“Governments should make better use of energy taxation to address climate change,” declares a press statement issued on February 14 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
“Taxes are effective at cutting harmful emissions from energy use, but governments could make better use of them,” according to the statement. “Greater reliance on energy taxation is needed to strengthen efforts to tackle the principal source of both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, according to a new OECD report.” The report to which the press statement refers, entitled Taxing Energy Use 2018, was released in tandem with a live OECD “Green Talks” webinar by the Paris-based intergovernmental organization. Entitled “Taxing Energy Use: Reforming energy tax systems to achieve environmental goals,” the webinar featured “environmental tax economists from the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration.”
“With almost no emissions from energy use priced at levels required to keep global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius,” states the webinar announcement, “there is still considerable scope, and an urgent need, to improve the use of taxation to reduce pollution and combat climate change.”
Translation: The OECD is pushing for still higher carbon taxes —
• despite the fact that the OECD countries — especially those within the European Union — already pay some of the highest energy taxes in the world;
• despite the fact that there has been no measurable global warming in 20 years;
• despite the fact that carbon taxes and skyrocketing energy prices are causing businesses to flee Europe and other OECD economies; and
• despite the fact that EU’s phony “clean energy” agenda has made EU countries more dependent on Russia and other foreign energy producers.
Still higher carbon taxes are necessary, insist the OECD bureaucrats, because energy taxes are still “poorly aligned,” with respect to the claimed harm that fossil fuel consumption causes.
“New data shows that energy taxes remain poorly aligned with the negative side effects of energy use,” says the OECD. “Taxes provide only limited incentives to reduce energy use, improve energy efficiency and drive a shift towards less harmful forms of energy.”
“The damage to climate and air quality resulting from fossil fuel combustion can be contained, but the longer action is delayed the more difficult and expensive it becomes to tackle this challenge,” says OECD Secretary-General Mr Angel Gurria. “Aligning energy prices with the costs of climate change and air pollution is a core element of cost-effective policy, and vast improvements are urgently needed. While in some cases compensation for higher energy costs faced by households or firms may be deemed necessary, especially to those more vulnerable, lower tax rates or exemptions are not the way to provide it – targeted transfers should be favored.”
Who Are These Guys, and Why Do We Still Fund Them?
Few Americans know anything about the OECD, since it is not really on our daily radar. It was launched in 1948 as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), which was one of the principal conduits through which globalists in the U.S. government after World War II distributed Marshall Plan funds to socialist parties and organizations that supported amalgamating the nations of Europe into what is now called the European Union. In 1961 the OEEC was reorganized and renamed as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and its membership began expanding beyond Europe, even as its agenda broadened to advocate more and more government intrusion and control in daily life, more taxation, and more centralization of governmental powers.
Currently, the OECD has 35 member states, including 22 of the 28 European Union member nations. Non-European members include the United States, Mexico, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Turkey, Israel, and Korea. And it intends to keep growing. The OECD website informs us: “In May 2013, the OECD Council decided to launch accession discussions with Colombia and Latvia; in April 2015, it invited Costa Rica and Lithuania to open formal OECD accession talks. Latvia became a member in 2016.”
And there’s much more planned. Again, from the OECD website: “In a previous accession round in 2007, the OECD Council decided to open accession discussions with Chile, Estonia, Israel, the Russian Federation and Slovenia. In 2010, Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia became Members. Following its meeting on 12 March 2014, the OECD Council postponed activities related to the OECD accession process for the Russian Federation for the time being.”
Then there are its “Key Partners” that are being considered for membership. “In May 2007,” says the OECD, “the Council, meeting at ministerial level, invited the Secretariat to strengthen OECD cooperation with Brazil, India, Indonesia, the People’s Republic of China and South Africa through ‘Enhanced Engagement’ programmes. These Key Partners contribute to the OECD’s work in a sustained and comprehensive manner.”
The OECD has also brought the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, into its daily operations and deliberations. “European Commission representatives participate alongside Members in discussions on the OECD’s work programme, and are involved in the work of the entire Organisation and its different bodies,” says the OECD website.
Russia, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Commission, etc., etc. — OECD is becoming a miniature UN. But as disturbing as its membership expansion is its mission creep and its globalist connections. The OECD cooperates closely with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, NATO, the World Economic Forum, and, naturally, the United Nations and its many agencies. The OECD is yet another example proving the dictum that government agencies will always grow and will always find new “missions” to expand their reach — as long as taxpayers allow them to get away with it.
A syndicated column by Veronique de Rugy, published last year in The New American, asked, “Should the United States Stop Cooperating With the OECD?” “Last year, as its single largest contributor, the United States sent $77 million to the OECD,” wrote de Rugy. “That’s 21 percent of the Paris-based bureaucracy’s $370 million annual budget. Add to that amount several million dollars of additional expenses for special projects and the U.S. mission to the OECD.” What do we get for our misguided generosity? According to de Rugy, “despite the OECD’s reliance on American taxpayer funds, it persistently works against U.S. interests by arguing for international tax cartels, the end of privacy, redistribution schemes and other big-government fantasies.”
With U.S.-taxpayer funding, the OECD has become a major propaganda/lobbying force. Two of many recent examples are its lobbying against the Brexit vote in England and its support of the Merkel-EU “refugee” policy that has swamped Europe with a deluge of “migrants” from mostly Muslim countries. And, of course, as the new OECD report indicates, the organization is also in full-tilt support of the UN’s disastrous Paris Climate Accord.
That’s not the whole of it, by a longshot. As Alex Newman pointed out in The New American last year (At “World Government Summit,” Top Globalists Drop The Mask), the OECD was one of the sponsors of the “World Government Summit” held in the United Arab Emirates. Yes, the one-world internationalists are coming out of the closet now and openly calling for world government. For the past several decades, many of these same internationalists have denied that their “New World Order” had anything to do with world government. They lied. They hid behind euphemisms such as “global governance,” “collective security,” and “international cooperation.” Now they are getting bolder — or more desperate.
Veronique de Rugy says, “it’s time for us to zero out this line in our budget. Let taxpayers in high-tax nations subsidize the OECD.” That makes excellent sense. Urge President Trump and your U.S. Representative and Senators to do exactly that.
Photo: choness/iStock/Getty Images Plus
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Should the United States Stop Cooperating With the OECD?
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