Article from Reason by Steven Greenhut.
It’s about time that members of Congress and the California legislature got really serious about combating the nation’s pollution problem. Just as Jonathan Swift had a “modest proposal” to keep poor Irish children from being a burden to their families and their country (by selling them to wealthy English people as food), I, too, have a modest proposal for dealing with the unconscionable level of pollutants that are emitted in the U.S. to produce electricity. Let’s propose a plan to shut down the nation’s power plants.
The facts are unmistakable: An environmental group in 2009 reported that the “nation’s power plants emitted 2.56 billion tons of global warming pollution… which is equivalent to the pollution from nearly 450 million of today’s cars—nearly three times the number of cars registered in the United States in 2007.” Even cleaner natural-gas fired plants, which have become more prevalent in ensuing years, “release 21—120 times more methane than earlier estimates,” according to a summary of a Purdue University/Environmental Defense Fund report from last year.
Do you care about clear air, the health of our children and the future of the planet? Of course you do. So there’s little reason to complain about this idea. Before you chalk it up to one columnist’s silliness, consider that some California policy makers are proposing something equally “modest” and ludicrous. Yet they seem totally serious about it.
Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) and some other Assembly members have introduced legislation that would ban the registration of passenger vehicles that are not “zero emissions.” Assembly Bill 1745 would, beginning in 2040, prohibit the California Department of Motor Vehicles “from accepting an application for original registration of a motor vehicle unless the vehicle is a zero emissions vehicle.”
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit: By Henri Sivonen from Helsinki, Finland (flickr: California State Capitol) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
wpDiscuz
It has become common knowledge that California politicians are so full of you know what, that they are the main source of pollutants in California. Just getting rid of half of the California politicians would nearly solve our problems, and if that isn’t enough, then get rid of the rest of them.
As California politicians try to ban polluting cars, the block all solutions. There was anent entrepreneur in the late 60’s, early 70 who was converting Fords to hydraulic motors and pumps, removing the transmission, drive line, rear axle , and brakes he was able to achieve 90- 150 mpg in the 70’s before disappearing. Article in 1970 Popular Mechanics. I saw a TV program about a car powered by compressed air in 2009 developed bey a Frenchman. He licensed production top small factories, The show said he had licensed a factory in New Deli, and Mexico City. There was supposed to be a factory in California, but that never happened. The Tesla car has very hazardous batteries and if they are compromised the whole car has to be disposed at a hazmat site. California has never approved a low pollution car for the average citizen, politicians, Hollywood elites, and connected dealers get free low pollution rides with taxpayer provided charging stations. If the politicians think pollution is bad now wait until they regulate cars, trucks , and buses out of existence. When we are back to horses and mules with the manure disposal problem and the illness this causes.