Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson is having a rough couple of weeks. Polls show Johnson gained little, if any, ground on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in August, and now many of those who support him or who have been considering throwing their support behind him have bailed on Johnson after he suggested during a recent CNBC interview he is “open” to supporting a carbon tax.
Under a carbon-tax scheme, businesses, power plants and/or individuals are taxed based on the amount of carbon-dioxide-emitting energy they consume. The theory behind the plan is if those who use a lot of energy, especially large businesses, are forced to pay more for electric power and gasoline, they will likely use less energy or buy more energy-efficient appliances, machinery and more-fuel-efficient vehicles.
Johnson says he believes catastrophic “man-caused” global warming is occurring and that a carbon “fee” is one “free-market solution” that could help save the planet.
Even if it is accepted catastrophic man-made global warming is now underway — a claim many scientists dispute — Johnson’s “solution” could have a disastrous effect on the nation’s economy and would likely drive energy prices to all-time highs. For some, the economic tradeoff may be considered worthwhile, but it is more than a little bizarre for a self-described libertarian to suggest the answer to any problem is to enact a massive government taxing scheme that would almost certainly be regulated by a substantial and centralized bureaucratic regime.
All this hasn’t gone unnoticed among Johnson supporters and others who have been rooting for the candidate’s success in a presidential election year offering few pro-liberty policy solutions. A slew of bad press has made the past week the worst one faced by Johnson’s campaign yet, with many labeling Johnson a “far-left” candidate disguised under the Libertarian Party banner.
Opposition to Johnson’s carbon tax has been so swift and unforgiving, Johnson quickly reversed course on the plan, saying at an August 25 rally in New Hampshire, “If any of you heard me say I support a carbon tax … Look, I haven’t raised a penny of taxes in my political career. … We were looking at — I was looking at — what I heard was a carbon fee which from a free-market standpoint would actually address the issue and cost less. I have determined that, you know what, it’s a great theory but I don’t think it can work, and I’ve worked my way through that.”
Even Hillary Clinton, who has called on the nation to produce one-third of its electricity using renewable energy by 2027, says she won’t back a tax on carbon-dioxide because, according to Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, “the politics of this are toxic.” Podesta recently reversed course slightly on this, suggesting in early August a President Clinton would consider a carbon tax if Congress sent a proposal her way, but “tight now we’ve not proposed a carbon tax.”
The politics of a carbon tax are undoubtedly “toxic” — as Johnson will most certainly tell you — and for good reason. Australia enacted a carbon tax in 2012 that charged $21.50 for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted, increasing annually, by the nation’s power plants. The tax was lauded by Democrats and President Barack Obama, who said it was created for the “good of the world,” but the policy was such an epic disaster that Australia repealed it in 2014 after household electricity prices skyrocketed by 15 percent in a single year and unemployment rolls rose by 10 percent.
Carbon taxes are often sold as a tax on rich businesses and heavy polluters, but the truth is low-income and middle-income people are the ones who suffer the most, because power companies and industry pass on their costs to consumers.
Gary Johnson, who has long characterized himself as a champion of the free market, should have known better than to get behind an obviously flawed and anti-free-market policy. Apparently, he didn’t, and now it may very well cost him a significant chunk of his support and any hope of capturing the White House in November.
12 responses to Gary Johnson’s Carbon Tax Fiasco Could Sink His Campaign
Gary Johnson is a honest man, and would be a much saner choice than the other two, people are asked questions all the time and the press seems to focus on a “got you ” point.
Fact is that Gary Johnson is about finding common SOLUTIONS, take a breath and look at the whole picture people!
Hey, man. I have a bridge to sell you.
Such a snappy come back,
Gary Johnson is about finding common SOLUTIONS, take a breath and look at the whole picture people!
It’s quite simple, really.
Someone who says they are a Libertarian who then proposes a government tax is, by definition not a Libertarian.
I don’t care how you label it, a tax is theft of property by the government which is about as bad as it gets.
Who nominated this guy?
Is there anything left of the Libertarian Party that Bob LeFevre would recognize??
