In this ridiculous article by Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post today, she decries the subversive influence of Southeastern states in the battle to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. The article is misleadingly entitled “Southeast counteracts efforts to reduce air pollution” and discusses the potential negative effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.
Nowhere is there any clarification that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant (nevermind a discussion of the potential positive impacts of carbon dioxide emissions such as increased vegetation, longer growing seasons, and improvements in human health). Nor is there any clarification over the fact that air quality, in the Southeast and elsewhere, has improved markedly over the past few decades and continues to improve. Instead, there is only the implication that carbon dioxide, essential to life on earth, represents a direct threat to human health.
Eilperin calls for Southeastern states to follow the lead of Northern and some Western states that are eliminating “policies that encourage people to move out to the suburbs in pursuit of larger homes and bigger backyards.” She continues to rally for policymakers that “are pushing aggressively to increase urban density and discourage the use of private cars.” In other words, she is calling for “smart-growth” policies that allow the government to dictate where and how people can live – placing severe limits on individual liberty.
Eilperin continues to specifically decry North Carolina policies that allocate more government revenue for road construction than for public rail transit. She further attacks Raleigh as being a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions through urban sprawl that has increased commuter distances.
A major concern with transit-centered smart-growth strategies that Eilperin refuses to address is that such a use of government revenue benefits a wealthy urban elite at the expense of the rural poor. The rural poor receive no benefit in terms of transportation accessibility from urban transit that they would be required to partially finance if the resources are drawn from the General Fund.
In addition, the effect of smart-growth style land-use restrictions is to increase the scarcity of land that can be used for development, thereby driving up the price of that land. This rewards land owners and puts ownership out of the reach of many low-income families.
The type of policies that Eilperin is openly advocating for in this article should demonstrate two points very clearly. The first is that because everything that we do generates carbon dioxide (including the simple act of just breathing), when carbon dioxide emissions are regulated, the government is able to regulate every aspect of life – ending individual liberty and laying the seeds for a tyrannical police state. Second, policy measures designed to address carbon dioxide emissions are nearly always regressive. To further the agenda a wealthy elite, they will hurt not only the poor in this country, but as has been seen with ethanol policy, when these policies affect world markets, they have the potential to starve and kill the poorest people in the world. Even Paul Krugman admits this. Advocates of such policies appear more than willing to cause a certain disaster of this sort in order to stave off the onset of a poorly-understood, “potential disaster.”
Cross-posted at www.environmentnc.com
