Carbon credit to carbon tax?

Al Gore buys carbon credits every time he flies.
No doubt he buys carbon credits for his SUVs as well.
You, too, can buy carbon credits on the Internet. Some say it could relieve the anxiety feelings you suffer from reading or listening to the global warming hype of the dominant media, charging you with destruction of the planet through your use of fossil fuels, from electricity to your car and other methods of transportation.
It follows, if you can relieve your own discomfort, everyone else can suffer his own pain.
Academy Award winner Al Gore is setting the example.
And not surprisingly, the “Greens” are here to help.
A carbon credit market has been established by Greenshift Corp.
Greenshift markets its carbon credits through one of its portfolio companies, TerraPass Inc. TerraPass, in turn, sells its carbon credits through a “Road TerraPass” which comes in “one of four flavors: Around Towner, Cross Towner, Out of Towner or Road Tripper. Each type is “guaranteed to reduce a specific amount of carbon dioxide emissions.” (Emphasis added).
Recommended for cars getting 19 to 28 mpg is the Out of Towner TerraPass which offsets 12,000 pounds of CO2, enough to balance one year of your driving. The Out of Towner costs a mere $49.95 for one year.
You receive for your nearly $50: a TerraPass decal that shows how much in CO2 emissions you have reduced, a TerraPass bumper sticker and a TerraPass logo decal.
TerraPass also offers the TerraPass Frequent Flier option for air travelers. For only $64.95 you can purchase 9,412 pounds of CO2, enough to fly you 24,132 miles, or around the world. You also get a “free TerraPass baggage tag.”
And, “in this way, your Flight TerraPass results in a guaranteed reduction in carbon dioxide emissions balancing out the global warming impact of your flying.”
Your TerraPass purchases amount to about $8.50 per ton of carbon.
The TerraPass makes a fine gift. TerraPass is the gift that keeps on giving. The presenters and performers at the Academy Awards ceremony this year were delighted when they opened their normally $7,000-value gift bag, to discover a certificate for 100,000 pounds of CO2 reductions courtesy of TerraPass.
If you would prefer owning stock in Greenshift, it is traded on the over-the-counter bulletin board of NASDAQ with the symbol GSHF.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Nov. 27, Greenshift Corporation was approved to sell 12 million shares of stock at $0.115 per share, at the closing price for the Common Stock on the OTC Bulletin Board as of Nov. 21 for a total of $1.38 million.
As of 2:11 p.m., on Feb. 26, the stock was selling for $0.0955 per share, up $0.0005 for the day. The 12-month high was $0.414 (41 cents) and the 12 month low was $0.0235 (2 cents) a share.
Greenshift has apparently run into competition. Carbonfund.org Foundation, a non-profit corporation located in Silver Spring, Md., is also found on the Internet.
Carbonfund.org offers much more: a certificate, a window decal, bumper sticker and “Your Climate Minute” e-newsletter.
In addition, Carbonfund.org “empowers you to reduce your carbon footprint to zero.”
And furthermore, it sells carbon for only $5.50 per ton, a whopping reduction of $3 per ton or 35 percent less than does Greenshift — and it’s tax deductible.
Now that we know all about carbon credits, how do they “guarantee” reduction of CO2 emissions?
In their words, “your purchase of ... TerraPass results in reductions of carbon dioxide emissions elsewhere, by funding industrial efficiency and renewable energy projects such as windmill farms.”
In other words, buy us a business.
This column may be the first time some readers have gotten an insight into carbon credits. The subject will be increasingly publicized in the future and, frighteningly may become a subject for taxation in as much as the Kyoto Protocol is drifting into recognized failure.
The draconian penalties that would have been imposed on world capitalist industries by Kyoto, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars over time, will be lost.
As the present global warming issue continues to be exposed, supporters of the cause will become more embittered and will seek ways to retaliate. This has already been demonstrated by their equating global warming denial with Holocaust denial and suggesting Nuremburg-type trials to prosecute those who disagree with them.
The manner in which carbon credits are presented today could lead to a form of taxation based on each person’s individual carbon footprint.
A direct tax on the individual would prove impossible to enact. However, the products represented in each individual’s footprint, such as household electricity, household heating fuels, automobile fuel use and air travel, to name a few, could be taxed in the form of carbon credit taxes.
Someone has to pay.
Such a tax would prove disastrous for the nation’s economy.
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