Green Energy Policies Harm the Poor
From an editorial in the Washington Examiner "When 'Being Green' Means Subsidies for Rich, Harm for the Poor" by Iain Murray and David Bier of the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
"Consider the Obama administration's subsidies for electric vehicles. To start with, there is the $7,500 credit for the car itself. Add to that the recently expired $1,000 credit for installation of a 220-volt charger. And on top of these, the government has thrown more than $3 billion at the Chevrolet Volt alone -- which totals out to $250,000 per vehicle. Not only do these credits go to corporate giants like General Motors, they subsidize cars for the wealthy.
The Volt sells for about $40,000, while the Fisker Karma sells for $100,000 -- well above most Americans' price range. That means that the federal government is again working to benefit the rich so they can drive cars that ease their environmental conscience. And for what? If 6 million wealthy Americans buy these cars, as the president hopes, it will reduce oil consumption nationwide by less than 1 percent.
OK, so Obama's environmental policies are subsidizing the rich, but they're helping the poor, too, right? Wrong. In fact, nearly every environmental policy hurts the poor the most.
Last year, Americans spent more on gasoline as a percentage of their income than they have in almost 30 years (see chart above). Yet that hasn't stopped the president, cheered on by his environmentalist allies, from rejecting the Keystone XL oil pipeline or restricting offshore oil permits."
HT: NCPA
"Consider the Obama administration's subsidies for electric vehicles. To start with, there is the $7,500 credit for the car itself. Add to that the recently expired $1,000 credit for installation of a 220-volt charger. And on top of these, the government has thrown more than $3 billion at the Chevrolet Volt alone -- which totals out to $250,000 per vehicle. Not only do these credits go to corporate giants like General Motors, they subsidize cars for the wealthy.
The Volt sells for about $40,000, while the Fisker Karma sells for $100,000 -- well above most Americans' price range. That means that the federal government is again working to benefit the rich so they can drive cars that ease their environmental conscience. And for what? If 6 million wealthy Americans buy these cars, as the president hopes, it will reduce oil consumption nationwide by less than 1 percent.
OK, so Obama's environmental policies are subsidizing the rich, but they're helping the poor, too, right? Wrong. In fact, nearly every environmental policy hurts the poor the most.
Last year, Americans spent more on gasoline as a percentage of their income than they have in almost 30 years (see chart above). Yet that hasn't stopped the president, cheered on by his environmentalist allies, from rejecting the Keystone XL oil pipeline or restricting offshore oil permits."
HT: NCPA
18 Comments:
Another cogent, well supported argument from Larry G. Now, if only "Benji" would chime in.
thenk u then u ...she is dead... much appreciated..
bad bad Obama...
Obama is ruining the world.
Obama is a polka-dot socialist
blah blah blah
more ! more !
:-)
Larry's just demonstrating the mental process of a moron Obama voter exposed to the truth of what his hero is doing to our country: "I can't heaaarrRRR YOUUUUU!"
WHAT! yet another anti-Obama fool?
Outrage!
;-)
As P.J. O'Rourke reminds us, it's the liberals dirty little secret. They Hate Poor People
She is Dead-
I support the Keystone pipeline, though I have reservations about ramrodding a pipeline across private property without permission of owner. I salute private property rights.
You have apparently confused me with the typical hypocrite who votes for the GOP---like the Nebraska GOP governor who opposed the pipeline across the public Sand Hills section of his state.
"We are for free enterprise and pipelines except when we are not." ----GOP Governor.
"You have apparently confused me with the typical hypocrite who votes for the GOP---like the Nebraska GOP governor who opposed the pipeline across the public Sand Hills section of his state.
" -- "Benji"
No, I've exposed you for the brain-dead leftist that you are.
Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns, who was in Omaha Friday, is disappointed with the president ... “What the president could have done is offered conditional approval for the rest of the pipeline, it's good to go, and when Nebraska makes its decision, we'll just build that in." ... "He wants to blame everything on Nebraska," said Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, who doesn't see it that way. He says moving the route in Nebraska shouldn't impact the rest of the route. "TransCanada is perfectly willing to start building. There's three states above and below us they have to go through. By then, we'll be ready a long time before they get here." -- Channel 6 News, Nebraska
According to Reuters, this Tuesday, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman signed two bills into law that will reroute the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The first bill is an agreement with TransCanada, the proposed pipeline's owner, and Nebraska to change the path away from both the ecologically struggling Sandhills area in the north central part of the state, as well as the Ogallala aquifer, one of the largest in the world ... The State Department has reviewed and rejected thirteen different alternate routes for Keystone XL over the past three years and now the final decision will be delayed until early 2013. -- Yahoo News
" “What the president could have done is offered conditional approval for the rest of the pipeline, it's good to go, and when Nebraska makes its decision, we'll just build that in."
ha ha ha.
methinks if Nebraska was REALLY SERIOUS about wanting the pipeline right away, it they would have had a route-in-hand, ready to go.
is the GOP in Nebraska ready to condemn their own citizens land for a foreign for-profit investor?
hmmm... do you think they'd rather blame the ED on Obama instead? Is that why they want him to go first?
would the GOP do something that slimy?
yep.
