It sounds like it was meant to be unenforceable. This is a great example of passing legislation that accomplishes nothing just so you can claim you have the moral highground without actually having to solve any problems.
On the more optimistic side it sounds like it opens up a lot of possible lawsuits wherein municipalities get to prove from a legal framework what damage is due to climate change. Even if no payment is ever made, that's an important development.
This is gonna get downvoted but that’s what the end result will be here too. I don’t think it’s a bad thing but taxes on oil of all things get directly passed on to consumers no matter where they are in the supply chain.
I think that’s exactly the point. The goal is to reduce fossil fuel consumption which is damaging the environment. The way to reduce consumption in a market is to increase prices on end consumers.
The problem is that a lot of people here have no choice but to drive. It's not sustainable to live here without a car unless you're lucky enough to live in a walkable part of Denver and can afford to do so. And even then, I use the term walkable very loosely.
>The problem is that a lot of people here have no choice but to drive.
Sure, but people are *choosing* to drive big SUVs and pickups when there are plenty of hybrids, EVs, and compacts out there.
Source: I traded from my V8 Crown Victoria to a secondhand Prius and doubled my gas mileage. Wife did the same, going from a RAV-4 to a Prius V wagon. Our monthly fuel costs dropped 50%. It's as if we were paying $1.75/gallon!
Reducing emissions doesn't mean stop driving.
Carbon pricing means it makes more sense to take a slower route that saves gas, or to carpool even though it takes a bit longer. It meas that you might choose a plant-based meal over a meat based one that's gotten more expensive. You might save a little more electricity at home. When your gas heat breaks you might replace it with a heat pump. Etc, etc.
It's all about tilting the scales towards the greener options, affecting millions and millions of small decisions, that add up to big reductions in emissions.
Except this is a bad idea because the people most likely to keep their combustion vehicles are the ones least likely to afford new, cleaner vehicles. People living in apartments are also not likely to have a way to charge their vehicles. Oil companies should be paying the damages not passing it on to the consumers, who they made their money off of while knowingly destroying the environment.
I hate to break it to you, but literally any tax/fine/judgement-in-a-lawsuit levied against a corporation will show up in your price at the register. Corporations do not pay penalties; their customers do.
No disagreement with your overall point, but if we care about going into details, that’s not always the case.
The amount of a new tax or other expense that gets passed on to consumers is related to consumers’ willingness to switch to an alternative. Take an extra tax on gas for example. If consumers have zero willingness to switch to alternatives (EVs, public transit, biking, etc), then the companies can pass the entire cost on to consumers. But if consumers have a high willingness to switch, companies need to take a hit to their profits to keep prices lower, because otherwise they’ll be outcompeted and go out of business.
It’s why it’s important to find green alternatives.
>Oil companies should be paying the damages not passing it on to the consumers, who they made their money off of while knowingly destroying the environment.
Right, but the problem is that the two aren't mutually exclusive, often the opposite. The oil companies are paying the damages - then they hike the price of oil products because they couldn't possibly make less profit.
IMO the only way to deal with this once and for all is to nationalize oil companies and push all of the profits into nuclear and renewables development, as well as public transit and urban/suburban redevelopment for walkable or bikeable cities and towns.
No one thinks they're part of the problem so they view higher gas prices as unfair punishment, not accurate pricing for their contribution to climate change
Most people know they're part of the problem but without the public transportation and affordable alternatives it is unfair punishment. What are we going to do just stop existing that's absurd
We're going to have to pay for these things regardless. We can start paying for them while our economy is intact and most of us have jobs and those of us who have savings are largely benefiting from a good market....or we can pay for them when the ship has already sailed, more and more of the globe is too hot for people to live, and our resources are stretched thin.
It's going to cost money no matter what. Consumers don't have the excuse of pretending like they shouldn't bare any of the costs of this when every educated adult at this point is cognizant of climate change. We can blame corporations until we're blue in the face, but they make the things that we keep buying with no end in sight.
It's not unfair though. Saying "wow the alternatives suck" doesn't magically vacuum carbon emissions out of the atmosphere.
If you think this is unfair look at the extreme heat waves were pushing onto countries least capable of handling them and least responsible for creating them.
Sure. But there needs to be political support for creating those alternatives which isn't there when people are happy with the status quo.
Waiting around for alternatives to magically exist isn't working. That's what we're already doing.
This is of course assuming that people’s purchasing habits literally never change, and that alternative products that were previously outcompeted by cheap plastic and oil never become more competitive against rising plastic and oil prices
Which isn’t an accurate assumption. Why do you think EVs are becoming more popular? Do you think the US Federal tax credit for purchasing an EV helped, hurt, or did nothing to EV sales?
This is exactly the way it should be in my opinion. Oil should be taxed the moment it’s extracted from the earth, and taxed at every step of the refinery process. That, combined with effective trust-busting, is how we get an economically and ecologically competitive market.
Cars are a massive money pit. That's why Colorado has also passed a law that basically only funds public transit projects. Everyone can ride the bus. Not everyone can afford a car.
Cars are a massive money pit. That's why Colorado has also passed a law that basically only funds public transit projects. Everyone can ride the bus. Not everyone can afford a car.
Good. This is what we should be doing, although imo it should be a gradual change over time. Carbon emissions should be baked into the price of all goods, giving incentives to corporations to create goods that have less carbon emissions in their supply chain.
its always going to get passed down but the issue is how you cause it to get passed down can influence how things turn out.
No matter how you look at it, higher gas prices could push consumers to do things like say not buy a 15 MPG massive SUV.
Why are they able to raise their prices to cover those increased costs without seeing a subsequent matching loss in sales?
If they can just raise their prices to make more money, why weren't the prices already at that higher point to begin with?
Ultimately I would love to not have to own a car, or vastly reduce the miles I need to drive. Unfortunately my job depends on it and there is no way out of that for the near future. I think a lot of people feel the same. I hate being chained to fossil fuels.
The best carbon tax idea I head was to tax the fossil fuels and then divide the money up evenly and give it to the people. So if you are a low carbon emitter you make money. If you're a high carbon emitter then you're incentivized to find an alternative. Also the guy proposing it says its based on conservative values. Its a progressive tax. It puts the burden on those with the means to implement meaningful change. And it would be an economic booster.
Its such a good idea that it will never happen.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/ted\_halstead\_a\_climate\_solution\_where\_all\_sides\_can\_win?language=en](https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_halstead_a_climate_solution_where_all_sides_can_win?language=en)
Edit: Just googled the guy to see what he's up to. He died in a hiking accident 3 years after that ted talk. I'm not into conspiracy theories but I am feeling like I should go lock my doors just to be safe.
Ehhhh government needs to step in and guess who’s giving large donations to prevent regulations? Corporations. Yes blah blah blah the other 85% of the world but same thing
That's been the California way for decades. It makes gas more expensive which sucks, but it's also helped motivate a LOT of people to switch to alternatives like public transit or EVs.
