How did we go from a national awareness of the challenges of acid rain (and subsequently global warming) to utter inaction on the subject in Washington since 2001?
I could spend the next twenty posts fingering individuals and bureaucratic monoliths but instead, I will give you a broader answer because there is more than enough blame to go around.
Indeed, members of both of our major political parties have fought the matter from the wrong side.
In the end, the ultimate cause of the inertia we face today and which we must overcome if we are to develop the momentum we need in order to drive sweeping reforms (and save Florida from reverting to the wooded sand bar it was eons ago) is subsidies.
American tax dollars are used to allow timber companies to fell millions of trees every year, exacerbating climate change (and displacing or killing beautiful wildlife which otherwise would thrive in our purple mountain’s majesty) and then the profits are used in part to fund huge lobbying efforts which block good faith attempts in Congress to reform the system. The timber is sold at below market value and we pay for it with our taxes!
Likewise, our tax dollars are given in block grants, loan guarantees and other subsidies to fossilized energy companies which use a portion of the resulting profits to wage a broad lobbying war on Capitol Hill to block such changes as an increase in the national average fuel efficiency standards, known as CAFÉ.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 contained billions of dollars of new subsidies for big oil. Ostensibly, those gifts of our tax dollars would reduce energy prices and provide greater stability of our energy infrastructure. What do we have instead? Record fuel prices while energy companies post record profits.
We paid for them to make bundles of cash far and above what they have made in the past and allow them to charge us whatever they want for fuel. Then, when members of Congress start talking about a windfall profits tax, their opponents try to tell us that the open market dictates energy prices. The reality is that those people make so much money from investing in energy stocks that higher prices at the pump are nothing more than an incidental expense to them.
Now, I have oversimplified the problem but many Americans see it just the way I have explained. The result has two key parts which perpetuate voter apathy:
1)The members of Congress who genuinely try to serve their constituents and nation by fixing the problem (there are Democrats and Republicans alike who fit this definition) have their voices squelched by other members who’d rather accept the lobbying money; and
2)Voters see what happens in item 1 and decide that no matter how many good candidates they elect, those candidates either will be corrupted by the 5:1 ratio of energy lobbyists to Congressmen or silenced by the corrupt majority.
What’s the answer? My next post takes you there.
Sustainable Justice For All!
Corbett Kroehler
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