French court rejects carbon tax, left and right join against government and special interests

• The French Court recognized assaulting citizens with a carbon tax wouldn't cure alleged man-made global warming. (The last ice age came and went without a carbon tax, for example).

"France’s constitutional court rejected a proposed tax on carbon emissions, saying a

• web of exemptions violated the principal of equality

• and rendered efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions ineffective.

The government said it will make new proposals on Jan. 20....

• To make the tax more palatable,

he (President Sarkozy) partially or fully exempted power plants, public transport, airlines, farming and fishing, as well as 1,018 older cement, steel and glass factories.

• In all, 93 percent of all industrial carbon emissions in France

• would have avoided paying the full tax,

the constitutional court said in a decision published on its Web site. The tax would have fallen disproportionately on fuel for heating and cars, it said.

“The court ruled that the system of exemptions, due to their extensive nature,

• were contrary to the objective of fighting global warming and contravene the principle of equality before the tax system,” the court said.

The court rejected all the articles relating to the carbon tax in the government’s 2010 budget....

The tax had been criticized by the Socialist-led opposition and critics in Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement, who said

• the tax would hurt the poor and handicap employers."

from Bloomberg News, "French Constitutional Court Rejects Carbon Tax," by Gregory Viscusi, 12/30/09. via the Drudge Report

• From the French Constitutional Court website:

"However, Articles 7 and 10 of the Act establishing exemptions, reductions, refunds and partial specific rates. So were totally exempt contribution of carbon emissions from

• power plants generating electricity, emissions thousand eighteen sites most industrial pollutants, such as refineries, cement, coke and glass factories, emissions from industries using chemical intensive energy, emissions products for dual use, emissions from energy used in electricity consumption, emissions from aviation and those of public transport of passengers by road. In addition, were taxed at rates reduced emissions from farming or fishing, road freight and shipping."...

12/29/09, press release, google translation from French. Original French.

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