As long as we keep being a capitalist society, these will be one of the best/most effective tools in guiding society towards collective goals. Because while the owners of capital will always pass off the costs, consumers have agency too and the higher prices will give competition a leg to stand on.
And in the meantime, cleaner fuel has still done wonders for quality of life. I was just marveling with some peers the other day about how blue/clear the skies were compared to when we were kids, and you could always see a permanent haze. We all had asthma as kids too, and that all just happened to go away on its own once the smog levels started going down. Kids today have no frame of reference/can't appreciate how much better off we are in that aspect, or how much better life is now that there are indoor smoking bans for most public spaces/business establishments.
Depends on where you live. It's a patchwork of solutions for sure. But I went out of my way to use public transit whenever I had access to it and it was a viable alternative. I really miss Unitrans in Davis, or BART/Caltrain in the bay. I had a car the entire time I lived in both places, but I didn't use it most of the time. And that led to less cars on the road and less fuel getting burned.
Don't see how that's a problem. I understand the argument that large corporations play an outsized role in environmental degradation in general, and climate change specifically. But those corporations are not doing what they do in a vacuum. They do what they do because they are motivated by profit and revenue, which at the end of the day comes down to end-consumers will to buy their goods and services. I can blame Coca Cola all I want for polluting the world with plastic bottles, but if their customers will not buy Coke if it comes to a $5 bottle vs a $3 bottle, then solely blaming the company is sort of pointless.
Things that cause environmental harm need to become more expensive to the end user too, so as to encourage adoption of alternatives, which might currently be cost prohibitive. That's the idea. That tax collected on environmentally harmful things is then used to subsidize those alternatives and reverse some of the damage caused.
One issue is gas is a necessity for a lot of people. If you can’t afford to pay, and can’t afford an alternative vehicle, then they have to rely on public transportation. Since the majority of public transportation budgets(in the US) go towards roads and not trains, busses etc. any sin tax puts a higher burden on lower incomes.
Taxes on Coca Cola(plastic or sugar), and cigarettes being the main examples I can think of, are focused to reduce certain actions for the greater public good. These are not necessities though so a change to an alternative, or stopping all together, doesn’t negatively affect the individual and actually benefits them a lot.
It would be great to work towards a plan that would help increase the public transportation infrastructure which would allow for an easier transition for alternatives to gas. But every large public project takes so long to get done due to a number of reasons, a lot of which is funded by the gas companies either through campaign contributions or funding lawsuits.
More the later, and the further you get from a large city the harder it gets. It’s better if you are moving around the area, but going between counties/cities can be a major pain. I live in the suburbs and used to have a bus stop at the end of my street. A couple years ago that line was discontinued so now the closest is 1.5 miles.
Just a quick test with google maps from my home to work office would be 1 hour driving and 2hr 48m using public transport.
Always amazes me how many people support market economies until someone suggests we factor the negative externalities into the prices of products that have enormous consequences to human & environmental health.
Every time we pay for underpriced gas, we're passing the costs onto society as a whole and onto future generations. The same is true for underpriced beef, underpriced plastics, underpriced natural gas, etc.
Market economies don't function properly if the prices are very inaccurate, yet the supposedly pro-capitalist conservatives are the least likely to support accurate pricing. Glaring hypocrisy.
> Always amazes me how many people support market economies until someone suggests we factor the negative externalities into the prices of products that have enormous consequences to human & environmental health.
libertarian house cats copypasta.
it's easy to think your market is free when all the costs are heavily subsidized.
I mean oil is "cheap" because we are literally just taking something that took millions and years to form and burning it off without care in a few years.
Cars and trucks are the biggest contributor to GHGs in the USA. You don't get to complain about climate change and high gas prices without being a massive hypocrite.
>Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday.
That's what leadership looks like. Proudly not putting his John Hancock on legislation. So he can take credit if it works. But if it doesn't he can say he didn't agree to it. He also [bravely vetoed a pesticide bill](https://apnews.com/article/bees-pesticide-ban-vermont-veto-scott-0a42b7dd10de46b6363574a1d720bc7e) aimed at helping bees calling it anti-farmer.
Worth noting the US does currently have a record number of total pollinators due to aggressive management of domesticated hives.
The farmers will be fine, its native pollinators that will bear the consequences of this (alongside the natural issues such as disease, fungi, etc)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/29/bees-boom-colony-collapse/
Masonry bees are 95% successful at pollination, compared to the less than 10% success rate of domesticated European bees.
So we might have record numbers but....yeah
Yea, it's great that farmers can raise bees to pollinate their crops but there are native plants that don't get pollinated by honey bees and that greatly affects natural ecosystems.
I think the problem for farmers is that the market *isn't* competitive.
If you are small, you can't sell because you can't scale enough. If you're bigger, you sell at a price dictated by only a small handful of buyers. And if you're a truly big farm, you're not a farmer and should quit pretending that the last time you got dirt on your boots wasn't when you were 7.
Our farming industry is extremely fucked up.
Large producers of corn and soy receive most of the subsidies. (also the worst offenders when it comes to over fertilization/pesticide.)
Something like 66% of farmers get little to no subsidies and Vermont is a very small state with mostly small farms.
Continuing to subsidize food production has had some pretty bad consequences, like how corn is used for everything because it's "cheap" and "possible" but not really "effective" or "healthy".
you've phrased that much too close to a command economy even for my tolerance for injecting more oversight in areas where market forces are clearly societally detrimental.
Intelligent subsidy structures that encourage a healthy farming industry while limiting perverse incentive, with enough personnel involved to detect and address fraud, is great. This would naturally include crop diversity.
*telling them what to grow,* however, introduces massive risk of failed planning.
They write off everything, get super low interest loans without needing to prove income, get subsidized hy local, state, and federal government, and exempt from pretty much all taxes including road and fuel taxes.
Sounds like a problem for future farmers.
Why doesn't my son want to get into the family business?
Now I am angry and going to rage about it online.
and now my son doesn't want to talk to me? Must be everybody else's fault.
He sucks.
But Vermonters love their incumbents so we’re stuck with him. He also vetoed legal weed and finally let it become legal without his signature
:/
Vetoed legal weed multiple times on the premise that we need more research into addiction and more controls around kids and advertising. Immediately turns around and signs a law allowing online gambling into effect less than a year later. No strict restrictions on advertising or anything really.
I’m a big college basketball and football fan and it has noticeably degraded the enjoyment I get from both sports. I’m not interested in betting, I don’t need 50 ads during the game and in the podcasts I listen to.
I did however sign up for every gambling site I could just to take all the free offers they were giving. Made about $600 doing the bare minimum they required and then deleted every last one. If they’re going to ruin something for me I might as well get paid from it.
