I am bemused by the reaction to my suggestion that we might tax to save the environment.
I think the need to tackle climate change is apparent by now.
But what amazes me is the lack of willing to accept that this might need taxes to change the way we organise our society.
As I argued in my book The Joy of Tax, tax is the strongest tool we have to shape the society that we live in. I believe that is true. In which case tax has to be used to shape the new world we have no choice but live in if we are to survive.
But there is a marked reluctance, even amongst commentators on this blog who tend to be open to new ideas, to think that this might be the case.
I cannot help but say that's depressing. It appears to be part of the whole paralysis that is afflicting us now. We know what we do not like - including tax. But we have no idea what we are willing to do to effect change.
We see this in politics. For example, Labour has no idea what to do on Brexit, and is fence-sitting as a result. The impartial are not enamoured as a consequence.
The Tories are torn asunder by differences on the same issue and are crippled as a result, and are haemorrhaging support.
The SNP can't decide on its intentions for a future Scottish currency, and are effectively postponing any decision, even though it is vital to their plans for independence.
All three major UK parties are then incapacitated by chronic indecision on key issues.
And in amongst this incapacity we need to address climate change: the biggest issue of our time. And the idea that we might use tax to change behaviour to assist the fundamental change that it demands of us and our society is apparently too much to ask.
In the circumstances the chance that we will face a massive climate catastrophe does appear to be quite extraordinarily high.
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People are getting tired and depressed by the constant resistance from the powers that be to any kind of change, so entrenched are the huge corporations with their lobbying power and backing by the fossil fuel billionaires and climate deniers. Even now with the wonderful wave of feeling from the Extinction Rebellion protests and the inspiration of Greta Thurnberg mobilising millions of young people world wide, Davos arrogance and complacency rules. This situation may only be temporary as more and more people are realizing that the Tories and business as usual hangers-on are gradually losing all credibility. There should be a lift to progressive spirits if the Tories have a thoroughly good trouncing in the local and European elections on May.
You suggested a transaction tax on ALL activity in a persons bank account to counter climate change. Talk about a blunt instrument missing the target. And you wonder why no one takes you seriously on this.
And you have not given a single suggestion as to why or what else should be done
Try harder, I suggest
My view is that tax – even as part of a raft of other policies to help the environment – is so badly misunderstood and briefed against in our society that we cannot expect to see any other reaction.
Tax continues to get a bad rap. I once engaged with someone over the benefits you speak of about tax in your book (TJOT). He just did not get it – and others don’t either. All they see is a financial cost to them personally.
It’s sad but true. It’s nothing to do with you or your writing or your ideas which are clear and well argued. Anti-tax sentiment is now deeply ingrained in our culture.
The best way to deal with taxes is to do what the Tories do; don’t tell ’em that you are going to put them up until you get into power.
I worry about your tax proposals not because of the proposals themselves but because you know what the reaction will be in most cases.
Also consider that the agency for delivering your ideas would be a Government of some form and Government is not trusted these days either.
It’s a sorry state of affairs I’m afraid.
We’ll fry alive unless the attitude changes
But maybe that’s what people want
Yes – I couldn’t agree more – it was that hot in Australia recently that something like thousands of flying foxes died in the heat being unable to cool themselves.
Increasingly people don’t seem to know what they want or in knowing what they want (low or no taxes) are not helped to be made aware of the consequences.
I don’t think anyone really wants to die from a failing environment – they just fail to make the causal links or put their own level of immediate comfort before anything else.
For example people have loved the recent weather because it was warm. The fact that it is not meant to be so warm goes completely over their heads and is celebrated instead as a natural event.
All of this is no excuse for giving up of course with your suggestions (combined with other good ideas).
But look at the extinction rebellion – quite a statement and a source of hope. I feel bad that I have not resorted to civil disobedience myself.
I’ve argued for taxes instead…
If people could be persuaded that taxes don’t fund spending, they might be more accepting of The Joy of Tax – tax being there to tackle bad behaviour and to protect them against inflation.
