Wednesday, February 14, 2007

New Jersey Jumps Off the Climate Cliff...

I just read with horror Jim's post on New Jersey's plan to attack "global warming":

....imagine how pleased I was to see that Governor Corzine will issue an Executive Order that contains long-term “global warming” goals matched only by those in California...

The state legislature will have to pass a statute in order to implement the goals that are contained in the Executive Order. No problemo, that. Democrats Linda Stender and Barbara Buono are ready to hold hearings on New Jersey’s “Global Warming Response Act”. According to the Star Ledger, The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection “will develop plans for meeting the goals in conjunction with the Department of Transportation, Board of Public Utilities [and] Department of Community Affairs …”

The prospect of four state agencies given the task of writing new regulations is downright frightening. Regulators just love to write regulations – lots of them. More regulations mean more bureaucracy, which in New Jersey means … yes, more taxes. Count on it.

If this continues, one day the only business left in New Jersey will be state government, and the only people left in the state will be state government employees. They can amuse themselves by regulating hell out of one another.

Well, we've said that before...I agree with Jim; we'll definitely see more taxes, especially on the New Jersey middle class, and most likely on our SUV's (yeah, fat lot of good a Prius would have been in getting me to work today, but Corzine and his ilk will always have their taxpayer-funded SUV's to take them to whatever fundraiser they need to get to).

New Jersey as the new California, except with worse weather and finances...just great.

There is a solution, though it is too simple and not punishment-oriented enough for the Democratic left ...via Tim Blair:

Easy. Simply ban automatic cars, as I advised in 2005. Because automatic cars use around 5% more fuel than manual cars, that simple law would save 5,650,000,000 barrels of oil per year in the US alone (and be minimally disruptive in developing nations, where a greater proportion of vehicles are non-automatic). If each barrel contains 175 kilograms of carbon, we’re looking at an annual carbon reduction (US only) in the region of 988,750,000 metric tons.

Save the enviornment, drive a stick!
Nah, never work...how would you raise revenues that way?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oy! I don't much want to be on the roads when most people under 40 would be learning to drive a stick.

Thanks for the link!

Anonymous said...

A stick?
Never happen!
Here's why -

Aren't they discriminatory against lefties? Being on the "right" side, the sticks are much harder for a lefty to manipulate.
Maybe left-handers should be exempt?
Or get a targeted tax break for their disability?

Erica said...

It just so happens I am a lefty, who first learned to drive a stick, in Cherry frickin' Hill, New Jersey. Go figure (until I actually got the hang of it, I almost sent the car careening off a parking lot cliff).

To be fair, I might be ambidextrous, since I only write and draw with my left hand, but do most everything else with my right, so using a stick was no problemo.

And FYI: It is *not* a disability to be left-handed (I hope you're not someone I know, because I'm tempted to call you a baboon). If you want I could inflict a disability on your right hand, though, and then you'd have no choice but to see how us lefties operate. It's kinda cool, really.