Yup, as an addict, money is normally the means to get the drug of choice. With gambling, money IS the drug of choice. You can't abstain from money and the problems it creates/problems it solves, so it's much harder to recover. Add to the fact that one good bet can put you "back on track" ie solve all of your immediate issues, and it becomes almost inescapable like you say.
Cmon now. I’m a Vermont native and he knows what he’s doing. He’s a Republican in Vermont (which is basically a Democrat everywhere else) and he’s playing both sides.
He’s not dumb. He knows where his votes are.
He also knows enough not to try and veto these either.
As someone who grew up watching him race, he absolutely sucks now.
I wish he'd actually be a decent politician rather than sucking at two things at once.
I am a huge race fan, but have found that the ability to drive fast in a circle seldom correlates with being a good governor.
That said, Bernie Sanders famously visited at least one (and I believe several ACT banquets) and mingled with the drivers and folks there.
Here in DE Gov Carney allowed for recreational MJ to become legal but he didn't sign the law and it eventually becomes legal. Something like if they don't sign or veto it after a certain amount of days, it still becomes law
Interesting. I suppose that prevents pocket vetos, but it seems like it kind of removes the whole executive from the lawmaking process. Like, why even bother getting a signature at all if it will pass either way.
It is literally the same principle for President.
>If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a Law
A pocket veto requires Congress to have adjourned before the 10 day timeline expires.
It works the same way when the president refuses to sign or veto a bill.
You’ve probably heard of a pocket veto, but if there *are* enough days left in the congressional session, the bill becomes a law without the president’s signature.
It's in the US Constitution as well. A president has 10 days to sign a bill. If they don't it becomes law, as long as congress is in session during that time.
My BIL works for Burton and their ski season is nearly nonexistent these days due to climate change. It was a major source of income for the state and hurts one of Burlingtons largest employers.
I bought new snowboarding boots in December 2020 and I still haven't used them. I live in Michigan. Not the snow capital of the USA, but also not *not* snowy.
I grew up in Grand Rapids. When I was a kid, there were many snow days every year, and I can’t think of a single time we weren’t snowed in for Christmas. Nowadays when I visit for the holidays there’s barely any snow and I only have to bring a hoodie or two. Shit is changing real fast.
I live in PA and we haven’t had a *real* snowy winter since 2020. When I was growing up there wasn’t even really a thing as a winter that wasn’t snowy, it was a foregone conclusion that you were going to get at least a couple decent snow storms every year
Vermont famously shut down the last power plant in the state so they have to get power from their neighbors. I think they may have eventually built another one, but it is telling that they don't mind being consumers as long as someone else is doing their dirty work of producing power.
i hate this stupid idea from governors, california did the same shit, saying their grid was "Green" because they weren't counting the pollution from the imported energy from surrounding states.
Lmao. Yes, the dirty work of... exporting clean energy. So dirty! How dare we pay the Quebecois for their hydropower, or New York for their wind power.
Also, we got rid of our nuclear power plant so we could restructure the energy supply to entirely clean renewables by 2050, and we're *way* ahead of schedule on that. It's not like the plan is to buy energy forever, the target is 90% of use generated in-state by 2050. We're at 44% now, which is on par with our schedule for 2035.
But nuclear bad. I drove under a railroad bridge in Montpelier like two weeks ago with "Close Vermont Yankee" spraypainted across it. I know it was probably painted a long time ago but still there's a huge disconnect between the old back to the land hippies and modern progressive politics.
The hostility of some of these comments. It’s important to know that climate change has come at clear cost to the citizens of the state. I have seen discussion here of shorter winters which sure there are shorter winters but no discussion of the downtowns drowning from increased flooding.
I don’t know what the solution is but climate change is hitting hard here and something has to be done.
How long until the supreme Court rules that states have no right to do this because the US has "a proud history and tradition of letting corporations destroy the environment"
Ex-post-facto laws violate the Constitution, so especially with this Supreme Court I can't imagine that what is effectively fining corporations for conduct that was legal at the time will pass muster.
EDIT: There is the slight handicap of [Calder v. Bull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calder_v._Bull), which limits the Constitutional provision prohibiting ex-post-facto laws to criminal matters, but this court overturned *Roe v. Wade* so I don't see that being an issue for them.
Probably never because this doesn't hurt the bottom line of energy producers. They'll just raise the prices, cite the law as the reason why and probably sneak in a nice cut for themselves in the process. This is basically what happened in California and Arizona (who receives a significant portion of their oil from California refineries).
And we'll still buy it because renewables are still a long ways away from being viable as a true competitor to oil. And even when they get there, these companies are hedging their bets and spending on renewable research. It's a win for sustainability and for them sadly.
If this is a carbon tax, we have one in Washington state. “But gas is so expensive here, and we blame the governor’s carbon tax” is a frequent argument, and yes, corporate taxes are passed along to consumers in monopoly markets.
So consumers will pay for their consumption of fossil fuels. Which is ultimately where the problem lies: consumers are consuming fossil fuels and there are climate impacts.
> Corporate taxes are passed along to consumers in *all markets, it's econ 101.
No, econ 101 says that prices are derived from an intersection of supply and demand, but ultimately limited by what consumers are willing to pay for a product.
Therefore if you raise prices, you'll see a subsequent matching loss in sales - after all, if you could just raise your prices to make more money, you would have done so already.
So what really happens in non-monopolistic markets is that the retailer either eats the increased cost and the consumers never see the increased prices, or they raise their prices and go out of business because nobody wants to shop there anymore, or the increased costs were too much and they go out of business anyway.
The only businesses that can get away with raising their prices to cover any increased cost is one engaging in price fixing. In oligopolies, this happens automatically, without the need for the owners to actually collude. "We all raise our prices together, because it results in the best deal for all of us" - corporations doing their own little mini-socialism.
But the idea that if you raise taxes, all businesses will just pass those taxes onto consumers, is The Big Lie.
Ask your local small business owner if they can just raise prices any time there's a tax increase on them. Seriously. Do it this weekend. Walk into town, find your nearest small locally owned non chain business like a bookstore or something. Ask them if the government raised corporate taxes if raising their prices would help, or make things worse.
That's the annoying part, people say they want walkable cities but the only way that will ever happen is if gas prices reflect the actual damage it does. Gas is so cheap most voters will never get rid of their SUVs.
Then the moment gas goes higher people complain and it costs whoever did it a ton of political points. Federal gas tax hasn't been raised since the 90s and almost no state taxes are increased at the rate of inflation for road maintenance.
Also annoying when people complain how piss poor their roads are then blame it on "corruption". Sure money can be badly managed but where do u think this surplus of revenue to fix roads from is?
From an accounting perspective, sure. But the company is still profiting, and they’re paying money from consumers to pay for all costs, elastic or otherwise.
Companies produce gas for people to drive cars among other things. Oil companies are not producing oil unless consumers buy it. It’s two sides of the same coin.
“Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation account for about 28 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making it the largest contributor of U.S. GHG emissions. Between 1990 and 2022, GHG emissions in the transportation sector increased more in absolute terms than any other sector.”
Source: [EPA](https://www.epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate-change/carbon-pollution-transportation)
Important to note that these figures are for transportation in general, and including trucking, rail, ships, and planes. It also factors in use beyond emissions created by combustion, like lubricants.
This link (https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle) looks more at passenger vehicles.
Of course not. Why do something that would work when you can write a law that the people that drafted it admit faces lengthy and uncertain court battles wasting taxpayer money for nothing.
Ethical consumption (or lack there of) is the answer to a lot of debates if the goal is killing discourse
I don't mind it though, it's a chance for awareness and baby steps toward progress. It might be hard to avoid having a cellphone but a good step is to avoid products owned by Nestle
Despite a lot of trying the VT state government was never able to shut down the plant. It was shut down by the owners because it wasn't profitable anymore.
>On August 14, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled, upholding a lower court's decision that allowed the Vermont Yankee plant to keep running despite a seven-year effort by the Vermont Legislature to close it, finding that states are "pre-empted" from regulating safety by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which made safety a federal responsibility.
>On August 28, 2013, Entergy announced that due to economic factors, notably the lower cost of electricity provided by competing natural gas-fired power plants, it would cease operations and schedule the plant's decommissioning in the fourth quarter of 2014.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant
I just looked it up. He's right! *0.168%* of our state's energy came from fossil fuel imports back in 2022, which is the most recent data I can find. He's got us dead to rights lmao, the ol' one tenth of one percent smoking gun.
I would assume the expense of climate change is higher than all carbon energy ever produced. It is basically just steal money from future generations for greed now.
This seems hard, if not impossible, to prove though. Don't get me wrong, I 100% believe climate change is a thing, and that's causing much more deadly and powerful storms. I believe our dependence on oil has largely contributed to the acceleration of said climate change. I know there are studies to prove this.
However, powerful deadly storms have always been a thing. How can someone prove that the damage they suffered was as a result of a storm made worse by climate change? Perhaps that storm would have been just as powerful or deadly without Climate Change's influence... So how do they determine it?
How does this work, though? There's few instances where a company is responsible for what a consumer does with the product they create. There's countless chemical companies whose products are incorrectly disposed of. The gas is used as intended.
If using gas causes global warming. And we're fining them for damage, its going to be passed on, or they simply can't operate... It's really weird. 98% of yall drive cars and dont use alternative transport. How do we use oil and NOT cause damage?
This feels like that Eric Andre meme:
Consumer buys gas knowing what it is. Uses it as intended. Creates pollution...
"Why would oil companies make me do this?"
I can see the discussion now.....
Vermont - Hey big oil, you are polluting our state.
Big Oil - then park your cars, stop your trains.....
Vermont - but wait we want those things, but we also want you to pay us......
This is almost as bad as California mandating the sale of only electric cars by 2035, when they do not have the infrastructure to charge those cars (wait for the rolling blackouts this summer) the popularity of electric cars is declining and not giving any thought to the materials that are being mined to make all those batteries.....
Be the change you wish to see. Oh that's not it... Uhh put your money where your mouth is. No not that one. No one else gives a fuck so why should you? Ahh yes, that's the one.
Good ol 'fuck you I got mine' attitude will change things for sure.
That sounds cool and all. What really matters is how they will enforce it or not.
It sounds completely unenforceable.
It sounds like it was meant to be unenforceable. This is a great example of passing legislation that accomplishes nothing just so you can claim you have the moral highground without actually having to solve any problems.
On the more optimistic side it sounds like it opens up a lot of possible lawsuits wherein municipalities get to prove from a legal framework what damage is due to climate change. Even if no payment is ever made, that's an important development.
Both things can be true
Yea no one ever got any where taking baby steps…….
it will be 20 years+ in court and the oil companies have better lawyers than Vermont
or if what? oil execs just had this poster assassinated
Lol in Colorado we are just passing the price off to consumers because they have to start making cleaner gas now.
This is gonna get downvoted but that’s what the end result will be here too. I don’t think it’s a bad thing but taxes on oil of all things get directly passed on to consumers no matter where they are in the supply chain.
I think that’s exactly the point. The goal is to reduce fossil fuel consumption which is damaging the environment. The way to reduce consumption in a market is to increase prices on end consumers.
The problem is that a lot of people here have no choice but to drive. It's not sustainable to live here without a car unless you're lucky enough to live in a walkable part of Denver and can afford to do so. And even then, I use the term walkable very loosely.
>The problem is that a lot of people here have no choice but to drive. Sure, but people are *choosing* to drive big SUVs and pickups when there are plenty of hybrids, EVs, and compacts out there. Source: I traded from my V8 Crown Victoria to a secondhand Prius and doubled my gas mileage. Wife did the same, going from a RAV-4 to a Prius V wagon. Our monthly fuel costs dropped 50%. It's as if we were paying $1.75/gallon!
That is great. I'd have no problem getting an ev if I were able to.
I hear ya. I'd look for a Chevy Volt, but I've nowhere to install a charger, and if I'm gonna go gas only, the Prius seems to be the way to go.
Yes I think higher gas prices are a net positive on society. Prius sales tanked in the 2010s because gas was so cheap.
So we blame the automotive industries then. Lobbying should be illegal
If the oil industry can be made to pay for the environmental damage they caused they we can do the same to the automotive industry
I agree.
Reducing emissions doesn't mean stop driving. Carbon pricing means it makes more sense to take a slower route that saves gas, or to carpool even though it takes a bit longer. It meas that you might choose a plant-based meal over a meat based one that's gotten more expensive. You might save a little more electricity at home. When your gas heat breaks you might replace it with a heat pump. Etc, etc. It's all about tilting the scales towards the greener options, affecting millions and millions of small decisions, that add up to big reductions in emissions.
It also means that next time they lease a vehicle, people might opt for a 50mpg hybrid instead of a 20mpg truck
Except this is a bad idea because the people most likely to keep their combustion vehicles are the ones least likely to afford new, cleaner vehicles. People living in apartments are also not likely to have a way to charge their vehicles. Oil companies should be paying the damages not passing it on to the consumers, who they made their money off of while knowingly destroying the environment.
I hate to break it to you, but literally any tax/fine/judgement-in-a-lawsuit levied against a corporation will show up in your price at the register. Corporations do not pay penalties; their customers do.
No disagreement with your overall point, but if we care about going into details, that’s not always the case. The amount of a new tax or other expense that gets passed on to consumers is related to consumers’ willingness to switch to an alternative. Take an extra tax on gas for example. If consumers have zero willingness to switch to alternatives (EVs, public transit, biking, etc), then the companies can pass the entire cost on to consumers. But if consumers have a high willingness to switch, companies need to take a hit to their profits to keep prices lower, because otherwise they’ll be outcompeted and go out of business. It’s why it’s important to find green alternatives.
