Tom Keane: Green Policies Lead to "Environmental Backfire"
While Boston Globe columnist Tom Keane wants to save the planet as much as the next guy, he's fed-up with green policies that make things worse. To wit: Logan Airport's new policy blessing hybrids with preferential parking– which encourages people to drive to the airport rather than use mass transit. Keane attacks other green laws: prohibitions against urban density (that push sprawl to the 'burbs), Brookline's proposal to double excise taxes on SUVs (which can be more fuel efficient than cars), carpool lanes (which slow down the majority of drivers and create more pollution), cloth diapers (whose cleaning requires more energy than disposables "in some cases") and carbon trading (which encourages consumption by relieving guilt). Kean's rant against "environmental backfire" is a welcome sign that common sense may finally be entering the debate over planet-saving public policy. And if you believe that, I've got a hydrogen-powered BMW 7-Series I'd like to sell you.
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James2: "I’m with ya, man. “Global warming” is just a convenient means to enact more regulation and raise taxes, even if I agree with raising gas taxes to reduce consumption." Yeah. I was at that meeting. All the Liberal scientists (climatologists, physicists, marine biologists, chemists, it runs the gamut) got together back in 1983 and said, "What can we, as scientists do to advance The Liberal Agenda?" There's only a few Conservative scientists and they're pretty much frozen out, reduced to writing articles for the Enterprise Institute for the $10K bounty they offer for debunking articles, so all the Liberals are in complete control. We don't allow any kids with Conservative tendencies to advance to doctorate-level studies in almost any of the hard sciences, or they'd figure out what's going on and then they'd have hard data to explain to the rest of you how this is all a giant fraud. After the big takeover of the Liberal scientists, we'll be pretty much in charge, we'll tax you to death and we will get the better-looking women while you'll be reduced to driving economy cars. Pretty clever, huh? OK - I'm lying. We're really being paid by the Chinese to cripple Western industry and we'll get to go live in Beijing and get the better-looking women there as the big payoff for our hard work. Luckily, every last one of us loves tofu. Pretty clever, huh?
Re: Preferential parking spaces. I annoy my poor wife to no end because I refuse to drive around and around hunting for the closest space (I usually just park next to a shopping cart area). I think the idea that anyone deserves a close parking space because of what they drive is ludicrous. I'd be happy to park my bicycle in the farthest space if it would only be there when I got back.
KixStart - like it ;-)
Regarding global warming, I have a hard time believing that what people choose to drive has that big of an effect on the problem when the rest of the solar system is warming up right along with our little planet. The air quality in China's industrial centers is so bad it is causing a marked decline in the general health of the populations there. Transit and school busses produce more pollution than the cars they are said to replace, not to mention all the crap thrown into the air by other diesel trucks. And yet I'm supposed to be concerned about my Yukon with it's multiple pollution reduction systems. Right.