(I paraphrase)
They might then wish to elect a government on the basis of policies that benefit all, since they will understand that “their money” is not being stolen to help others.
How could the Daily Mail argue against that?
(rhetorical question, they would)
I do sense that much of the resistance comes from people’s reluctance to change their habits. A particularly sore point for many is the idea of being encouraged to change eating habits, i.e. reducing or eliminating animal products.
The U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) warned that we only have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.
The report predicted that as the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations.
Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study.
UNEP estimates it would cost the United States at least $100 billion to protect its east coast alone.
Shifting climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheatlands.
Why don’t people listen to these warnings?
I don’t know
As if political life isn’t already complicated enough, it is reported that Jeremy is (allegedly) influenced by Piers – https://larouchepub.com/pr/2019/190422_rips_climate_change.html. Who or what to believe? However, of one thing I’m reasonably certain and that is the human species is indeed capable of committing ecocide – not consciously of course but through ignorance and brain-washing by the corrupt political equivalents of cult-leader Jim Jones. I hope the Green Party leadership is collaborating closely with its Continental counterparts.
Piers Corbyn is a climate change denier but I doubt that Jeremy is. I’ve heard him speak on climate change demonstrations and he spoke sense. Labour Party policy on climate change is, of course, inadequate – like almost every other party’s policies. JC feels he has to appease the unions who speak for high-carbon jobs hence the support for airport expansion.
Then he needs some principles
Paul Smith: It’s not hard to see why people “don’t people listen to these warnings”. It is, as the sociologists say, overdetermined.
There’s the lies of the fossil fuel apologists and the failure of the media to confront them.
There’s the fact that the increase in tax and state (ie democratic) control of the economy runs counter to the ruling neoliberal narrative.
There’s the nasty fact that many of us in rich countries will have to give up things we value NOW to protect other people in the future or in distant lands.
And there’s our evolved biological nature – alert to immediate threats especially from other people. Adaptable to slow environmental changes since through most of history nothing could be done about them.
Our job is to make the case for truth and stress the health and welfare benefits of making the green transition
” We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Albert Einstein
Whether taxes or civil disobedience there will be people who don’t like them or take them seriously and will limit their efficacy. Both have positives, both have negatives as approaches.
We are a planet obsessed with the notion of freedom at no cost. And everyone still wants it.
A mixed economy of pressure and ideas will be what makes the change – that or something really calamitous from the environment.
I expect it will be a slow realisation and then harsher measures being brought in towards the end – whatever end that might be.
I’m not sure that the aversion is to introducing taxes per se, or a failure to recognise that taxing something can change behaviour, just that the unintended consequences of any given tax proposal needs to be carefully thought through.
I do appreciate that you have just been throwing out some ideas, and by your own admission, these have not been hugely thought through yet.
Go on then: cut the climate denying excuses and say what the unintended consequence is
Right now all the objections are either ‘we don’t want trees’ (amazingly) or ‘we don’t like tax’ apart from the ‘LVT can do it all’ response, which is glaringly obviously wrong.
So, now let’s have some real arguments because th3 intended argument of not acting is we burn the planet
I have not said all I have suggested is fully worked through. That is obvious. And I am more than happy to hear refinement, but apart from a request to respect a wider range of habitats (which was a good suggestion) I have yet to hear a reasoned response to these ideas
And that’s pretty disappointing
Morning Richard,
As is my wont, I started the day, as always, reading your blog posts in an attempt to wake up my day.
Can I respectfully suggest that your depression displaces your power by assessing our solution to climate change is dependent on the outmoded first-past-the -post, two-party electoral system.
What are you doing about climate change?
Bugger the Tories, the Labour party and the SNP. What can we do?
Here’s my personal to-do list:
1. Vote Green, my next-door neighbour is a Green councillor.
2. I don’t have the resources at 71 to install photo voltaics (at least not yet), but I’m researching solar panels to heat our domestic hot water.
