In principle, it’s hard to disagree with the slew of green taxes coming our way, at least in theory. After all it would be difficult for anyone to defend a world view that involves not wanting to save the planet. Whether the money will be wasted or not remains to be seen.
The details of the new taxes can be found here:
According to the EU, though not mandated as such – Cyprus scored an own goal on this one – green taxes are designed to “incentivise behavioural change”. That implies a benefit for the public to stump up. Absent that, it’s simply “coercion”.
It’s very easy for the powers-that-be to sit on their high-horse, expensive EV or private jet, and dictate that green taxes are necessary when they’re not the ones waiting an hour for a bus.
These are the same people who barely blinked when it came out that a swathe of the Amazon was being destroyed to create roads and airstrips ahead of November’s COP climate conference. In Davos and the EU they pompously decree: “Those who pollute or waste the most should bear the consequences of their actions”.
In theory yes but leading by example would help.
Just a week ago European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola and Council President António Costa briefly came under fire for hopping a private jet – and yes that’s worse than driving that 200km from Brussels to Luxembourg for an unnecessary ceremonial junket – all without consequence.
A few rungs down from these two elite ruling classes, are those who are comfortably off and can also afford to virtue-signal their own environmental credentials while looking down on those who can’t afford to do the same.
Overpaid and underworked MPs will of course state that they care about the impact of the taxes on the masses – elections are coming – but will at the same time throw their hands up and blame Brussels for those dastardly “incentives”.
On the other end of the spectrum, certainly of necessity, vulnerable groups such as large families will probably be subsidised as they’re the ones who will suffer more when the cost of living goes up again even though bigger households do use more water and electricity and produce more waste.
As for the rest of the public. Not earning enough to afford a new EV yet not poor enough for a subsidy? Just put up and shut up. Everybody knows green utopias do not come cheap.
If green taxes were to lead to improvements in quality of life – like they’re supposed to – such as proper public transport, fewer cars, cheaper electricity, a stable RES grid, functional recycling, fewer landfills and less environmental damage from tourism, they would be a lot easier to swallow.
However, none of these things have been accomplished in Cyprus. The reason that these taxes add insult to injury – apart from the off-the-scale hypocrisy of the chattering classes – is that the millions collected will most likely go to paying Cyprus’ EU fines for the ever-growing list of successive governments’ environmental failures.
Meanwhile, Joe Bloggs will be “incentivised” into oblivion.
