When Democrats say America must "do something" about global warming, they never fully explain what that "something" is. Instead, they talk in nebulous terms about "cutting back" on the use of fossil fuels. There's a reason they obfuscate. If voters find out what they have in mind, they'll be routed in 2020, and they know it.

Having embraced the extreme "do something" plan known as the Green New Deal, Democrats have a nasty surprise in store for voters who haven't looked beneath the lipstick and mascara that's being troweled on in pancake-thick layers to conceal the linchpin of their plan to "save the planet": a massive punitive tax on the consumption of fossil fuel energy.

Just how big a tax do the U.N.-worshiping Democrats have in mind? They desperately don't want you to know, but there's a way to read the tea leaves. You might want to sit down for this, because what you'll learn in the next paragraph will leave your jaw on the floor.

As reported by Forbes, a United Nations special climate report calls for a global carbon tax of $49 per gallon of gasoline within 12 years. You read that right: $49 per gallon. At roughly 100 times the average state and federal gasoline tax, the U.N.'s carbon tax "suggestion" would raise the cost of a 13-gallon fill-up to over $600, just for the carbon tax.

Think about the economic implications of that. The mega-rich climate shills who bellow the loudest about the alleged perils of global warming can easily absorb a gasoline tax of that magnitude. But what about the roughly 125 million typical American households that can't?

To be sure, there are other ways than gasoline to slap a tax on man-made CO2 emissions, and you can bet your last dime that Democrats will, if given the chance, enact carbon taxation that will put a hammerlock on America's capitalist economy.

Whatever form of carbon tax they ultimately choose, Democrats intend to control virtually every aspect of your life: where you can live, the size of home you can have, the minimum number of residents in your home, whether you're allowed to have a second home, the amount of air-conditioning you're allowed to use, the kind of car you can have, the number of cars you can have, what you're allowed to eat, and whether you're allowed to travel by air or take your family on a cruise. Democrats will use punitive carbon taxes to impose draconian limitations on every facet of your life, except your health care, which they will limit by wiping out employer-sponsored health insurance in favor of government-run Medicare for all.

Few people know about the U.N.'s demand for a $49-per-gallon gasoline tax. Why? Because progressive journalists in the complicit Western media have helped the climate crisis lobby keep it hidden. No intelligent person can fail to see that such taxes would destroy the U.S. economy, and with it the lifestyle of all but the wealthiest Americans.

Democrats say the green jobs economy they'll create will lift all ships. They'll tell you to trust them, because "studies" done by "experts" using "economic modeling" have found their carbon tax plan will be "revenue neutral" and will have only "a modest impact" on the lives of ordinary Americans. What they won't tell you is that a few years back, ordinary citizens in Spain, Italy, and Germany — and this year, in France — openly revolted after realizing they'd been lied to about the crushing impact punitive carbon taxes have on the Western way of life.

When Democrats say their carbon tax plan will invigorate the economy, they're lying through their teeth. If you think otherwise, ask yourself how the economy can possibly function when ordinary wage-earners, the engine upon which economic stability depends, are saddled with a gasoline tax that disembowels their family budget, and thus their ability to even get to work.

A carbon tax of $600 per fill-up. Spread the word.

An electrical engineering graduate of Georgia Tech and now retired, John Eidson is a freelance writer in Atlanta. American Thinker recently published a related article of his: "The Cynical Plot behind Global Warming Hysteria." johneidson@comcast.net.