Do you really want to spend $100 billion dollars on a train that goes from one Central Valley farm town to another? Is that really how we're going to defeat the dreaded Global Warming?
Get ready for more:
Motorists are about to get drafted into California’s war on climate change.You catch that? You probably won't notice the difference, it'll be so small. Gas prices are relatively low right now so you should be able to afford a few extra cents a gallon for Mother Gaia. Lucky you.
Starting Jan. 1, gas and diesel fuel will be subject to California’s cap-and-trade market, a 2-year-old regulatory mechanism that puts a price on carbon spewed into the atmosphere.
The result will be higher gasoline and diesel prices, and probably more controversy for a state program that’s already been attacked in the courts by the business community.
With fuel the cheapest it’s been in years, state officials say the price increase won’t clobber consumers. The increase is likely to be less than 10 cents a gallon, said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, which runs the carbon program. Given the typical volatility of gas prices, Nichols said most consumers will probably barely notice the difference.
How will this money be spent? How will the earth heal with this money? The article doesn't say.
5 comments:
As usual, secondary effects are never discussed. Consumers feel gas prices by an increase of the cost of everything they buy, everything that has to be transported. Every truck that hauls, every business that has to keep its lights on, every manufacturing company that has to run its plant must increase prices to pay for the increased price of fuel.
Much of the slackness of the economy in the last few years has been due to the price of fuel (or, alternately, the weakness of the dollar.) Much of the recent recovery can also be attributed to the decrease in fuel costs.
I really wish businesses would think of a boycott and basically say to California: okay, you don't want our product to come to your state on trucks? Fine, we won't send it to you anymore. "Sorry, not available in California," should become standard operating procedure for many companies. If they don't take a stand, it will only get worse.
I made a more detailed comment about this as an ancillary to my comment on the topic above, but Ann, you're correct. For this to be truly effective, it would need to be nationwide … states without income taxes draw people; states with higher sales taxes encourage people to buy out of state.
Sorry Auntie Ann but the business of business is business and while some businesses will make noisily-public efforts to suggest otherwise it's just eye-wash.
Business will, and should, go where there's money to be made and California's sufficiently endowed with a variety of bounties that even really stupid policy doesn't have the damaging impact it would in other, less fortunate, states. So the California political class, and thus the California electorate, largely escapes the consequences of their self-involvement and their conceits.
But responding to the increasingly hostile business environment a steady move of businesses exiting California has occurred over the past decade or two. When the pain becomes great enough, and the various special interests wane in power, change will occur.
Changing the direction of a representative form of government's the responsibility of the we, the people, and looking to anyone/anything else is an avoidance of that generally unappealing truth.
It's the lobster and the pot of water-consumers won't complain until the water is boiling. Besides, since this additional tax is used for undefined projects, doesn't that fall under the taxation without representation rule?
IF it costs a business more to ship something to California because of California policy, then Californians should pay more for said something. The business should also loudly and publicly declare WHY it costs Californians to pay more for said something.
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