Larry Gude
Strung Out
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/05/AR2007020501248.html
Every once in awhile I get to an article and say to myself "Huh. When someone reads one of my posts and thinks I am a complete idiot, they must be thinking what I am thinking about this piece."
Anne thinks that global warming is caused by man burning fossil fuels. She's thought that for a long time. She thinks it's gonna cause pretty bad problems. She thinks it needs to be fixed and that convoluted ideas like Kyoto are simply not workable. She thinks there is a simple solution; a carbon tax.
Now, I am a lover of simple solutions but Anne and I have different views of what 'solution' means.
I have no problem with people being so damn sure that us burning fuel is dangerously warming our planet. Some people think a butterfly 1/2 way around the world has terrible power as well. Being scared to death sometimes leads to good things, like finding something to worry about that you can actually do something about. Burning fossil fuel isn't one of them.
Anne gives it the old college try however. Anne is of a like mind with the people who claim they don't want you to smoke and she uses the same sales pitch; tax it so people will use it less and we'll do all sorts of things with the extra money.
Tax it so people stop using it yet use all that money from taxes that people, ostensibly, won't be paying because they don't want to pay taxes, ergo, no tax money, ergo no money to spend on other things.
See, cigarette smoking is pretty much a one in five thing for adults, as a national average, and has been for awhile. Yes, it's trending down, but a 1/2 percent or so per year isn't exactly people quitting in droves. One could make the argument that that was predictable and the real outcome of this has been a new, and steady, source of money for government. FWIW, Kentuckians smoke at about a 27% rate. Utah 10%.
So oil. All this wondrous economizing and innovating Anne envisions will happen. It would anyway. We will use oil ever more efficiently and that will offset the carbon tax to some extent but it won't result in one drop less of oil being burned overall. In fact, we'll burn more, not even accounting for global economic progress, but because that's what efficiency naturally leads to. Besides, taxes aren't having much affect on a personal leisure choice, smoking, so there is no reason behind the wish-craft involved in taxes reducing the consumption of a necessity; energy.
Anyway, I'm operating from the same premise as Anne; that someone will read what I have to say and think 'that's a good idea!'. So, here's mine, given their success with smoking, why don't we just put Utah in charge of fossil fuel burning. It makes as much sense as the statistical arguments about global warming, more so actually.
And it will have the same affect as our
solutions to global warming.
Every once in awhile I get to an article and say to myself "Huh. When someone reads one of my posts and thinks I am a complete idiot, they must be thinking what I am thinking about this piece."
Anne thinks that global warming is caused by man burning fossil fuels. She's thought that for a long time. She thinks it's gonna cause pretty bad problems. She thinks it needs to be fixed and that convoluted ideas like Kyoto are simply not workable. She thinks there is a simple solution; a carbon tax.
Now, I am a lover of simple solutions but Anne and I have different views of what 'solution' means.
I have no problem with people being so damn sure that us burning fuel is dangerously warming our planet. Some people think a butterfly 1/2 way around the world has terrible power as well. Being scared to death sometimes leads to good things, like finding something to worry about that you can actually do something about. Burning fossil fuel isn't one of them.
Anne gives it the old college try however. Anne is of a like mind with the people who claim they don't want you to smoke and she uses the same sales pitch; tax it so people will use it less and we'll do all sorts of things with the extra money.
Tax it so people stop using it yet use all that money from taxes that people, ostensibly, won't be paying because they don't want to pay taxes, ergo, no tax money, ergo no money to spend on other things.
See, cigarette smoking is pretty much a one in five thing for adults, as a national average, and has been for awhile. Yes, it's trending down, but a 1/2 percent or so per year isn't exactly people quitting in droves. One could make the argument that that was predictable and the real outcome of this has been a new, and steady, source of money for government. FWIW, Kentuckians smoke at about a 27% rate. Utah 10%.
So oil. All this wondrous economizing and innovating Anne envisions will happen. It would anyway. We will use oil ever more efficiently and that will offset the carbon tax to some extent but it won't result in one drop less of oil being burned overall. In fact, we'll burn more, not even accounting for global economic progress, but because that's what efficiency naturally leads to. Besides, taxes aren't having much affect on a personal leisure choice, smoking, so there is no reason behind the wish-craft involved in taxes reducing the consumption of a necessity; energy.
Anyway, I'm operating from the same premise as Anne; that someone will read what I have to say and think 'that's a good idea!'. So, here's mine, given their success with smoking, why don't we just put Utah in charge of fossil fuel burning. It makes as much sense as the statistical arguments about global warming, more so actually.
And it will have the same affect as our
solutions to global warming.
