Every Europe-bound U.S. airliner is about to be hijacked. No,
not by box cutter-wielding Saudis or squads of Nigerian explosive
underwear bombers. This attack is mounted by a bunch of
euro-grifters who are about to impose the European Union’s “cap and
trade” global warming tax on every flight landing in the EU.
You might think that the fact of the euro’s downward
spiral might focus the EU bureaucracy on saving their own phony
baloney jobs before the euro’s dissolution. But you’d be wrong,
because the global warming crowd is just as much of a cult as the
Islamofascisti who try to blow up their shoes and underwear to kill
their fellow air passengers. They are just as fanatic, too. They
probably mumble “Algore Akbar!” under their breath while smiling
politely at our objections.
As the Financial Times has reported many times
over the past few months, the EUnuchs “cap and trade” scheme is the
largest such in the world and although aviation accounts for only
2-3% of the global carbon dioxide emissions every year, the EU will
impose its costs and burdens on every aircraft flying into or out
of Europe beginning in January.
Consider, please, the brazenness of the Euro “Algore
Akbar” cultists. Even if we accepted the nonsensical theory of
man-made global warming, the imposition of the EU cap and trade
scheme on U.S. airlines would be impermissible. Perhaps they can
impose another tax — call it what you will, but this is all the
cap and trade scheme is — if they craft it within proper
limitations. But limitations are not for the Algore Akbar!
cult.
The way the EU plan will be imposed on U.S. airlines will
be to grant them “permits” to emit carbon dioxide and such under
certain limits each year. Those limits will, of course, be much
lower than the estimated emissions to force the airlines to buy
more “allocations” from the EU and create a “market” in which to
buy and sell them. Of course, that market will be European and
subject to European regulations and corruption. (Think about
auctioning guns in a Mexican border town or the insurance
“cooperatives” set up under Obamacare.)
And even that is not the worst of it. The emissions
included in the amount regulated, taxed, and traded will not just
be those flowing from engine exhausts in European skies. The
regulated/taxed/traded emissions of, for example, a Los Angeles to
London flight will be the entire amount from takeoff to landing
despite the inconvenient truth that about 99% of the flight occurs
over U.S. territory and the Atlantic.
And that’s the point. With a brazenness that would make
Lady Gaga or even Harry Reid blush, the EU is imposing its power
and its ability to tax on actions that occur entirely within the
United States and over the free oceans of the world.
This is, to state the obvious, an invasion of U.S.
sovereignty and a limitation of our freedom of navigation in the
air and at sea. In better times — say, for example, the two
previous centuries — any nation or group of nations that tried to
impose a tax on American shipping sailing U.S. waters or on the
high seas would have bestirred a rather different reaction than the
non-response from Team Obama. Wars have been fought — justly —
over less than this.
But all this, we are assured, is a matter of international
law. As Judge Bork memorably wrote a few years ago, there’s no such
thing. International law — except for the law of war, which was
used in earlier times to punish war criminals — is just
international politics written down. Which the European Court of
Justice in Luxembourg proved last week when its advocate general
issued her preliminary opinion dismissing the grounds for the case
brought by two U.S. airlines — United Continental and American —
to overturn the law.
(India is also fighting the EU airline cap and trade law,
and will achieve no better result.)
The advocate general — formally, an advisor to the court
— issues opinions that aren’t binding on the court, but usually
presage the court’s decisions. The only difference is the court
uses paper even more expensively produced with fancier
seals.
The ECJ-AG opined that “EU
legislation does not infringe the sovereignty of other states or
the freedom of the high seas guaranteed under international law,
and is compatible with the relevant international
agreements.”
The State Department issued a harrumph at the ECJ-AG
opinion last week, reaching the startling conclusion that the ECJ
case isn’t likely to resolve this dispute. While Attorney General
Holder is busy dodging questions on “Fast and Furious,” there’s no
reaction from the Justice Department or the White House.
Why?
You, dear reader, already know the answer. It is because
President Obama doesn’t object to the Europeans doing indirectly
what he can’t do directly. Our president picks and chooses the laws
he likes, and his ever-willing Attorney General agreeably declines
to enforce those that Obama disdains.
Even liberals should be objecting to the EUnuchs’ scheme.
Their objection, of course, would be that the tax take won’t go
into the U.S. treasury. How dare someone take the “enhanced
revenue” the libs want to control and spend?
So where do we go from here? Contempt should be our
airlines’ policy. Contempt of the EU, contempt of its court, and an
utter refusal to pay the tax or trade the “allocations.” The
airlines should form an alliance with Indian airlines — and those
of any other nation so inclined — to refuse to pay or engage in
the trade of the EU cap and trade allocations/tax.
U.S. airlines are running on such a thin financial string
that they must be at least tempted to simply ignore the European
law and court rulings and let the fines stack up. American
companies are, with some justification, pretty gun shy of this sort
of political/legal dispute, but the airlines are in a position
where they may not be able to do anything else.
In this case, they should stand fast. The EU law will
almost certainly be upheld by the EU court, and go into effect in
January. It can be safely ignored. Few, if any, European leaders
will pay attention to it even if — a decade hence — it’s the last
vestige of the failed European Union.
The EU’s financial meltdown and the failure of the euro
currency have reached the stage of inevitability. Rumors abound
that Germany — the most productive and richest economy in Europe
— has begun printing Deutschmarks secretly in anticipation of the
euro’s failure.
When the euro fails, and the members of the Brussels
branch of the Algore Akbar! cult are out of a job, no one will
remember the airline cap and trade law. Between now and then,
American companies and people are obliged by history to refuse to
obey it.
Freedom of navigation at sea and in the air is an
essential part of American economic freedom. The EU cap and tax
scheme being imposed on our airlines is no different from the
British tea taxes and stamp acts of colonial times. The only
permissible answer to it is, “Go to hell, Europe.” Anything else
would be, literally, un-American.
