A Force More Powerful Than Emissions Mandates or Carbon Taxes

I have written in previous articles about the ineffectiveness of government mandates in lowering carbon emissions. Recently, The Wall Street Journal published an article about a much more underhanded attempt to effectively implement a mandate through an unconstitutional, dishonest, back door carbon tax.

An “insidious carbon tax has been quietly advancing in county courthouses across the U.S. in the form of climate lawfare targeted almost exclusively at American industry,” the article reports. “Over the past few years, blue states and municipalities have filed dozens of tort suits in state courts against American energy companies claiming hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. … The plaintiffs insist they are suing for local damages the way any plaintiff might and aren’t trying to set global climate policy. But a few weeks ago, the mask slipped.”

The article quotes David Bookbinder, director of law and policy for the Environmental Integrity Project, who is representing one of the plaintiffs and who openly acknowledged that “Essentially the tort liability is an indirect carbon tax.” This, the Journal article points out, “confirms what critics of these suits have been saying all along. This litigation isn’t about compensation; it’s about coercion.”

The fact is, history has shown that coercion — whether through government mandates and protocols or through carbon taxes (underhanded or otherwise) — simply doesn’t work. For decades, governments around the world—including the government of the United States—have endeavored to pass legislation to combat climate change. World leaders have gathered at international summits and conventions, negotiating treaties and protocols. But international pressure and government mandates are simply not incentivizing countries or companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

But there are forces out there more powerful than any individual government or international consortium. Forces that can effect huge change, quickly. Those are the forces of the free market.

Now, imagine if we could take that massive power. Imagine there was a mechanism that could harness market forces to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide—while also benefitting businesses, the consumer, and the economy. No government mandated policies or regulations. Just the free market, doing what it does.

This is exactly what ICEMAN offers: a way to make reducing greenhouse gas emissions a tangible competitive advantage in the marketplace. This would have a far greater impact on reducing the global carbon footprint than any government-mandated policy. The laws of supply and demand would effect a change in the behavior of companies and even entire industries far more quickly than policy or regulation.

How? Consumer demand. With ICEMAN, consumers would have a science and math-based attribute—the Carbon Factor Index (CFI)—by which they could objectively and accurately assess the carbon footprint of every product. Consumers are already inclined to buy products they perceive to be greener, and to purchase from companies they perceive to be more environmentally responsible. As these tendencies become more and more mainstream, and as more consumers demand environmentally responsible products, the competitive advantage in the marketplace will go to those companies who do more to reduce their carbon footprints.

At the same time, ICEMAN will increase profit margins and reduce the costs of products—all while reducing carbon emissions. ICEMAN doesn’t incur any costs in and of itself, and it will actually save companies money. Making the adjustments necessary to earn a higher CFI value will actually reduce the cost of manufacturing products due to the energy-saving measures companies will need to implement to reduce their carbon footprint.

As I’ve written about in previous articles, it pays to adopt renewable energy. Solar panels take about seven to eight years to makeup their cost in electrical savings; the life span of solar panels is thirty years, so you get twenty-three years of free electricity! Hydroelectricity is also very cheap. I worked on a project in Massena, NY, which uses electricity from a hydroelectric grid. We bought, worked, and lived on a family farm there, and I discovered that our electricity prices were three cents per kilowatt hour—versus twenty-two cents per kilowatt hour in East Hampton!

With ICEMAN, there won’t be any mandate on what companies do with the money they save from investing in renewable energy. Companies can put those savings toward their bottom line, making them more profitable; they can in turn pass that profit on to their shareholders. They can use those savings to lower the cost of their products for consumers, giving themselves an even greater competitive advantage in the marketplace. They can even put those savings toward purchasing carbon offsets to raise their CFI value even more and give themselves even more of a competitive edge!

In this way, ICEMAN fits perfectly into a free market economy by incentivizing the use of renewable energy, creating a financial benefit for the company and thereby reducing the cost of products for consumers.

But the benefits of ICEMAN go beyond individual businesses, extending to the economy as a whole, on a state, national, and even global level. Investing in clean energy infrastructure directly creates jobs. And when a community—be it a town, a region, an entire state, or even an entire country—invests in renewable infrastructure, ICEMAN will guarantee that infrastructure will be a draw for manufacturers and companies to come to that area. When manufacturers and companies move into an area, they bring jobs with them.

When we can implement ICEMAN, we will allow consumers to decide and allow market forces to impact a free market economy. This will encourage the adoption renewable energy, reduce carbon footprints, and at the same time increase profits for businesses, who can pass those savings onto the consumer, reducing costs. In other words, it is exactly the opposite of an unconstitutional, back door carbon tax that increases costs to the consumer.

Frank Dalene, an Amazon Best Selling Author in Green Business & Environmental Economics titled, Decarbonize The World: Solving The Climate Crisis While Increasing Profits In Your Business, and founder of the Hamptons Green Alliance, a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. Learn more at frankdalene.com and hamptonsgreenalliance.org.