The government bring in large revenues from green taxes already, from both businesses and the public. There are plans to increase the level of public green taxation in order to discourage the use of fossil fuels and encourage households to become more sustainable. These plans are backed by pretty much every party to one level or another and indeed by a large proportion of the public themselves, but does increasing taxation actually work?
The plan is that the amount spent in tax, per person per year, will stay approximately the same. Where taxes are increased on activities that produce CO2 emission or wastage they are decreased in areas such as income tax. The idea is that people will be encouraged to live in a more environmentally conscious way in order to save money.
The thinking is simple, increase the price of something and people buy less of it. This is not the only area in which increased taxation has been used to discourage people from continuing in certain behaviours. The obvious examples are tobacco and alcohol.
Now, if we take the example of alcohol, as talk of tax increases to combat “Booze Britain” have been in the news recently. The plan is that by increasing taxes on drink we will reduce the amount of binge drinking that goes on in this country. It is a lovely lab theory cooked up in a sterile room, over rich tea biscuits, by a committee who are paid millions to come up with similar ground breaking concepts.
The problem is that it will not work. What they have not factored in is that Britain is culturally (and most probably physically) dependant on Alcohol. We are not going to solve the problem by making it more expensive for people to drink. Take an alcoholic for example; the price of their preferred tipple rises; do they, A: stop drinking, or B: find more money to get pissed. Alcohol is the most important thing in said alcoholics life and they will continue to drink at the cost of all else. The only way you stop the problem is by treating the cause, the cultural and physical reasons for the dependency.
The reason for the analogy is that we are addicted to fossil fuels and like the alcoholic if prices rise we will merely look for other ways to feed our habit. The worst offenders, the affluent middle classes, will be the ones who will happily pay more just to continue living the same way as before. If prices do rise then it will be the less well off who will suffer, this is a regressive form of taxation.
There are ways around this, for example we could tax certain luxury areas more heavily while leaving essentials, such as fuel for heating, at the same level. In this way we are punishing excessive and unnecessary use while protecting the vulnerable.
Even with a fair well balanced tax, could we really trust the Government to spend the money on environmentally beneficial projects? Knowing our recent track record it would be of little surprise if the increased money in their coffers was used to fund “defence”. Ironically channelling funds acquired through the environmental concern of the public to claim our stake of Middle Eastern fossil fuels (sorry wrong meeting).
Okay, let’s say it all works fine. The taxes are fair and graduated for the rich and poor, the government spend the money on planting trees and polishing rainbows and environmental change is brought about. Still for me there is something wrong here. The outcome is all good but; is the only way to get us to change lifestyle by threatening our wallet? I thought it was the rush for money and our modern consumerist ways that has got us into this fine mess in the first place.
We need to tackle the underlying cause of our wastefulness and destruction and that is our greed. By changing tax slants we are effectively saying to people if you are green you will have more money. We are appealing to people’s greed in order to reduce their greed.
What is needed is for people to have a reason other than greed for being environmental, anything: an appreciation of nature, some thought for future generations or even a sense of empathy for people drowning in Bangladesh. In reality we all know that money is the best way to get people to understand, so although green taxes are far from ideal, I guess we have no other choice (it’s not like anyone is going to develop a conscience anytime soon). |
