21 May 2007

California Provides Cautionary Tale to Eco-Elite

The Unbearable Whiteness of the Green Movement
By Van Jones, Grist Magazine

California Provides Cautionary Tale to Eco-Elite

The idea for Prop 87 was brilliant in its simplicity: California would start taxing the oil and gas that we extract from our soil and shores. And those dollars would go into a huge, "clean-energy" research and technology fund.

Many states and nations have similar excise taxes. But California would have been alone in dedicating the revenues to inventing alternatives to carbon-based energy sources. Had it passed, money from oil would have been used to find a replacement for oil.

It was a brilliant idea. And at first, the measure was polling off the charts.

But in the end, Californians voted the measure down. Why? Because big oil convinced ordinary Californians that the price tag for them would be too high for them to bear.

No comments: