Current Event: France’s Climate Change Tax Fail (for now)

On December 4, France’s prime minister announced that they would postpone their fuel tax for
6 months until they bring back the “unity” within their nation. Their peace was disrupted when their
government announced a 24 cent per gallon tax increase on fuels as an attempt towards fighting climate
change. Their people were not very happy and protests started immediately. There were violent
demonstrations daily and in my opinion, they were a bit justifiable. When thinking about this, I imagined
what it would feel like to have that in the U.S… It would be chaos! Not everyone can afford to just buy
new electric cars to avoid the taxes, and people need to drive. They cannot just avoid driving to work
(which might not be walking/biking distance) because they cannot afford to pay the extra fines for fuel.
If it were a tax specifically aimed towards big public corporations abusing and overusing fossil fuels the
public’s feelings might be different. However there are many people who struggle to keep their car and
unfortunately could suffer a great amount from that. The amount in which people are taxed is already
controversial, just adding to that adds more controversy than help.
While I completely agree with the president of France’s intentions, just making fossil fuels more
expensive for everyone, even people who can’t afford to lose that money, is not going to solve climate
change. They have also stated that the revenue from these taxes would be used for deficit reduction,
which was not appealing to the public. As the majority of their people are middle class citizens, the
money needs to somehow circle back their way, other than using the money for what the public sees as
staying within the government. I think this is a fine start to a solution, but this is not a well planned one,
nor one that will end up working. There needs to be benefits that the people can visibly see, because
unfortunately, “climate change” is not a term fully understood by everyone, and that much of a long term
solution requires convincing and incentive.

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