The Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI) is a regional gas tax set by unelected bureaucrats. It claims that killing local economies and pinching pocketbooks to fund more failed government interventions will reduce emissions. I have a better idea.
Related: TCI is a “poorly conceived, fundamentally regressive, and economically damaging proposal”
Regional carbon taxes, which is all this is, have no credibility. There is no proof they lower emissions which is damning since lowering emissions won’t do anything anyway.
Even by your own admission, a fully-implemented TCI would only produce a 5 percent carbon dioxide reduction by 2032.[10] This is not a meaningful reduction. A temperature decline of less than a thousandth of a degree by 2100,
An expensive next to “nothing” that if this were something could go a lot farther for a lot less if we took this in the opposite direction. So, let’s play along. Let’s pretend lowering emissions is for the common good.
Incentivize the Free Market Find Solutions
We should encourage states to incentivize wealth creators (see also, job creators, private business owners, and their investors) with lower taxes or tax credits. Instead of taking their money, which by the expert’s own admission has led us to this so-called tipping point™, reward them for investing their own money by letting them keep more of it to embrace…
- Carbon sequestration technology
- Convert to low emissions natural gas.
- Add scrubbers or other technologies that capture particulates to improve local air quality.
- Improved waste water filtration.
- Add or support local water sampling or well testing equipment.
- Buying their own damn weatherstripping, or new windows, or whatever else.
But not for wind and solar. Please, these are disgusting, dirty, boutique technologies with huge front and rear end costs and carbon footprints, made from toxic materials or those you can’t even reuse or recycle. They don’t deserve the praise heaped on them. And they do not derve to be incentivized further.
As for my list, some of these incentives may already in place. Anything that keeps money in the hands of the folks that earned it will work. Because if any of this means anything to the people shouting the loudest, we need to stop forcibly investing in corrupt government failure.
The State has been the self-proclaimed point of the spear on this issue for decades but to listen to the advocates we’re worse off than ever. So, why must the solution be more of the same? Why should you pay more for gas, groceries, goods, and services, to finance more corruption and failure?
Take the Politics Out of It
I think this all a fraud. That it is exactly what many of its most prominent advocates claim. A lie to convert our economy away from the free market toward a more centrally planned government-run system. One that will inevitably waste even more money and be worse for the environment.
Anyone who stops to look can see that this is true. Their “solutions” will make things worse.
If “The Planet,” clean air, and clean water are in that much danger, more government is the wrong direction. Outside of enforcement for actual polluters who knowingly put lives at risk, the State has no reliable role or record of meaningful accomplishment. And there is a very viable case to be made that they’ve screwed that part up as well.
What little the Government has done has wasted billions if not trillions of dollars that could be used for other pressing priorities.
If this is really about the environment and not growing government states need to incentivize the free market to find affordable solutions (on its own) that actually advance the stated goals. They will do a much better job of finding affordable solutions (that may even save them money) than any unelected bureaucrat or pandering politician.
TCI is accepting public comments here.
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