by John Zube, veteran Australian libertarian activist

  1. No one has ever been able to prove that any kind of tax is rightful, efficient and an economic way to raise funds and to spend or invest them. They are just a continuance of the tribute levies of powerful and exploitative States to help them stay in power. Or is there any compulsory tax left that has not yet been revealed as wrong and harmful by genuine economists, like e.g. Murray N. Rothbard?
  2. Another wrong assumption that is taken for granted in their articles is that CO2 emissions by man’s activities on Earth are to be blamed for what some have asserted to be an acute and dangerous Earth Warming. But man’s activities on Earth can certainly not be blamed for the repeated Earth Warming periods that did occur to Earth in geological times, nor for whatever warming is now occurring also on other planets of this solar system. The obvious cause here and now are variations in the Sun’s radiation output, whose various irregularities, e.g. via Sun spots and Solar Storms, have often been observed and recorded. Climate and CO2-factor sceptics are usually ridiculed rather than refuted.
  3. If one would take the term “Carbon Tax” literally and serious — and any tax is a serious attack on individual human rights and liberties, then one would realize, that it is another wrongful tax upon people, one that is as wrongful and senseless as e.g. a tax on oxygen, nitrogen or on rare gases in our atmosphere, e.g. Helium, which would also be a wrongfully imposed burden upon people, for it is not these elements which do pay taxes or can be forced to do so.
  4. We are already taxed, multiple times, and all too highly on all the carbon compounds and other nourishments that are contained in our food, which makes our survival possible.
  5. Most of the animal, plant, worm, insect, algae, microbe etc. life on Earth is also based on carbon, e.g. in form of carbohydrates. To tax all this carbon would mean a tax on life. Are we to be taxed on all the carbon in our bodies, in our flesh, our bones, sinews, skin, brains, organs and hair? Or on the carbon dioxide we inhale and on the additional carbon dioxide we exhale when we process our food, together with our air and water intake to make our survival possible? Are the carbon compounds remaining in our excreta also to be taxed? When the son of a Roman emperor once criticized him for taxing even toilets, the emperor replied: “Money does not stink!” — sound money certainly does not — but territorial politics does “stink” and is much worse in many other respects.
  6. Is the carbon in our lawns, our lawn clippings, in our flowers, shrubs and trees in our gardens also to be subjected to taxation, in a consistent application of a “carbon tax”?
  7. Is our gas-, oil-, coal- or wood burning, for heating and cooking, bathing and showering, to be additionally burdened by this tax?
  8. Our fences and houses, or fittings and furniture, are to a large extent still made out of wood. Are we to be taxed on this carbon, in addition to e.g. rates and other charges upon our land titles?
  9. Would the air atmosphere, the oceans, lakes and rivers, the rain water, which also contain much dissolved CO2, be taxed as well by a universal “carbon tax”?
  10. Should man be taxed as well for all the carbon that is in fertile humus soil and those quantities of carbon unused by us, still buried deep in the ground?
  11. Are these tribute collectors aware that man’s survival depends on a minimum contents of CO2 in the air and that the existing percentage of it barely exceeds this minimum?
  12. Are these tribute collectors aware that vast areas of the Earth are, unfortunately, not yet covered with carbon containing fertile black soil to grow human crops on? More carbon in the air, more warmth and more irrigation, could lead to their greater utilization for mankind. Or are we to develop merely into admirers of infertile wilderness areas?

The absurdly shortened term “carbon tax” suggests all such nonsensical applications and yet it is used dozens of times every day in the mass media and by the politicians, which are thereby revealing themselves, once again, to be uncritical, without sufficient judgement, almost mindless, but at least full of popular errors, dogmas, spleens, prejudices and fashionable “public opinion” statements.

Their supposed cure-all for a supposedly great danger is another great wrong and irrationality, another tax burden laid upon the shoulders of the victims of territorial politicians, all power addicts and power mongers, as their “leadership” struggles illustrate.

The greatest pollution danger for human beings are the laws, programs and institutions of territorialist politicians and bureaucrats. They do senselessly destroy or prevent the production and exchange of much more than is destroyed by storms, floods and earthquakes.

If they taxed themselves and their activities, measures, laws, regulations, judgements etc. out of existence — or at least confined them, exterritorially, to their remaining volunteers, then all the rest of us would have good reasons to cheer.

We could then finally do our diverse own things for ourselves, undisturbed by them. Our productive employment and our savings, investments and living standard would then come to boom, permanently.

As long as such terms are as uncritically, wrongfully, irrationally and carelessly used by journalists and by politicians, as legislators, what good can one expect from their legislation?

Alas, the Dark Ages are with us again.