I see two issues here. First, should the government subsidize "green" toys for the rich? Not a good idea. That's the easy one.
The other is more subtle. Good green policy would mean, in one way or another, raising gasoline prices. As the chart shows, the poor spend more on gas than the rich. Is that a reason not to raise gas prices? No!
Keeping gas prices low to help the poor means we are giving low income folks a license to harm the rest of us by polluting our air. That makes about as much sense as "helping the poor" by deciding we will no longer enforce shoplifting laws against people with low income.
"Good green policy would mean, in one way or another, raising gasoline prices." -- Ed Dolan
Why would that be good "green policy"? The former Soviet Union had very few cars, yet they managed to have one of the worst environmetal records in human history.
"Keeping gas prices low to help the poor means we are giving low income folks a license to harm the rest of us by polluting our air"...
OMG!
That's it! I'm done with you blog Dolan...
Obama = Epic Fail...
Larry,
"methinks if Nebraska was REALLY SERIOUS about wanting the pipeline right away, it they would have had a route-in-hand, ready to go."
Like many of us, they might have figured there wasn't a chance in hell Obama would allow the pipeline to be built, so why bother?
ed-
that is an astoundingly incomplete and limited analysis.
wealth begets environmental stewardship. this is a simple and indelible fact of economics and humanity. the poor are terrible caretakers of the environment. clean environment functions in every way like a luxury good: the richer you are, the more disproportionately you want it.
you may lament that this is so, it it is.
as the US grew wealthier in the last 30 years, the air and water got MUCH cleaner. now you seek to reverse this trend by making us poorer again to suit your fascist predilections about how we should be forced to behave?
this problem is taking care of itself. why are you so anxious to step in and force behavior and limit freedom and material well being in hopes of driving outcomes that are by no means certain.
your argument (like most green party thinking) seems premised in notions that fascist control is OK so long as you like the goal and based upon flawed notions of economics and human behavior.
wealth = clean environment. it's that simple. this is only true above a certain level of wealth. the greens seem determined to drive this into reverse and keep the third world from developing leaving them as massive polluters and mired in human misery all for "the good of mankind".
it's the most specious, indefensible dogs breakfast of hypocrisy going.
unable to find any real pollution trends in the developed world to be worried about, they have had to invent a bugbear with CO2 and back it up with false consensus and massive statistical distortions and bad science of a magnitude not seen since celestial spheres.
the whole green movement is just the same totalitarians and communists that wrecked so many countries after ww2 looking for a new way to grab the reins of power.
of all the mainstream political movements out there, i think they are the most deceitful and hypocritical.
" Like many of us, they might have figured there wasn't a chance in hell Obama would allow the pipeline to be built, so why bother? "
ha ha ha.. that's really lame.
If the slimy GOP REALLY wanted to make Obama look BAD - they'd have a map of an approved route to release to the media.
the fact of the matter is they seem to be dodging the ED issue because their own citizens might throw THEM out of office for taking Nebraska citizens property for profit-making foreign investors.
who is the coward here? The GOP.
they are hoisted on their own petard .. they say they support fossil fuel development but they say they also say they protect private property rights - until they are forced to choose between the two and then they get slimy.
"If the slimy GOP REALLY wanted to make Obama look BAD - they'd have a map of an approved route to release to the media"...
Oh no worries there larry g, the question is how many of the dolts that supported him understand that Obama doing a bang up job of 'looking bad' all by himself?
While it's true that the environment has gotten cleaner, we are well past the point where further improvements are generally worth their cost. This is especially so for cars, which are so clean (their pollution when warm is so low it's beyond our ability to measure) that the only reason the EPA keeps clamping down on auto emissions is because they hate cars. It won't produce better air quality. The same goes for motorcycle emissions. The EPA wants bikes to have catalytic convertors just like cars. The problem is that these are expensive, and if you removed all bikes from the road I doubt it would be measurable. So what's the point, then? To make motorcycles more expensive because you can?
Morganovich is correct that a clean environment is a luxury good. Poverty drives a bad environment.
After that, he is all wet. A good economy alone does not provide a clean environment.
It is a necessary but insufficient condition, as history easily shows.
Garde Lieux.
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