LETTER TO EDITOR: Taxes will not protect environment

What is expected to happen to the United States in the absence of a misguided effort to reduce carbon emissions? The answer can be found in the latest report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body that started the global warming hysteria.

According to the IPCC, a failure to limit emissions will lead to global warming of 2 degrees centigrade by 2050 (4 degrees centigrade by 2100). In IPCC’s own words, this will have some rather innocuous impacts on the environment of the continental U.S.

Among them: Cities currently experiencing heat waves are expected to be further challenged by an increase in their number, intensity and duration. Coastal communities and habitats will be increasingly stressed by climate change, interacting with development and pollution.

What does all this mean? The snow pack in the West will melt faster so that early spring flows will be higher and summer flows lower in an area well supplied with reservoirs to even out seasonal flows. Crop yields will go up. Crops in warm areas will compete for water, which is nothing new. Heat waves will pose a challenge, but we are already doing what we can to help vulnerable people. None of this justifies the president’s plan for enormous taxes on the use of carbon fuels.

Carbon dioxide is uniformly distributed throughout the planet’s atmosphere. Taxing carbon will have no effect on the atmosphere of the U.S. because its carbon dioxide content is determined by the actions of other major countries such as China and India. Like the U.S., they are heavily dependent on hydrocarbons, and taxing Americans will not make our atmosphere any different from the rest of the world.

WILLIAM T. SMITH

McLean