Wild-eyed French socialists announce a new carbon tax.
France’s Le Monde newspaper says the tax will cover 70% of the country’s carbon emissions and bring in about 4.3bn euros (£3.8bn) of revenue annually.
Suggesting that we do the same is now officially anti-American.

Tee-hee, it’s funny because they’re raging conservatives.
get ready for the Carbon Bubble!
We must resist this right-wing conservative attempt to tax us!
Don’t wet your panties just yet. The tax is a long ways from being implemented, and is hugely unpopular. There’s a good chance it will be watered down to nothing or never happen at all.
@5 is right.
The climatologists are so divided that it’s only 1000:1 …
@5: So some scientists disagree, which means we must do nothing? Are you by any chance a republican?
Who knew (other than Francophones) that tax was a feminine noun? In other words, shouldn’t that be la taxe verte?
What I’d like to see is what’s called a revenue-neutral carbon tax: where the carbon tax is offset by an equal cut in some other tax, like payroll taxes. Apparently, British Columbia has had some success with a modest carbon tax of this very sort–only instead of a tax cut, the revenues are mailed to taxpayers in the form of dividends.
@8: Loan words like “Tax” are frequently made masculine unless explicitly feminine in nature (e.g. la seductress). The correct title should be “Le Tax Vert”.
More correctly, it would be “L’Impot Vert”, although it’s been conceptualized as “Le Tournant Vert” (trans., Green Shift), which was implemented as a campaign strategy in Canada’s last general election.
@7 for the win.
Actually, more like rounding a corner, Baconcat @10.
What was amusing was the EU/Japan/China/Canada reaction to the speech (sue me I watch late night business news) – they all are selling out of Big Pharma and Big Insurance firms, because they know our current medical regime won’t last another two years before it bankrupts our nation.
Fun cartoon re. consensus, bipartisan and climate:
http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2009/07…
Wait until everyone finds out that carbon’s actual only a fraction of the global warming problem compared to methane, which just about every carbon-based life form produces constantly, even after death.
I mean, fight carbon emissions all you want and pat yourselves on the back for your low Carbon Footprint (I mean, hey, mine’s pretty low too), but we’re still fucked at best without some sort of cataclysmic worldwide development. You can’t stop methane production.