3. We have a hybrid petrol/electric car, when the infrastructure is more established we may go all-electric.
4. I tend a small garden that now has vegetable plots and we have planted four trees, one plum, one cherry, two apple.
5. Lobby for PR.
6. Lobby for tax incentives for individuals who invest in green technology for their personal use.
That will keep me busy for a year or two.
What the Labour Party and Tories have demonstrated with their dithering over Brexit is that displacing personal responsibility, by voting for institutions whose rationale is access to power and re-election has had it’s day. Surely, a peaceful, thoughtful and intelligent response is to assert our personal power, where we can.
Back the Greens, do they understand the spend then tax issues. Could you help them formulate a funding plan for the Green New Deal?
Despair based on the antics of our so-called political parties is surely a waste of your considerable talents. Figure out what you personally can achieve and go for it. What we can do is do…
Wise words
And yes, we do need to take control – and take it back from the failing leadership of our main political parties
And what I can do is make the case for taxes to save the environment
Amongst other things
I often think that less well off people feel powerless and as a consequence say what’s the point nothing will change anyway.
The better off people just think that government will save them it usually does.
The government see nothing as important as saving their own bacon even if it does mean catastrophe in the longer term that’s why wars happen too and keeping conglomerate businesses in their country at any cost is priority for modern governments what a sham.
Your idea of tax to save the planet, green tax, taxes that change priorities are fantastic only fools and selfish people would disagree with them but there are many around.
The SNP I believe are pretty much in favour but they still have to negotiate a separation from England which will be a negotiation with the same people the EU have been negotiation brexit with so they keep their cards close to their chest ,no point preparing the opposition in advance .
Modern economies are a disaster everyone even our children for all the time they have been on the planet knows it.
Individualism is the order of the day a world where everyone looks out for themselves even government officials at the very top look at trump ,may,farage,Mogg all preaching one thing whilst doing the opposite for themselves.
Your opening three paras may well be right
But we have to soldier on…
Thanks
Maybe if governments could stop and or revoke all the tax allowances and concessions given to our most polluting industries that could be a step in the right direction. It might even concentrate minds on the abuses inherent in that sort of subsidy.
I accept that point…. I will add it to the list to do
I’m sorry but all I’m seeing here is a desire for something that isn’t there in the amounts it needs to be on the climate issue: rationality.
It is the same old issue. Do we live in a rational world or not? Or is it both?
The world is actually more irrational than we’d like to think (even more definitely if you buy into the ‘rational self-interest’ bollocks of the Neo-libs).
So, given this, are there better ways to talk about taxation on this issue? Maybe the approach needs to be rather like a male preying mantis onto his much bigger female mate – very cautious and slow otherwise forget it.
It is not the ideas. It is how they are put across. That is the new battle ground. Presentation.
We don’t need new ideas. We know what the problems are because we’ve been acknowledging them for long enough – since I was boy for goodness sake.
This whole anti-pro-environment ethos is based on a fear of change – a loss of comfort – what is familiar. That is an emotional response and it needs handling carefully.
That’s all I (and I think others) am saying.
OK – given time is not on our side what would you be doing?
Oh dear…………….black dogs and all that………………
Just keep doing what you are doing here – getting it out there – you’ve had successes with country by country reporting etc.,. Don’t lose heart – just keep at it like you have been doing. It’s a matter of persistence and time. You know this.
As for me, I try to raise these issues every time I talk to people. And by engaging and coming up against indifference I try to reflect on what I said, how I said it and try to apply the new insight the next time I have the opportunity. Keep trying until the message is refined.
But I still think that surreptition and incrementalism is what has to be used when taxing for the environment – as you have said we tend to tax the wrong things.
You know – I think the answer is to cut a tax in one area and add it to those that harm the environment? Maybe that is the answer? Some thing for something?
My work in the public sector is doing enough – we fit solar panels to all our properties for obvious reasons; and reinvest the savings; we are now going towards heat source pumps, electric car charging points (in Council Housing!!), better levels of insultation – I’m in the process of procuring a lot of this stuff.