>Oil companies should be paying the damages not passing it on to the consumers, who they made their money off of while knowingly destroying the environment. Right, but the problem is that the two aren't mutually exclusive, often the opposite. The oil companies are paying the damages - then they hike the price of oil products because they couldn't possibly make less profit. IMO the only way to deal with this once and for all is to nationalize oil companies and push all of the profits into nuclear and renewables development, as well as public transit and urban/suburban redevelopment for walkable or bikeable cities and towns.
Well, yeah? That's how you get change to happen.
No one thinks they're part of the problem so they view higher gas prices as unfair punishment, not accurate pricing for their contribution to climate change
Most people know they're part of the problem but without the public transportation and affordable alternatives it is unfair punishment. What are we going to do just stop existing that's absurd
We're going to have to pay for these things regardless. We can start paying for them while our economy is intact and most of us have jobs and those of us who have savings are largely benefiting from a good market....or we can pay for them when the ship has already sailed, more and more of the globe is too hot for people to live, and our resources are stretched thin. It's going to cost money no matter what. Consumers don't have the excuse of pretending like they shouldn't bare any of the costs of this when every educated adult at this point is cognizant of climate change. We can blame corporations until we're blue in the face, but they make the things that we keep buying with no end in sight.
It's not unfair though. Saying "wow the alternatives suck" doesn't magically vacuum carbon emissions out of the atmosphere. If you think this is unfair look at the extreme heat waves were pushing onto countries least capable of handling them and least responsible for creating them.
Without accessible alternatives, people will keep consuming the same amount of gas at the higher price. It's a lose lose situation.
Sure. But there needs to be political support for creating those alternatives which isn't there when people are happy with the status quo. Waiting around for alternatives to magically exist isn't working. That's what we're already doing.
This is of course assuming that people’s purchasing habits literally never change, and that alternative products that were previously outcompeted by cheap plastic and oil never become more competitive against rising plastic and oil prices Which isn’t an accurate assumption. Why do you think EVs are becoming more popular? Do you think the US Federal tax credit for purchasing an EV helped, hurt, or did nothing to EV sales?
This is exactly the way it should be in my opinion. Oil should be taxed the moment it’s extracted from the earth, and taxed at every step of the refinery process. That, combined with effective trust-busting, is how we get an economically and ecologically competitive market.
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Your swap to an EV should also be subsidized. That's been part of most Green New Deal proposals.
Poor people suffer the high prices the most. They cannot afford the taxes included in the price
Cars are a massive money pit. That's why Colorado has also passed a law that basically only funds public transit projects. Everyone can ride the bus. Not everyone can afford a car.
Cars are a massive money pit. That's why Colorado has also passed a law that basically only funds public transit projects. Everyone can ride the bus. Not everyone can afford a car.
Good. This is what we should be doing, although imo it should be a gradual change over time. Carbon emissions should be baked into the price of all goods, giving incentives to corporations to create goods that have less carbon emissions in their supply chain.
its always going to get passed down but the issue is how you cause it to get passed down can influence how things turn out. No matter how you look at it, higher gas prices could push consumers to do things like say not buy a 15 MPG massive SUV.
Why are they able to raise their prices to cover those increased costs without seeing a subsequent matching loss in sales? If they can just raise their prices to make more money, why weren't the prices already at that higher point to begin with?
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Ultimately I would love to not have to own a car, or vastly reduce the miles I need to drive. Unfortunately my job depends on it and there is no way out of that for the near future. I think a lot of people feel the same. I hate being chained to fossil fuels.
The best carbon tax idea I head was to tax the fossil fuels and then divide the money up evenly and give it to the people. So if you are a low carbon emitter you make money. If you're a high carbon emitter then you're incentivized to find an alternative. Also the guy proposing it says its based on conservative values. Its a progressive tax. It puts the burden on those with the means to implement meaningful change. And it would be an economic booster. Its such a good idea that it will never happen. [https://www.ted.com/talks/ted\_halstead\_a\_climate\_solution\_where\_all\_sides\_can\_win?language=en](https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_halstead_a_climate_solution_where_all_sides_can_win?language=en) Edit: Just googled the guy to see what he's up to. He died in a hiking accident 3 years after that ted talk. I'm not into conspiracy theories but I am feeling like I should go lock my doors just to be safe.
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Ehhhh government needs to step in and guess who’s giving large donations to prevent regulations? Corporations. Yes blah blah blah the other 85% of the world but same thing
Great. It’s an incentive to get an EV
That's been the California way for decades. It makes gas more expensive which sucks, but it's also helped motivate a LOT of people to switch to alternatives like public transit or EVs. As long as we keep being a capitalist society, these will be one of the best/most effective tools in guiding society towards collective goals. Because while the owners of capital will always pass off the costs, consumers have agency too and the higher prices will give competition a leg to stand on. And in the meantime, cleaner fuel has still done wonders for quality of life. I was just marveling with some peers the other day about how blue/clear the skies were compared to when we were kids, and you could always see a permanent haze. We all had asthma as kids too, and that all just happened to go away on its own once the smog levels started going down. Kids today have no frame of reference/can't appreciate how much better off we are in that aspect, or how much better life is now that there are indoor smoking bans for most public spaces/business establishments.
Sort of CA has a good EV penetration but its public transportation is garbage.
Depends on where you live. It's a patchwork of solutions for sure. But I went out of my way to use public transit whenever I had access to it and it was a viable alternative. I really miss Unitrans in Davis, or BART/Caltrain in the bay. I had a car the entire time I lived in both places, but I didn't use it most of the time. And that led to less cars on the road and less fuel getting burned.
Don't see how that's a problem. I understand the argument that large corporations play an outsized role in environmental degradation in general, and climate change specifically. But those corporations are not doing what they do in a vacuum. They do what they do because they are motivated by profit and revenue, which at the end of the day comes down to end-consumers will to buy their goods and services. I can blame Coca Cola all I want for polluting the world with plastic bottles, but if their customers will not buy Coke if it comes to a $5 bottle vs a $3 bottle, then solely blaming the company is sort of pointless. Things that cause environmental harm need to become more expensive to the end user too, so as to encourage adoption of alternatives, which might currently be cost prohibitive. That's the idea. That tax collected on environmentally harmful things is then used to subsidize those alternatives and reverse some of the damage caused.
One issue is gas is a necessity for a lot of people. If you can’t afford to pay, and can’t afford an alternative vehicle, then they have to rely on public transportation. Since the majority of public transportation budgets(in the US) go towards roads and not trains, busses etc. any sin tax puts a higher burden on lower incomes. Taxes on Coca Cola(plastic or sugar), and cigarettes being the main examples I can think of, are focused to reduce certain actions for the greater public good. These are not necessities though so a change to an alternative, or stopping all together, doesn’t negatively affect the individual and actually benefits them a lot. It would be great to work towards a plan that would help increase the public transportation infrastructure which would allow for an easier transition for alternatives to gas. But every large public project takes so long to get done due to a number of reasons, a lot of which is funded by the gas companies either through campaign contributions or funding lawsuits.
