Nelson Otto
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
It starts out as all climate alarmist's publications with social context. Social context is used to enhance conformity to and the setting of social norms. The process is simple to create the illusion that it is a social normality that climate change is a top priority of the general population. Using the emotional need to conform to social norms to make one agree with climate change policies like the carbon fee/tax/dividend.
In May the Guardian had an interesting article about a study that found that climate crisis is more politically polarizing than abortion for U.S. voters. All registered voters ranked climate crisis as 17th on their list of concerns. Liberal Democrats listed it as third, conservative Democrats 8th, liberal/moderate Republicans 23rd, and conservative Republicans as 29th. According to Wikipedia there are around 100,00 members of the Citizen's Climate Lobby, which comes roughly .03 percent of the U.S. population. Wow, not so much of a social norm now is it.
CCL likes to claim that the carbon dividend will help the poor. There is one problem with this. The goal is to get people to reduce the use of cheap plentiful carbon fuels with an ever-increasing tax forcing us to use more expensive no emission alternatives. Here's the problem: As the tax goes up, use goes down. As people switch to no emission alternatives no more tax money going into the fund means no more money, and thus no more dividend. At the same time people will be using more expensive less reliable sources of energy ultimately hurting the very people it was supposed to help. For more information read a commentary in the Michigan institute entitled "Why a Carbon Tax is Bad for the Country."
One of the things not mentioned is what would happen if we stopped all CO2 emissions today. According to a paper published in 2013 in "Nature Climate change," stopping all CO2 emissions will not stop global warming. It may slow it for awhile but temperatures will rise again. Then we must also consider that China is the largest emitter of CO2 and is increasing its CO2 output. So a carbon dividend here is useless if not delusional. So contact your congressmen and women and tell them to vote "no" on the carbon tax.