance that Ithaca's City Council will endorse a federal carbon tax at it's meeting THIS Wednesday, February 6th! Agenda Item 11.3 SUPPORT FOR THE ENACTMENT OF A FEDERAL CARBON TAX – RESOLUTION The debate between a tax and emissions trading may seem remote from daily life, but the outcome will affect citizens for decades. New York City is also remote from Washington, however Mayor Michael Bloomberg has declared his support for a federal carbon tax, as have many economists both liberal and conservative. The reason for this broad-based support is that “cap-trade” in heat-trapping emissions acts like a disguised tax, but trading is more expensive and at the same time less effective for emissions reduction, and more readily abused than an actual tax. Without a maximum permit “stop” price, trading makes energy costs too volatile. With a stop price, selling extra permits to pollute blows off the regulatory cap. Both results of of cap-trade or cap-auction are counterproductive for the goal of reducing heat-trapping emissions. Many local governments may hope to sell offsets in emissions trading to help fund projects that reduce heat-trapping emissions. However, the value of those projects may get undercut by competition from inexpensive offsets from abroad. A federal carbon tax is less expensive as well as more effective and simpler than trading. To find out further reasons to support a new tax, please see the non-profit initiative for a federal carbon tax at the "Initiative" page of http://www.climatehealth.net/Initiative.html. 11.3 SUPPORT FOR THE ENACTMENT OF A FEDERAL CARBON TAX – RESOLUTION WHEREAS, legislation at the federal level is being considered for reductions in heat trapping emissions of carbon dioxide, with the primary methods for motivating reductions being either a federal carbon tax or emissions trading, and WHEREAS, the outcome of this legislative debate will substantially affect residents of the City of Ithaca for decades, and WHEREAS, the cost of trading in emissions of carbon dioxide spreads throughout the economy like a tax, yet emissions trading increases expense significantly beyond that of an actual tax due to income extracted by intermediaries such as traders and brokers, due to detailed participation by attorneys, as well as due to an extensive regulatory and oversight bureaucracy, and due to overhead and infrastructure for all the above, so that emissions trading costs society substantially more than an actual tax, and WHEREAS, the volatility of trading in permits to pollute will likely prove a deterrent to investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, because emissions trading increases energy cost uncertainty, in turn making returns on investments more uncertain, and WHEREAS, offsets are challenging for quantification of emissions reduced and for reliable verification of fulfillment of the goal for each offset, and WHEREAS, many offsets actually build in warming by applying the carbon dioxide saved by the offset over the many years of the lifetime of the offset against the current year’s emissions, instead of applying the current year’s reduction by the offset against the current year’s emissions, and WHEREAS, many offsets create other counterproductive unintended effects or would have been constructed anyway, even without extra funding, such as hydropower projects that already have been planned, and WHEREAS, offsets undermine the U.S. economy due to potentially high volume purchases of inexpensive offsets from abroad, worsening the balance of trade and sending jobs abroad, and WHEREAS, effective action requires reducing emissions at the source, not trading off the pressure to reduce emissions, and WHEREAS, the potentially useful feature of emissions trading is that the overall total amount of permits to pollute shrinks over time according to a regulatory goal, but that feature gets negated whenever the price of permits to pollute exceeds a set “stop price” or “safety valve,” in which case the government sells more permits at that price to maintain the price at that level, so that the total amount of permits is no longer determined by the regulatory goal, and WHEREAS, the analogy made to trading in emissions of sulfur dioxide to reduce acid rain is not applicable due to the limited number of coal-burning power plants that practice trading in emissions of sulfur dioxide, compared to the diverse sources of fossil fuels and emissions of carbon dioxide that would make emissions trading unwieldy, and WHEREAS, a straightforward federal carbon tax is projected by many economists to be more effective than unwieldy emissions trading at achieving reductions in fossil fuel usage, and at motivating investments in the U.S. in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources that would create jobs in the U.S. and stimulate the economy, and WHEREAS, the European experiment in cap-trade has been called a failure in part due to export of responsibility to reduce emissions with the purchase of possibly questionable offsets from abroad, providing historical evidence that cap-trade may work substantially less effectively than a federal carbon tax, and WHEREAS, a tax achieves goals for reduction of emissions by applying judiciously adjusted price-demand modeling as a public policy tool, because as price increases, demand decreases. Using this well-developed modeling, the fixed tax rate for each year gets determined by the goal for reduction in usage of fossil fuels, without the continual price volatility of permit trading, and WHEREAS, the annual goals for reduction of emissions could be mapped out for decades, for example to ultimately achieve at least 80% reduction from the emissions of 1990 by 2050 as advised by climate scientists, and WHEREAS, a federal carbon tax levied upstream (at the sources close to extraction or import of fossil fuels) will minimize the number of entities directly taxed and the expense of monitoring compliance, and WHEREAS, the major part of the proceeds of a tax could be refunded in a progressive manner as equal dividends to every citizen or as an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, stimulating the economy, and WHEREAS, part of the tax proceeds could fund meritorious projects in the U.S such as energy conservation and the production of energy from renewable sources, creating “green” jobs and supporting local economies, and WHEREAS, the competitive position of the U.S. could be maintained by imposing a border tax tariff on products imported from countries without a carbon tax, and WHEREAS, a carbon tax could be accepted more widely for a worldwide protocol than emissions trading since each country’s proceeds from a tax would remain in that country with minimal impact from foreign countries on national sovereignty, and WHEREAS, both labor and business have reasons outlined above to support a federal carbon tax over emissions trading, so that once the merits of a tax become better known it could soon become politically possible, and WHEREAS, the Mayors for Climate Protection organization (www.coolmayors.com) has supported Mayors nationwide in their efforts to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets (7% reduction from 1990 levels by 2012) in their own communities, and WHEREAS, the City of Ithaca has increased its own efforts to reduce its heat-trapping emissions, and WHEREAS, cities have taken the initiative because of delays by the federal government, and WHEREAS, for the above environmental and economic reasons a federal carbon tax would be substantially more effective than emissions trading; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, That the Common Council and the Mayor of the City of Ithaca, New York, declare their support for enactment of a federal carbon tax, to be levied upstream, with a majority of revenues refunded to citizens, and be it further RESOLVED, That the City Clerk notify and send copies of this resolution to the Director of the United States Conference of Mayors, Washington, DC, and to the following elected officials: • United States Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Washington, DC • United States Senator Charles E. Schumer, Washington, DC • United States Representative Maurice Hinchey, Washington, DC • New York State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, Albany, NY • New York State Senator George H. Winner, Jr. Albany, NY • Deputy Secretary for the Environment Judith Enck, Office of the Secretary to the Governor, Albany, NY ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://webmail.aol.com _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