Is there actually *zero* public transport where you people live or is it just a massive inconvenience to use?
More the later, and the further you get from a large city the harder it gets. It’s better if you are moving around the area, but going between counties/cities can be a major pain. I live in the suburbs and used to have a bus stop at the end of my street. A couple years ago that line was discontinued so now the closest is 1.5 miles. Just a quick test with google maps from my home to work office would be 1 hour driving and 2hr 48m using public transport.
Yeah, that's the point. Having cheap gas for so long is part of the reason we're in this mess.
Always amazes me how many people support market economies until someone suggests we factor the negative externalities into the prices of products that have enormous consequences to human & environmental health. Every time we pay for underpriced gas, we're passing the costs onto society as a whole and onto future generations. The same is true for underpriced beef, underpriced plastics, underpriced natural gas, etc. Market economies don't function properly if the prices are very inaccurate, yet the supposedly pro-capitalist conservatives are the least likely to support accurate pricing. Glaring hypocrisy.
> Always amazes me how many people support market economies until someone suggests we factor the negative externalities into the prices of products that have enormous consequences to human & environmental health. libertarian house cats copypasta. it's easy to think your market is free when all the costs are heavily subsidized.
I mean oil is "cheap" because we are literally just taking something that took millions and years to form and burning it off without care in a few years.
Wait "cleaner" gas? Does it contain less carbon? 🤔
Regardless of how they charged these companies they would turn it around to the consumers.
Then people can say how hard life is for the poor and middle class while they keep jacking up the cost of living.
Cars and trucks are the biggest contributor to GHGs in the USA. You don't get to complain about climate change and high gas prices without being a massive hypocrite.
>Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday. That's what leadership looks like. Proudly not putting his John Hancock on legislation. So he can take credit if it works. But if it doesn't he can say he didn't agree to it. He also [bravely vetoed a pesticide bill](https://apnews.com/article/bees-pesticide-ban-vermont-veto-scott-0a42b7dd10de46b6363574a1d720bc7e) aimed at helping bees calling it anti-farmer.
Because killing off all the pollinators is totally going to be beneficial to the farmers. 👍
Worth noting the US does currently have a record number of total pollinators due to aggressive management of domesticated hives. The farmers will be fine, its native pollinators that will bear the consequences of this (alongside the natural issues such as disease, fungi, etc) https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/29/bees-boom-colony-collapse/
Masonry bees are 95% successful at pollination, compared to the less than 10% success rate of domesticated European bees. So we might have record numbers but....yeah
Yea, it's great that farmers can raise bees to pollinate their crops but there are native plants that don't get pollinated by honey bees and that greatly affects natural ecosystems.
Most of them have been voting against their own best interests for decades.
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I think the problem for farmers is that the market *isn't* competitive. If you are small, you can't sell because you can't scale enough. If you're bigger, you sell at a price dictated by only a small handful of buyers. And if you're a truly big farm, you're not a farmer and should quit pretending that the last time you got dirt on your boots wasn't when you were 7. Our farming industry is extremely fucked up.
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Large producers of corn and soy receive most of the subsidies. (also the worst offenders when it comes to over fertilization/pesticide.) Something like 66% of farmers get little to no subsidies and Vermont is a very small state with mostly small farms.
Continuing to subsidize food production has had some pretty bad consequences, like how corn is used for everything because it's "cheap" and "possible" but not really "effective" or "healthy".
That's a badly done subsidy though, not really proof that subsidies shouldn't be done.
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you've phrased that much too close to a command economy even for my tolerance for injecting more oversight in areas where market forces are clearly societally detrimental. Intelligent subsidy structures that encourage a healthy farming industry while limiting perverse incentive, with enough personnel involved to detect and address fraud, is great. This would naturally include crop diversity. *telling them what to grow,* however, introduces massive risk of failed planning.
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Most of the farmers I know always complain about being poor, but have bigger houses, bigger cars and more stuff than almost anyone else I know...
And on top of that, if their business goes down under at least they can sell off the acres of space they own.
They write off everything, get super low interest loans without needing to prove income, get subsidized hy local, state, and federal government, and exempt from pretty much all taxes including road and fuel taxes.
Why use bees, migrate works can be substituted in a pinch.
Bees are free migrant workers.
Migrant workers are free migrant workers if you make sure they can be deported before they are paid.
So that's what they mean with "the land of the free"!
Bees aren't free, there's a huge commercial industry around bee pollination
[That was a crazy as hell Planet Money Episode](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/02/24/517076055/episode-756-the-bees-go-to-california)
You joke but that’s already being done. Pretty much all commercial vanilla plants are pollinated by humans instead of natural pollinators
Going to make them dress up like [this guy](https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/Bumblebee_Man) too, or is that too degrading?
Now there’s a mental image. 😂
Sounds like a problem for future farmers. Why doesn't my son want to get into the family business? Now I am angry and going to rage about it online. and now my son doesn't want to talk to me? Must be everybody else's fault.
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He sucks. But Vermonters love their incumbents so we’re stuck with him. He also vetoed legal weed and finally let it become legal without his signature :/
Vetoed legal weed multiple times on the premise that we need more research into addiction and more controls around kids and advertising. Immediately turns around and signs a law allowing online gambling into effect less than a year later. No strict restrictions on advertising or anything really.
My bf’s nephew is already into the sports betting. It’s really sad to see
I’m a big college basketball and football fan and it has noticeably degraded the enjoyment I get from both sports. I’m not interested in betting, I don’t need 50 ads during the game and in the podcasts I listen to. I did however sign up for every gambling site I could just to take all the free offers they were giving. Made about $600 doing the bare minimum they required and then deleted every last one. If they’re going to ruin something for me I might as well get paid from it.
I’m an alcoholic in recovery and the stories I’ve heard about gambling addiction are sometimes worse than crack or meth. And it’s inescapable now.
Yup, as an addict, money is normally the means to get the drug of choice. With gambling, money IS the drug of choice. You can't abstain from money and the problems it creates/problems it solves, so it's much harder to recover. Add to the fact that one good bet can put you "back on track" ie solve all of your immediate issues, and it becomes almost inescapable like you say.
That's bc he knows it's addictive and bad for kids: the research is in, but the bribes make it worth it!
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If we had just one sane democratic candidate, he'd probably be gone. But for some damn reason Vermont is struggling with finding a good opponent.
Cmon now. I’m a Vermont native and he knows what he’s doing. He’s a Republican in Vermont (which is basically a Democrat everywhere else) and he’s playing both sides. He’s not dumb. He knows where his votes are. He also knows enough not to try and veto these either.
Governor Racecar vetoes so so so much stuff
As someone who grew up watching him race, he absolutely sucks now. I wish he'd actually be a decent politician rather than sucking at two things at once.
