Oh putain!
Nothing seems to be going right for the carbon taxers and cap-n-traders. Firstly, Australia dumps the ETS, then US democrats threaten to block the legislation in the Senate unless it is seriously watered down, and now the French courts have ruled their flagship carbon tax illegal:
FRANCE’S new carbon emission tax, due to have gone into effect on Friday, has been ruled illegal by the country’s constitutional court on the grounds it exempted too many polluters.
The Conseil Constitutionnel struck down the tax as the exemptions “create a breach of the principle of (tax) equality.”
It estimated that 93 per cent of industrial emissions outside of fuel use, including the emissions of more than 1000 of the country’s most polluting industrial sites, would be exempt from the tax of 17 euros ($A27.29) per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide.
The ruling is a severe blow for President Nicolas Sarkozy as the measure was one of his flagship initiatives to cut emissions of greenhouse gasses that fuel climate change.
It also leaves the government scrambling to plug a hole of 4.1 billion euros ($A6.58 billion) in the 2010 budget. (source)
As they would say in Paris, merde alors!
Australian Climate Madness 
[…] Post Copenhagen nothing seems to be going right for the carbon taxers and cap-n-traders. Firstly, Australia dumps the ETS, then US democrats threaten to block the legislation in the Senate unless it is seriously watered down, and now the French courts have ruled their flagship carbon tax illegal […]