The truth about green 'taxes'
Nicky Stocks
09 June 2011
This morning I read something that left me outraged.
The news that £200 is added onto our energy bills in the form of a green stealth tax is scandalous.
The source of my distress?
It's simply not true.
We're facing rocketing energy bills because of spiralling oil and gas costs, not because of green 'taxes.'
The green schemes in question actually save us money. They help us save energy in our homes. And investment in clean UK energy helps shield us from the price hikes we're landed with when we import our energy from unstable areas of the world.
But the word 'tax' also troubled me.
I remember very little from A-level economics so I may be way off, but I don't believe a tax is defined as 'any cost associated with improving a product or service to make it safer or cheaper in the long run.'
I started thinking about what else we could call a tax if we applied the same logic:
- Fire resistant tax for the materials that are used to help stop our houses burning down
- Clean water tax to make sure our drinking water doesn't give us cholera
- Seat belt tax that kicked in when cars were required by law to have seat belts
- Safe toys tax to make sure toys don't maim, choke or poison children
- Sewage tax that's charged by water companies because they're not allowed to pump raw sewage onto our beaches
Lots of things would be dirt cheap in the short-term if there was no need to make them safe, and no need to think about what might happen in the future.
But climate change, rising energy costs and simple common sense mean we can't afford not to consider what might happen tomorrow.
Nicky Stocks, Communications and Media Team
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