Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is skittish about endorsing a “carbon tax,” despite her party laying out an aggressive environmental platform that supports enacting a nationwide fee on fossil fuel emissions.
The tax would be levied on carbon dioxide emissions that many scientists blame for driving manmade global warming.
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Clinton’s staff said the reason for her wariness stems from lack of support, not surprisingly, in the Republican-controlled Congress for such a tax. Congress would have to approve any new nationwide tax.
“Democrats believe that climate change is too important to wait for climate deniers in Congress to start listening to science,” Clinton’s energy policy adviser, Trevor Houser, said Tuesday on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Houser added that “while it’s always important to remain open to a conversation about how to address this issue with Congress, we need a plan that we can implement day one, because it’s too important to wait, and we need to focus on those things as well.” He spoke at a policy event held by the Washington Post in Philadelphia.
He told attendees that Clinton’s climate change policy likely will support executive actions such as President Obama’s climate regulations she has said she will support if elected in November.
But the regulations are being heavily contested in the courts, with the Supreme Court halting the centerpiece of the rules, the Clean Power Plan, in February. The plan directs states to cut their carbon emissions a third by 2030.
She may have to go forward with her own policy if the Obama plan is vacated, delayed or trimmed by the courts. Oral arguments in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals are to be held Sept. 27, about five weeks before the elections.
Grover Norquist, head of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, said it’s clear that Clinton won’t endorse a carbon tax because it would significantly weaken her chances in the general election.
“When counting to 270 — the number of electoral votes needed to win the presidency — the Republicans may have already won the election in five short words: ‘We oppose any carbon tax,'” Norquist said Tuesday.
He said it’s important to see the differences between the Democratic and GOP platforms.
The Democratic Party endorses “a carbon tax on the American people.” He said the carbon tax language added to the platform at the last minute is expansive, saying Democrats believe carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases blamed for causing global warming “should be priced to reflect their negative externalities.”
Norquist said the policy would hurt Clinton in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania that are both coal producers and centers of the fracking boom.
“Note the overlap between new fracking states — Pennsylvania, Ohio and Colorado — and the swing states to reach 270 for any candidate,” he said.
The Republican platform flat-out rejects the idea. “We oppose any carbon tax,” the GOP platform reads.
