Macron scraps fuel tax rise in face of gilets jaunes protests

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

The French government has bowed to gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protesters and abandoned the fuel tax rise that has sparked more than three weeks of violence and seen parts of central Paris in flames.

Just a day after announcing a six-month freeze on the eco-tax, the Elysée Palace declared it was dropping the measure from the 2019 budget.

Hours earlier, the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, had said his government was prepared to reconsider the tax if other solutions could be found to make the transition to cleaner fuel without hitting people in their pockets, as he spoke to MPs during a debate on next year’s finance bill in the Assemblée Nationale.

In a statement on Wednesday evening, the Elysée said that Philippe and the president, Emmanuel Macron, “both wished the increase in the carbon tax be removed” from the budget for 2019.

-snip-

Kim Willsher in Paris
Wed 5 Dec 2018 21.48 GMT


Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/05/france-wealth-tax-changes-gilets-jaunes-protests-president-macron

[Loki Liesmith]

1. Bad news

[CurtEastPoint]

2. How is this bad news?

[nycbos]

4. Carbon emissions are still increasing.

[Loki Liesmith]

8. If France can't make carbon taxes work

No one can.

[progree]

3. Monsieur, I really don't think we are going to stop this "without hitting people in their pockets"

Last edited Wed Dec 5, 2018, 09:23 PM - Edit history (2)

You, we, us collectively are going to have to not only stop the rise, but bring emissions down to pretty close to zero.

htps://

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142216927

Between 2014 and 2016, global CO2 emissions remained largely flat, leading to hopes that the world was beginning to turn a corner. Those hopes have been dashed. In 2017, global emissions grew 1.6 percent.

The rise in 2018 is projected to be 2.7 percent.

GRAPH showing India, EU, U.S., China, Other from 1959 to present. It was about 9.5 billion tons of CO2 in 1959, now 37 billion tons.

Projected change of 2018 from 2017: India: +6.3%, EU: -0.7%, U.S. + 2.5%, China: +4.7%, Other: +1.8%, World total: +2.7%

[NickB79]

5. We can't stop global warming with cheap gasoline

If we can't cut fossil fuel use drastically in the next few years, our grandkids will be living in a world closer to Mad Max than the Jetsons.

[Scruffy1]

6. Fuel taxes are never popular.

There are other ways of cutting of cutting CO2 emissions. Taxes on gasoline, telephone, sales taxes, , real estate lotteries and a myriad of others are regressive taxes. Sometimes it all in what it's called. Here in the good old USA we call one form of lowering the tax for the wealthy a capital gains "tax", when it's really an exclusion. If the goal is to reduce gas an diesel, then we need incentives for not using it. People always respond to better with a carrot than they do with a stick.

[progree]

7. "If the goal is to reduce gas and diesel, then we need incentives for not using it."

Such as?

The only idea that comes to mind is a tax credit for electric cars (but they are still quite very expensive) and subsidies for using public transportation (which is already heavily subsidized) ...

And the truth is that electric cars, at least on the current grid, are not that "green" since the incremental electricity they use comes mostly from a fossil fuel power plant which is about 35% efficient. That is reduced a further 10% in transmission losses, then loses another 10% in losses in round trip battery charging / discharging. Elecrric motors are highly efficient, but not 100%. So there's maybe another 10% or so in losses there.

A lot of the carbon tax proposals are revenue neutral, meaning that everyone subject to them gets a fixed size rebate -- the same amount for everyone. So high fuel use people end up with a rebate that is less than what they paid in the carbon tax, while low fuel use people end up coming out ahead.

[Jeroen]

9. In the EU these kind of policies

are dangerous because they open the door to right wing extremism. Tensions are already high because of rising costs and flat wages. These policies are viewed as tax hikes regardless compensations.

That said, industry, agriculture and commercial transportation are by far the biggest contributors of CO2.

[progree]

10. "industry, agriculture and commercial transportation are by far the biggest contributors

of CO2"

Sounds like us, the consumers, are responsible for pretty much all of it. We buy the products of industry, agriculture, and "commercial" transportation. It's easy and fun and even, some would say, "progressive" to blame it all on "the other", "industry", and/or "capitalism" as some do, but I look around, and I see a huge huge problem looking at my own and neighbors' lifestyles.