If a meteor was hurtling at the Earth, would a Libertarian say “let the market figure it out” ? That’s the reality of unbridled emissions pumped into the atmosphere – the market won’t fix it. Like overfishing, without some regulation, companies will abuse the resource until it is ruined. There is simply no market incentive to do the right thing.
Libertarianism is about maintaining liberty without negatively affecting others. Many take a very naive view of economics. Realization of external costs, like those industrial emissions cause, is a sign of maturity. Making adjustments for these is not a contradiction of Libertarian principles. A carbon tax is a n attempt to correct a market that fails to account for an external cost, the negative effects of massive CO2 emissions into the atmosphere at a rate that disrupts its equilibrium.
Carbon fee and dividend will NOT hurt the poor. Because poorer people use less energy they would be better off. A carbon fee is the only way to save the planet. It’s not a matter of whether carbon pollution will be priced, just when. Go to the website of the citizens climate lobby to learn more.
Maybe you should rethink what you just said. Do poor people buy gasoline? Do poor people buy food? How about clothing? Do they heat and cool their homes? Start piling on a tax on energy and you’ll drive up the prices on everything.
Because poorer people use relatively less energy than wealthier people they get back a relatively larger dividend. Poorer people are better off with carbon fee and dividend. Pleasent read the REMI study on the citizens climate lobby website. But, yes, the heart of the idea is to drive up prices on goods that consume fossil fuels. Only way to preserve the habitability of the planet for our children.
With 17 layers of reinforcing bias in between the undergraduate who chooses to enter the climate field and the lay reporting of their research years later, there is no way to trust the climate field. Think: who chooses to enter the field in college? Any likely bias in that decision? Of course there is. Those who aren’t convinced already are less likely to pursue the field. And that process continues at each fork in the road, with those pre-convinced succeeding in the self-reinforcing process of academic success, grant writing success, publication success and attracting lay attention. 17 layers, each causing MORE bias in the final information that we in the lay world here. It is like exquisitely distilled information, sent through 17 filters before it comes to us. It is by absolutely certainty, UNTRUSTWORTHY.
But untrustworthy doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t occurring, or that CO2 isn’t contributing. It just means we absolutely must not trust the people who are telling us that it is and does. Might as well say marshmallows cause global warming. We should figure it out, and meanwhile not panic, because the whole thing is pile of turd on top of turd. But maybe there is a kernel of truth. And that is what Gary Johnson is open to, perhaps. I personally think global warming is happening, but it is not remotely caused by CO2, and storms aren’t increasing, nor will they. The fires in California and the flood in Louisiana aren’t caused by global warming. I am thrilled to have a warmer more verdant world with plants in the future no longer starving for CO2 that they need. I have zero fear of CO2 levels causing any real problem, for the CO2 all came from the atmosphere when the coal and oil was being made, and an enormous percentage of it is forever tied up in limestone, and will never get back into the atmosphere. Furthermore, we can ALWAYS cool the planet, with relative ease. But we have no way of ever warming the planet if an ice age starts to proceed again.
So Gary keeps his mind open. I think he recognizes that CO2 is dumped into a mandatory commons (the atmosphere). He recognizes that mandatory commons are going to get mismanaged by government. Taxes are part of the mismanagement. But until someone invents a way that the atmosphere is NOT a commons, government mismanagement of the atmosphere will occur. The first part of that mismanagement is the wasted funding of the “climate community” that has skewed their biases beyond any rational tolerance.
Trump-Johnson-Clinton Love (BP-DuPont-Shell) GMO Corn Mandate?
The Mother Jones quotes are from 2011 ! Johnson has more recently shown support for a carbon tax.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/22/libertarian-candidate-gary-johnson-says-most-of-gop-right-now-is-me.html
Ask yourself why someone would drag up quotes from 5 years ago when Johnson has very recently expressed opinions on the issue.
The “scientific” disagreement over climate change is coming primarily from the Heartland institute.
This is the same institution that, in the 1990s, worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to deny the health risks of secondhand smoke and lobbied against smoking bans.
WAKE UP.