The carbon tax- a moral issue

Hopefully this carbon cap will save Maui Hawaii from the evil HC&S company that constantly pollutes the island with noxious carbon released from burning the sugar cane! This island is too small for their smoke, they trap us on the island here and torture us all!

A win-win solution, we need tax money now and need to force business to change for the future.

I love modern business. Here in a nutshell is their strategy. Move a new plant into an area, promising jobs and prosperity. Bribe local politicians to get tax relief and other incentives. Then pollute the local environment and as soon as the tax exemption period ends, move the plant or facility to another area that has now been bribed to give public money to a pack of criminals. What is left for the local people? A polluted environment with no one held responsible for the crime. But, do not forget, there are always taxpayers to shift the burden too. I am open to debate on this subject, however, be prepared with some facts, I have the bullshit meter set on sensitive.

JanforGore,

Are you serious? You act like a government bot or something. Are you a government bot? You continually tell people to 'prove themselves' and 'give perspective', which tells me one thing: you don't understand the basic structure and purpose of an argument.

Tell me, because I'm very curious, what exactly do you do to 'save the environment'? What do you do? I'd love to know, because you won't let up on other peoples' perspectives on here, so there must be something pretty amazing that you're doing for the environment to warrant such an attitude.

The bills for doing NOTHING will be much greater , and not just $$$$$$ wise. PERSPECTIVE please.

What a joke,people won't wake up to this scam until the bills start coming in,which will be on the way very soon.

Well sure it will be, if you sit there and let it happen. And morality isn't a "cute" thing to talk about. It is what the sustainability of this planet now depends on. Unfortunately, for all of us this was taken from being a moral issue to a political issue, which was the big mistake.

Morality is a 'cute' thing to talk about, but the reality of the situation is that the 'real' polluters WILL be subject to cap and trade, they WILL be able to pay to pollute as much as they do now, and it WILL be the poor and middle classes as well as the third world that suffers under the brunt of this scheme.

Polluters should pay a direct charge for all environmental damage. No trading of funny money and carbon credits. Hammer them until they respond.

The only reason you and others don't "believe" it is because you hide behind a political grudge as an excuse to not believe it because you think it absolves you from doing anything about it. Right? I didn't let a newspaper article or any one person (including Al Gore) brainwash me about this. Al Gore is simply carrying a crucial message that scientists have been trying to get to people for more than thirty years. I post about this because I went and got the knowledge about it and see the facts of it. Those like you who continue to push this 'New World Order' rhetoric regarding our planet may, and I repeat "may" have some credibility when it comes to governments actually wasting time regarding this continuing in order to use the effects of it for their own agenda, but to continually try to brainwash people into thinking that this isn't happening is grossly negligent and disengenuous, and frankly, I'm tired of going around and around about it.

You want to be irresponsible when it comes to actually being a true free thinking individual and seeing what is hapening for yourself, fine. When your children come to you and ask how we could allow the world to get the way it is in not standing up to the status quo, you tell them it was because of your retiscence to see the reality because you were too involved in your Al Gore hate and trying to look superior in ignoring the FACTS.

The socalled "New World Order" you speak of doesn't want to do ANYTHING about this. A tax on the very status quo causing this is not something they would want in my view, because it effects them. They are more content I believe in allowing this to get even worse in order to kill off as many people as possible and force starving nations to accept their GM crap. You need to more concerned with the privitization of our resources than this. A carbon tax actually goes to the source of it, it will not seek to tax you, but them. Only if those industries paying that tax choose to dismiss you by passing it on to you will it then be a tax, and it is then THEY you need to direct your ire to. Why do you think it isn't even being considered by the Obama administration? Why do you think we are still at a virtual standstill regarding government action on this? They are on the side of the very industries polluting this planet and looking to skirt responsibility for it!

It is those outside the system calling for this carbon tax because we seek accountability and the end (or at the very least a mitigation) of the destruction of our planet which will lead to our eventual destruction down the line who are on the right side of history.

Bottomline and the moral to this is :

Polluters must pay or change how they deal with this planet. We must demand it.

Anything less than that is immoral.

From the article:

This same shell game informs many of the cap-and-trade practices as opposed to the simple moral principle that he who does the harm to the earth must also pay for it directly. In place of such a direct penalty this moral obligation cannot be traded or auctioned off to some other entity, including poor developing countries, who are paid off to proportionally reduce their carbon production in place of the original carbon perpetrators. As Archbishop Tutu recently wrote: "The polluter must pay."

A direct penalty fee or tax, on the other hand, let us say $50 for every ton of carbon dioxide emitted, is a just way of reversing the destructive carbon path. It represents the environmental version of making up with all the bullied smaller kids in the global sand box. Instead of the questionable method of paying off another company or even bribing poor people to carry the load of the fossil fuel addiction of "developed" societies, the proceeds of such a tax could be equitably redistributed to the general public. The beneficiaries of the tax would include low income people, the elderly, single parents, the disabled and the middle class. It comes as no surprise that poor people and people of color have been strong supporters of a carbon tax over cap - and - trade solutions. Such a tax would also leap frog over the lobbyists and carbon traders whom cap - and -trade would make millionaires.

A carbon tax also has numerous practical advantages. These include a certain simplicity ,which would facilitate implementing such a tax rapidly and without protracted rule making. We cannot afford delays as we fight the environmental clock. It is also transparent, whereas a cap - and - trade process is more subject to manipulation and becoming another Ponzi scheme keeping the bottom line hidden from the public. The tax is also predictable, which offers great advantages to the business and commercial community. One hopes that these advantages will outweigh the misgivings, which legislators have about anything with the word "tax" in it as they consider the new bills before them.

The primary contributors to such a carbon fee would be the oil and coal companies and even enterprises indirectly dependent on fossil fuel . They would also include a hopefully more enlightened citizenry who would in effect be paying for their own emissions at the gas pump and the check out line but would also be benefiting by the proceeds. They would come to understand, as in many other countries, that higher gasoline prices will encourage the use of public transportation, bicycles and a more sustainable life style. We do so in the name of the earth and for our children and grandchildren. To them we might still leave a restored verdant earth home instead of a sterile moonscape planet devoid of life and hope.