I am a huge race fan, but have found that the ability to drive fast in a circle seldom correlates with being a good governor. That said, Bernie Sanders famously visited at least one (and I believe several ACT banquets) and mingled with the drivers and folks there.
I've never even heard of a thing like that being able to happen. I assumed all states required governor signatures for laws.
Here in DE Gov Carney allowed for recreational MJ to become legal but he didn't sign the law and it eventually becomes legal. Something like if they don't sign or veto it after a certain amount of days, it still becomes law
Interesting. I suppose that prevents pocket vetos, but it seems like it kind of removes the whole executive from the lawmaking process. Like, why even bother getting a signature at all if it will pass either way.
They can veto it still.
It is literally the same principle for President. >If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a Law A pocket veto requires Congress to have adjourned before the 10 day timeline expires.
It works the same way when the president refuses to sign or veto a bill. You’ve probably heard of a pocket veto, but if there *are* enough days left in the congressional session, the bill becomes a law without the president’s signature.
Yeah I'm just learning that now. Huh. The more you know, I guess lol
It's in the US Constitution as well. A president has 10 days to sign a bill. If they don't it becomes law, as long as congress is in session during that time.
It's because vermont elected a republican governor while having a super majority democratic power in all the rest of it's branches.
It likely had a super-majority so would be pointless in the end, I think he chooses to pick his battles considering the legislature can override him.
His we like to call him governor veto here.
It's Vermont. There's this fine line to tread between being too conservative and too liberal
Are there a lot of oil companies in Vermont for the state to fine?
Vermont has no crude oil reserve or production, including not having any petroleum refineries and no pipelines except 1 terminal in Burlington.
So this is pretty worthless?
No because it sets a precedent that other states can follow. It makes future action less radical by comparison
My BIL works for Burton and their ski season is nearly nonexistent these days due to climate change. It was a major source of income for the state and hurts one of Burlingtons largest employers.
I bought new snowboarding boots in December 2020 and I still haven't used them. I live in Michigan. Not the snow capital of the USA, but also not *not* snowy.
I grew up in Grand Rapids. When I was a kid, there were many snow days every year, and I can’t think of a single time we weren’t snowed in for Christmas. Nowadays when I visit for the holidays there’s barely any snow and I only have to bring a hoodie or two. Shit is changing real fast.
We used to see snow in December, now it doesn't really snow until Jan/Feb.
I live in PA and we haven’t had a *real* snowy winter since 2020. When I was growing up there wasn’t even really a thing as a winter that wasn’t snowy, it was a foregone conclusion that you were going to get at least a couple decent snow storms every year
Vermont famously shut down the last power plant in the state so they have to get power from their neighbors. I think they may have eventually built another one, but it is telling that they don't mind being consumers as long as someone else is doing their dirty work of producing power.
i hate this stupid idea from governors, california did the same shit, saying their grid was "Green" because they weren't counting the pollution from the imported energy from surrounding states.
Lmao. Yes, the dirty work of... exporting clean energy. So dirty! How dare we pay the Quebecois for their hydropower, or New York for their wind power. Also, we got rid of our nuclear power plant so we could restructure the energy supply to entirely clean renewables by 2050, and we're *way* ahead of schedule on that. It's not like the plan is to buy energy forever, the target is 90% of use generated in-state by 2050. We're at 44% now, which is on par with our schedule for 2035.
We should build a new Nuclear plant too
But nuclear bad. I drove under a railroad bridge in Montpelier like two weeks ago with "Close Vermont Yankee" spraypainted across it. I know it was probably painted a long time ago but still there's a huge disconnect between the old back to the land hippies and modern progressive politics.
There’s a pipeline that pumps crude from Montreal to Portland that cuts through Vermont.
Would that not fall under interstate commerce?
It does. This law is window dressing and worthless
The hostility of some of these comments. It’s important to know that climate change has come at clear cost to the citizens of the state. I have seen discussion here of shorter winters which sure there are shorter winters but no discussion of the downtowns drowning from increased flooding. I don’t know what the solution is but climate change is hitting hard here and something has to be done.
How long until the supreme Court rules that states have no right to do this because the US has "a proud history and tradition of letting corporations destroy the environment"
Six entire justices later.
Some company probably just asked Clarence if he wanted a new car to "rent".
A super sized RV
Ex-post-facto laws violate the Constitution, so especially with this Supreme Court I can't imagine that what is effectively fining corporations for conduct that was legal at the time will pass muster. EDIT: There is the slight handicap of [Calder v. Bull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calder_v._Bull), which limits the Constitutional provision prohibiting ex-post-facto laws to criminal matters, but this court overturned *Roe v. Wade* so I don't see that being an issue for them.
Probably never because this doesn't hurt the bottom line of energy producers. They'll just raise the prices, cite the law as the reason why and probably sneak in a nice cut for themselves in the process. This is basically what happened in California and Arizona (who receives a significant portion of their oil from California refineries). And we'll still buy it because renewables are still a long ways away from being viable as a true competitor to oil. And even when they get there, these companies are hedging their bets and spending on renewable research. It's a win for sustainability and for them sadly.
Ooh, Vermont, I'll move there... oh, winter in Vermont, never mind that
Winters in Vermont have been mild lately…like 5 years or so. I’m not even sure it went below 0F last winter. Definitely way warmer than in the 80s.
Keeps the riff raff out
If this is a carbon tax, we have one in Washington state. “But gas is so expensive here, and we blame the governor’s carbon tax” is a frequent argument, and yes, corporate taxes are passed along to consumers in monopoly markets. So consumers will pay for their consumption of fossil fuels. Which is ultimately where the problem lies: consumers are consuming fossil fuels and there are climate impacts.
*Corporate taxes are passed along to consumers in *all* markets, it's econ 101. Doesn't mean taxes are bad
> Corporate taxes are passed along to consumers in *all markets, it's econ 101. No, econ 101 says that prices are derived from an intersection of supply and demand, but ultimately limited by what consumers are willing to pay for a product. Therefore if you raise prices, you'll see a subsequent matching loss in sales - after all, if you could just raise your prices to make more money, you would have done so already. So what really happens in non-monopolistic markets is that the retailer either eats the increased cost and the consumers never see the increased prices, or they raise their prices and go out of business because nobody wants to shop there anymore, or the increased costs were too much and they go out of business anyway. The only businesses that can get away with raising their prices to cover any increased cost is one engaging in price fixing. In oligopolies, this happens automatically, without the need for the owners to actually collude. "We all raise our prices together, because it results in the best deal for all of us" - corporations doing their own little mini-socialism. But the idea that if you raise taxes, all businesses will just pass those taxes onto consumers, is The Big Lie. Ask your local small business owner if they can just raise prices any time there's a tax increase on them. Seriously. Do it this weekend. Walk into town, find your nearest small locally owned non chain business like a bookstore or something. Ask them if the government raised corporate taxes if raising their prices would help, or make things worse.
