John Dingell
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Grist tries (unsuccessfully) to find out Rep. John Dingell’s climate and energy plans
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair John Dingell (D-Mich.) spoke yesterday at an event sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation — “I Fish, I Hunt, I Vote Conservation” — where he talked up conservation efforts and the common ground Democrats have with sportsmen. We tried to get Dingell, who is notoriously tight-lipped, to tell us […]
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Dingell issues another glimpse at where he stands on climate legislation
The world is still waiting with bated breath for climate legislation from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where chair John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee chair Rick Boucher (D-Va.) are supposedly collaborating on bill. In the meantime, the committee has been issuing a series of “white papers” on climate legislation. Last […]
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Monday links
As promised, here’s yet another bunch of links for your leisurely perusal: Fortune writer Adam Lashinsky has a great round-up from the Brainstorm Green conference. My only beef is with this, about Lomborg: Even if you believe that global warming is an abject crisis, I simply reject the argument that it’s a bad idea to […]
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Dingell takes his ‘hybrid tax’ off the table
The carbon tax camp lost a powerful congressional voice yesterday when Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) announced he was taking "off the table" the hybrid carbon tax proposal he floated last fall that featured a national carbon fee, supplemental increases in taxes on gasoline and aviation fuel, and a reduction in the mortgage interest deduction for super-large houses.
In a prepared statement, the Michigan lawmaker, who for much of his 54 years in Congress has chaired the House Energy & Commerce Committee, reiterated that "economists and other experts continue to inform us that a carbon tax is the most effective and efficient way at getting at the problem of global warming." Dingell also noted that his online poll query, "Do you approve of the idea of a carbon tax?," earned a "Yes" from 61 percent of the 2,900 respondents.
In his statement, which was first reported yesterday in The Hill, Dingell pointed to rising gas prices and the gathering recession, saying, "Times have changed; our economy has taken a hard downward turn and now is not the time for us to put any additional financial burden on the working families of Michigan or this nation."
The irony is that a revenue-neutral carbon tax would not act as a drag on economic activity, since the return of the tax revenues to Americans via tax-shifting or dividend rebates would fully offset the higher costs of fuels and energy.
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Dingell to debut House climate bill in April
Dingell says he’ll release a draft of a House climate change bill for comment and feedback in mid-April (sub rqd).
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Notable quotable
"Jack [Murtha] and other senior leaders now all march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi, to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous Speaker. And I’m surprised by that. I think of John Dingell and the energy business. This is a hot item right now. But I don’t see John Dingell driving […]
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If Dingell’s your Rep., tell him what you want
Are you a constituent of Michigan Rep. John Dingell? Via the grammatically challenged but well-meaning Think Global: Act Dingell, you can let him know you’d like him to show genuine leadership on energy and climate. Whatever else Dingell may be — and I expect we’ll be having that argument again before the year’s out — […]
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Big Green savages Dingell’s carbon tax
"Man always kills the thing he loves," wrote naturalist Aldo Leopold in the environmentalist bible, A Sand County Almanac. Leopold was referring to Americans' destruction of the wilderness, but he could have been describing the green establishment's hostile reaction to the "hybrid carbon tax" proposed by Michigan Rep. John Dingell last month.
Dingell's tax package, combining a carbon-busting tax on fossil fuels, a surtax on gasoline and jet fuel, and a phase-out of subsidies for sprawl homes, should have been greeted by environmentalists like the Second Coming. Extrapolated to 2025, the carbon tax alone would cut annual CO2 emissions by 1.3 billion metric tons (a sixth of current emissions) and curb U.S. oil usage by 2.8 millions barrels a day (mbd). With Dingell's petrol surcharge, the savings swell to nearly 1.6 billion metric tons of CO2 and 4.5 mbd, more than the entire oil output of Iran.
Further savings would come from abolishing the tax-deductibility of mortgage interest on houses larger than 4,200 square feet, a loophole that has underwritten millions of McMansions on America's SUV-crazed exurban fringe. (Smaller houses down to 3,000 square feet would also lose some deductions, on a sliding scale.) Taken as a whole, Dingell's proposal would be a giant step toward what Friends of the Earth terms "decarbonizing the tax code." It would also embody the cardinal sustainability precept that keeps Europe's carbon footprint at half of ours: energy prices must tell the truth, even if it requires taxing fuels.
Alas, with the lone exception of FoE, leading Big Green groups have gone after Dingell's proposed bill like a clear-cutter on crank.
