No, not that tax, the carbon tax one, this one
Opinion: Fix U.S. tax code to address climate change and our health
The climate crisis is here. It is real and it is hurting our health.
As physicians in Northern California, my colleagues and I see how climate change is making our patients sicker every day. We see infants and children with worsening asthma due to wildfire smoke exposure. We see adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease requiring stronger and more toxic medication due to worsening air pollution caused by gas-powered cars.
Would these be the fires caused not by “carbon pollution”, but firebugs and accidents? And, yes, gas powered cars do release air pollution, but, CO2 is not pollution. And, cars are cleaner than ever. Strange that Warmists won’t give up their own fossil fueled vehicles, though, eh?
But 2019 ended with a climate whimper as Congress missed the opportunity to make a more meaningful impact on climate change than it has in the last decade by updating and extending the tax code to promote clean energy. A package of clean-energy incentives, including for energy storage, solar, offshore wind power and electric vehicles, failed to make it into Congress’s year-end government spending deal due to White House pressure.
If these things had massive potential, private companies would be dumping massive amounts of money in them, looking to make more money. Why does it always have to be Government with these Stateists? Why is it always Someone Else’s money?
Right now, our tax code strongly favors the creation of new fossil fuel projects. Large-scale clean-energy projects are possible and cost-effective. But we need to level the tax code, and hence the playing field, for clean-energy projects that rely on wind, solar and complementary energy storage to get off the ground so that we, especially our children, can be healthy.
What Dr. Amanda Millstein means by leveling the tax code is giving these things extra breaks than everything else.
The climate crisis is here and we no longer have the luxury of time. Congress needs to hear from us, as many of us as possible — Democrats, Republicans, young, old, West Coast, East Coast, farmer, businessperson, rich, poor. Our voices matter. And nothing is more important than our health.
What of the voices of those of us who do not believe in the climate crisis? Do we get a say?
Dr. Millstein should lobby the city councils in the San Francisco area, where she lives, to ban all fossil fueled vehicles. Let’s see how that goes.
Then there’s this tax in a letter to the editor of the LA Times
Planting 1 trillion trees and oil companies promising to be net-zero emitters of greenhouse gases will not be enough to fight climate change, as your editorial says. There must be a worldwide cutback on consumption.
This can partially be achieved by individual and corporate conservation, but ultimately global population stabilization is the answer.
A family with two children will have stable consumption over time. A family with three will have more. There needs to be a total restructuring of the global economy concentrating on a stable population, not ever-expanding demand based on an ever-expanding population.
One way to do this is to phase out child tax deductions over time so they apply to no more than two kids. I know this sounds grim, but so is what the world faces.
I say we place a big tax on any person who expresses a belief that climate change is mostly/solely caused by mankind if they have any kids.
