No April Fool: Coal Industry Asks For $1 Billion Tax On Fossil Fuels
No April Fool: Coal Industry Asks For $1 Billion Tax On Fossil Fuels
David Sassoon’s April Fool’s post at Solve Climate, Exxon & Peabody Energy Issue Call For Stiff Carbon Tax, claims that the CEOs of the largest oil and coal companies wrote a “letter to the White House and Congressional leadership today urging immediate adoption of a stiff tax on carbon” but concludes “happy April Fools to one and all.”
In a strange twist, the coal industry did in fact send a letter yesterday to Congress asking for a tax on carbon. A letter to Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) from the United Mine Workers of America and the National Mining Association — the lobbying organization for Peabody and other coal companies supports the Environmental Protection Agency proposal “that the Congress create a ‘Carbon Capture and Storage Early Deployment Fund’ supported by a modest fee on fossil-fueled electric generation to assist in raising the funds and defraying the risks associated with developing CCS technologies” at “approximately $1 billion per year.” The EPA working group estimated such a fee would increase electricity prices approximately 0.6%.
So Peabody’s lobbyists actually did call for a $1 billion tax on fossil fuels — so long as the proceeds go to the coal industry.
One Response to “No April Fool: Coal Industry Asks For $1 Billion Tax On Fossil Fuels”
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Not only that, they are charging the American people for the externalities of their dirty industry and for R&D they should have done ages ago instead of financing climate deniers.
CCS doesn’t deserve a dime of our money (and by our I mean the millennials’ money since I assume the cost of this will just be another addition to the huge debts that Babyboomers are leaving us). The carbon tax should go to energy efficiency programs (with jobs as pathways out of poverty), our “cleanest source of energy” (as the Alliance to Save Energy would say).
April 4th, 2008 at 2:49 am