Choke the carbon tax!

A tax on public enemy number one, carbon, was one of the more publicized ideas that came out of the United Nations (U.N.) climate conference in Bali, Indonesia. The obvious skewering about the incredible waste of people traveling to the conference aside, the idea of a global carbon tax is a horrible idea at best. I will not even touch the ongoing scientific debate about the existence of carbon dioxide induced planetary overheating; rather I will flay the tax on its lack of merits.

First out of the gate is the point that a carbon tax will not work as proposed. Taxing carbon will not reduce carbon emissions significantly. The major producers of carbon are wealthy enough to absorb the cost of any reasonable carbon tax. The costs will simply be passed on to the consumer, which will result in more expenive U.S. goods and services, which will result in people going elsewhere to purchase their goods and services, namely from people who buck the U.N.’s tax.

Bucking the U.N.’s tax? Preposterous, you might say, but it is possible. If the U.N. is to enforce and collect the tax, it can only do so to members of the U.N. Membership in the United Nations is voluntary, which means that all a state has to do is renounce membership in the U.N. to not be subject to U.N. conventions. There are states that are not members of the U.N. who are eligible to do so, namely, The Holy See (the state that runs Vatican City) and New Zealand. So any country whose membership in the U.N. is not worthwhile could easily produce carbon without being subject to carbon taxation.

There is also the problem that even U.N. member states do not abide by the resolutions of the U.N. The U.N. would have to develop some form of enforcement beyond the arbitrary force of the United States. It is not the job of the United States to be the U.N.’s executive branch. The U.N. would have to either be really good at sweet-talking governments to fork over money for something which they might not see a benefit in, or have a sufficiently strong deterrent force to ensure that member states toe the line on carbon taxation. The U.N. should not have a sufficiently strong deterrent force, else it becomes a de facto world government which should be much more thoughtfully and artfully constructed if it is to exist at all.

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power does not get much more absolute than making decisions that affect the entire world no matter how pure you assert your intentions are. The idea of a world government may attract idealists, but it should remain an ideal until everyone is an idealist following the same ideal. Until then, abuse will occur and abuse on the global scale is something that is simply intolerable. Even if you allow only idealists whose idealism is proven, you can still make decisions whose impact causes unintended consequences that weren’t accounted for.

Even if all member states were to behave and somehow the taxation system worked out nicely, the participation of the U.S. in the U.N. would become an open question. Currently it is advantageous for the United States to be a member of the U.N. The U.S. backs this up by funding 22% of the U.N.’s budget (part of which has not been paid recently). Add on a carbon tax whose result will incur a larger debt on the United States, and the United States will probably reconsider its participation in the U.N. Taxes are not something that goes over well in the U.S. and are often the downfall of those who openly support increases in them. Add the trouble that the United States has with the United Nations in getting its way and the United States has little reason to support the U.N. in any way other than having an outlet to most nations. Not having the world’s sole superpower in the U.N. reduces its effectiveness to virtually none at all.

Given that the logistics are all worked out, there remains a more fundamental question about the authority and meaning to tax. The membership dues that the United States pays to the U.N. are something voluntary. A tax is a law whose effect is to make mandatory whatever is specified independent of participation or membership. All persons working in the United States are required to pay taxes if they work in the United States. This is within the scope of the United States because it is requiring an action based on citizenship or presence inside the country’s boundaries. The United Nations does not have the jurisdiction to require action independent of membership as it does not have a territorial jurisdiction. This implies that this is not a global carbon tax, it is merely an additional form of dues to the U.N. assessed not by ability to pay but by carbon output.

A carbon tax is not something that should be supported by any sane member of the United Nations. There are significant fundamental problems involving ineffectiveness, enforceability, U.S. support, and jurisdiction, just to name a few. There are still problems with the propriety of penalizing developing countries for the sins of those already developed, the existence of a problem, measurability, et cetera. Let’s try for something a little more effective like developing alternatives to carbon that improve upon their carbon equivalents, such that it is beneficial for reasons other than carbon output that will induce people to purchase green.