Rural climate skeptics are costing us time and money. Do we keep indulging them?
When we talk about a carbon tax, we’re talking to an old-school fossil fuel industry. They’re the people who have always thought carbon dioxide was a pollutant, whose main objective has always been to drive up prices while they continue to exploit it.
So we’re not talking to a bunch of new-school climate skeptics who are fighting for the earth and their children and grandchildren. We’re talking to an old-school fossil fuel industry whose only purpose is to drive up prices by shutting down renewable energy and replacing it with dirty, carbon-intensive fossil fuels.
The question on the table is this: Do we continue to support them and keep indulging them and paying them to do it? Or do we decide to stop and think about them and their impact on the environment?
It’s a question worth considering. Because it’s clear that the fossil fuel industry is going to do everything it can to delay, derail and obstruct any meaningful policies to reduce carbon emissions. It’s a problem that goes all the way past the point of no return.
At an event in New York last week, I was asked a question by a man I’d never met before, a man named John Hoey, who had written a book in which he tried to make the case that climate change skeptics like me might be right and carbon taxes might be a good way to go.
He wanted to know why I didn’t acknowledge that fossil fuels should be a factor in any national policy for combating climate change. And this is one of the reasons that I wanted to come here today to say, “Hoey, you’re right. Carbon taxes are the worst thing to do about this.”
I’ve been saying it for over a year now. And I keep hearing from people that I respect because I have a lot of respect for John Hoey. He’s been around and he’s been involved in a lot of different causes over the years. But when I saw him, I saw someone who has