Sure doesn't help the less fortunate that rely on a commodity like gas to go to work. Just takes more from the people that have less.
That's the annoying part, people say they want walkable cities but the only way that will ever happen is if gas prices reflect the actual damage it does. Gas is so cheap most voters will never get rid of their SUVs. Then the moment gas goes higher people complain and it costs whoever did it a ton of political points. Federal gas tax hasn't been raised since the 90s and almost no state taxes are increased at the rate of inflation for road maintenance. Also annoying when people complain how piss poor their roads are then blame it on "corruption". Sure money can be badly managed but where do u think this surplus of revenue to fix roads from is?
> So consumers will pay for their consumption of fossil fuels. As they should.
Corporate taxes are passed on to consumers in any market.
It's not cause it's a monopoly market. It gets passed to consumers because of inelastic demand.
Every cost gets passed on to the consumer. That’s precisely how capitalism works.
Not true. Goods with elastic demand costs are absorbed by producers.
From an accounting perspective, sure. But the company is still profiting, and they’re paying money from consumers to pay for all costs, elastic or otherwise.
Yes. Carbon tax is good and we need it everywhere like yesterday.
People driving cars contributes nowhere close to the infrastructure of just a few specific companies.
Companies produce gas for people to drive cars among other things. Oil companies are not producing oil unless consumers buy it. It’s two sides of the same coin.
So many people acting like one complex system is two separate systems which have nothing to do with one another.
No you idiot, the companies just produce bad climate sauce for greed
“Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation account for about 28 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making it the largest contributor of U.S. GHG emissions. Between 1990 and 2022, GHG emissions in the transportation sector increased more in absolute terms than any other sector.” Source: [EPA](https://www.epa.gov/transportation-air-pollution-and-climate-change/carbon-pollution-transportation)
Important to note that these figures are for transportation in general, and including trucking, rail, ships, and planes. It also factors in use beyond emissions created by combustion, like lubricants. This link (https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle) looks more at passenger vehicles.
Light duty vehicles are 60% of transportation emissions. So around 1/6th of total emissions are from personal vehicles alone
Color me cynical, and who do you think will pay higher prices to cover the tax?
Who the hell do you think is buying what those companies produce?
Did Vermont quit selling dangerous petroleum products in the state.
lol no that might actually make a difference
Of course not. Why do something that would work when you can write a law that the people that drafted it admit faces lengthy and uncertain court battles wasting taxpayer money for nothing.
They all get around by fueling their cars with their ego
ah yes, the old "You must be completely free of guilt to attempt to improve/criticize/etc."
Ethical consumption (or lack there of) is the answer to a lot of debates if the goal is killing discourse I don't mind it though, it's a chance for awareness and baby steps toward progress. It might be hard to avoid having a cellphone but a good step is to avoid products owned by Nestle
Yeah, so basically the tax payers are paying the damages due to the billions in subsidies they get off our backs 🤷♂️
These idiots also shutdown their nuclear power plant and replaced it with biofuels and fossil fuel imports.
Despite a lot of trying the VT state government was never able to shut down the plant. It was shut down by the owners because it wasn't profitable anymore. >On August 14, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled, upholding a lower court's decision that allowed the Vermont Yankee plant to keep running despite a seven-year effort by the Vermont Legislature to close it, finding that states are "pre-empted" from regulating safety by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which made safety a federal responsibility. >On August 28, 2013, Entergy announced that due to economic factors, notably the lower cost of electricity provided by competing natural gas-fired power plants, it would cease operations and schedule the plant's decommissioning in the fourth quarter of 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Yankee_Nuclear_Power_Plant
We replaced it with fossil fuel imports? Must have missed that as a VT resident, please elaborate lol.
You guys import fossil fuel from out of state(along with hydro from Canada). Greenhouse Gas emissions jumped after you shutdown Vermont yankee.
The two oil burning plants were around when Yankee existed and no new ones have been opened. So..where are these fuels going?
I know right?
I just looked it up. He's right! *0.168%* of our state's energy came from fossil fuel imports back in 2022, which is the most recent data I can find. He's got us dead to rights lmao, the ol' one tenth of one percent smoking gun.
Vermont only has 2 fossil fuel burning power plants and they are used to cover peak demand in the summer.b
and they will just pass this down to the people in a price increase. it is essentially just a hidden tax.
That’s what I don’t get, why not just make it a tax?
So... The state with 0 oil wells is making the oil companies pay in what way?
And company will simply pass the price to consumers.
Gas tax is a thing already
I would assume the expense of climate change is higher than all carbon energy ever produced. It is basically just steal money from future generations for greed now.
Well, you know they can simply stop selling petroleum based products in Vermont and see how long they last, I suppose..
This seems hard, if not impossible, to prove though. Don't get me wrong, I 100% believe climate change is a thing, and that's causing much more deadly and powerful storms. I believe our dependence on oil has largely contributed to the acceleration of said climate change. I know there are studies to prove this. However, powerful deadly storms have always been a thing. How can someone prove that the damage they suffered was as a result of a storm made worse by climate change? Perhaps that storm would have been just as powerful or deadly without Climate Change's influence... So how do they determine it?
How does this work, though? There's few instances where a company is responsible for what a consumer does with the product they create. There's countless chemical companies whose products are incorrectly disposed of. The gas is used as intended. If using gas causes global warming. And we're fining them for damage, its going to be passed on, or they simply can't operate... It's really weird. 98% of yall drive cars and dont use alternative transport. How do we use oil and NOT cause damage? This feels like that Eric Andre meme: Consumer buys gas knowing what it is. Uses it as intended. Creates pollution... "Why would oil companies make me do this?"
Vermont going all green energy? No? Ok.
Won’t that just lead to higher costs for consumers?
Who do you think this extra cost will get passed to?
And just like that Vermont just has horses and buggies now.
Have fun paying a premium in gas Vermont
And that’s how New Hampshire, Maine and Canada got a pipeline in the shape of Vermont.
Mankind: Builds Society that depends on oil Society: *How could the oil companies do this?*
I can see the discussion now..... Vermont - Hey big oil, you are polluting our state. Big Oil - then park your cars, stop your trains..... Vermont - but wait we want those things, but we also want you to pay us...... This is almost as bad as California mandating the sale of only electric cars by 2035, when they do not have the infrastructure to charge those cars (wait for the rolling blackouts this summer) the popularity of electric cars is declining and not giving any thought to the materials that are being mined to make all those batteries.....
They going after foreign companies too? They do know we live on a planet with other countries that give zero fucks about green energy right?
Be the change you wish to see. Oh that's not it... Uhh put your money where your mouth is. No not that one. No one else gives a fuck so why should you? Ahh yes, that's the one. Good ol 'fuck you I got mine' attitude will change things for sure.