On a personal basis with the environment, I have been cycling in all weathers, using the train as well as much as possible and keeping the car at home and also keep my speed low if I use it.
I’m whittling myself off milk, we are increasingly using substitutes and we do not eat red meat at all., We’ve always recycled everything and my partner has found one of those whole food shops where you can take your own containers (from empty jars etc.,) and fill up with goodies without having to create empty cartons. We do lot of home cooking – using our own ingredients – rather than buying processed food.
Today I was given a gift by a colleague of some home made roasted coffee beans ran by the local clergy whose social entrepreneurial project employ drug addicts to process the coffee!! It’s delicious and I’ll buy some next time – but looking out for things like that and supporting them all contribute (turns out that the vicar roasts the coffee in the Church!!. He says it makes the most marvellous incense for the congregation!).
I have a battle to fight this year though because my kids want to go somewhere warm on the aeroplane rather than camping in the Lake District. I hate flying and we usually take the train into Europe and save money by booking as early as possible – so the outcome on that one is unclear as we have not booked anything yet.
So that is what I/we are trying. We’ve just put together two raised beds for the garden for lettuces and strawberries and yes – we are lucky enough to have an allotment up the road where we live which we share with another family and we all do our bit to keep that going. All it needs around it now is a model railway (hint hint).
PSR
Thanks
I have to remember ‘nil illegitimate carborundum’ I.e don’t let the bastards grind you down
Unless it’s the coffee, of course
I appreciated your comment
Richard
Perhaps the problem is the word “Tax”. I am always impressed by the amount raised by the TV charity events – Red Nose Day – about £1 for every person in the country was willingly donated. So perhaps if the words ‘contribution ‘ or ‘you own a tree’ or ‘donate an hour of your work to saving your earth home’ would allow people to feel positively engaged in the struggle rather than penalised. After all ‘dig for victory ‘ worked in the war. So much of the strategy has to be how the government frames the changes needed. Turn a stick into a carrot!
No: tax is essential. There is nothing voluntary about what is required: the change has to impact everyone
Resistance to taxation is as old as civilisation, probably because most of the time tax is associated with exploitation of the weaker elements in society, and cop out for the rich. Basically it is historically associated with oppression.
Even educated, environmentally & socially aware ctizens will resist it. I don’t think it’ll be easy to counter that engrained resistance.
Just look at Macron’s dismal record with his fuel tax in France. Riots, vandalism, and blockages ensued. Yet the COP21 results had just been very publicly applauded by almost everyone.
I won’t go into details of why this experiment failed here, but if you’re going to tax, a few things have to be very clear: it has to be very well explained and trialled so it’s given time to be understood, and supported by measures compensating for loss of income. It has to be fair, proved to be fair. Absolutely no cop out or loopholes for the rich.
Rational thinking stops when the State asks for more money. Even though the State is us. Go figure. It’s like a Pavlovian reaction, except that instead of salivating, people start biting.
I doubt there’s a way out of this reaction, certainly not in the short term, so we should just go ahead and do it, explaining and educating all the way. Some progress will be made.
Just as an example, not life-changing but significant: the plastic bag tax in Wales. It took 3 months of education by shops and TV adds before the 5p tax was widely accepted. It took another month or so before almost no one needed to pay it because everyone brought their own recycled or canvas bags.
English people coming for holidays were the only ones complaining, they had not been weaned. Now everyone here is glad of the enforced change, they all agree there’s less waste and pollution. Just a tiny thing, but it’s worked.
I think you won’t get everyone to like taxes, ever. Just do it. Educate, prepare, by all means. Some will get it, most will resist. Tough. We have no choice.
Your ideas may need tweaking as you said, but they make sense.
In a small way the plastic bag charge is useful proof of concept
Thanks for your comment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl-FbtHmZhU
Just saw this, very much to the point IMO.
From a brief look it looks good