SACRAMENTO
(CBS/AP) — The
state Senate leader on Thursday proposed a tax on consumer fuel
purchases of gasoline, oil, diesel, ethanol and natural gas, with the
money raised diverted to mass transit projects and households making
less than $75,000 annually.
The
plan by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, would
not create an additional tax, however. Instead, it would alter how
money is raised and spent under a provision of California’s landmark
2006 greenhouse gas emissions law, known as AB32.
Rhys
Williams, Steinberg’s press secretary, emailed KCAL9’s Dave Bryan and
said, “It’s not a gas tax. He’s not raising gas taxes. Prices on fuels
are set to rise, unpredictably, when the cap-and-trade program expands
to cover fuels in 2015. Instead, the senator proposes replacing this
expansion with a stable tax on carbon.”
Environmental
and business groups immediately opposed Steinberg’s plan, and
Republican lawmakers questioned whether it could pass the Legislature.
It
would impose an estimated 15-cents-a-gallon carbon tax on fuel next
year, offsetting an indirect tax that will be imposed in 2015 under the
existing law that helped establish the nation’s largest carbon-trading
marketplace.
The
state’s current cap-and-trade program applies only to industrial
plants. It allows companies with higher emissions of greenhouse gases
to buy pollution credits from companies that have found a way to lower
their emissions below a certain threshold.
But
next year, the cap-and-trade program is scheduled to be extended to the
producers of carbon-based consumer fuels. In turn, that will raise
prices at the pump by an uncertain level.
Steinberg
said his proposal would raise the per-gallon carbon tax to an estimated
24 cents by 2020, which he said would still be lower than the
40-cents-a-gallon price hike that is possible under AB32. He
acknowledged, however, that by 2029 his proposed carbon tax would be
higher than the upper projected limit under the current law.
Either
tax will sting motorists at the pump as a necessary way to lower fuel
consumption and discourage the emission of gases blamed for causing
global warming, Steinberg said.
“On
the issue of climate change, we have no choice: We must reduce the
amount of carbon we put in the air, and that will come with a price,”
he said. “Nothing is free.”
[Full Baloney Pony]
ALASKA
WINS!
