Some states want to punish fuel-efficient car drivers!

You're not seeing the big picture. Gas taxes do not cover the full cost
of our nation's highway system. A lot of road repair and maintenance
comes from revenue streams other than gas taxes. Do you think a town in
Wyoming with a population of 1000 generates enough gas tax revenue to
pay for all the roads those people use in their area? I don't think so.
Even those who don't own a car or a drivers license still pay gas taxes
indirectly through the cost of the goods and services they use.

 

You're mixing two things. Gasoline and other road taxes are
redistributed. Not only over a county, or a state or even the nation but
diverted to non-road purposes. But those are taxes FOR ROADS and are
paid for by DRIVERS. The various other taxes (almost always property
tax) paid by non-drivers that go to roads go to the most local of
roads. And nobody in po-dunk WY is a non-driver, that is if he isn't
living some sort of 19th century mountain man lifestyle that is.

You were talking about a non-driver who lives in chicago paying for
roads in the suburbs outside the CTA's service area. Sorry, it just
ain't happening by any accounting I'm familiar with. As a non-driver he
isn't paying any specific road taxes, just general taxes. What general
taxes he pays will be going to roads within the city, ideally the one in
front of his house.

 

The true purpose of the environmental movement is to keep the prices

Marin County certainly is, and it demonstrates how they got their way.
Just TRY to move there if you don't have more money than God.

 

All one need do is look at the price of property in California and it become
apparent what the runaway environmentalism of the environuts has done to its
cost, and the costs of many other things in that state like prices for fuel
and electricity

 

Certainly, the price of buying houses in the Silicon Valley Area and
San Fransisco are amoungst the highest in the nation. But this has
very little to do with the environmental regulations. It has a lot
more to do with people love the climate and people like to work for a
lot of money in the electronics and biotech industries as well as at
some world-class universities.

The cost of electricity in CA is less than the cost in New England
states. I don't know how much of this has to do with environmental
regulations. Much of the cost might have to with the free market
system where utilities bought electricity from companies like Enron.
California now gets a lot of its electricity from burning natural gas.

However, I don't consider environmentalists nuts. Rather, they are
people who like the environment that we all share to survive. I don't
see what is so nutty about that.

jeff

 

Social engineering, the DAHLING of LIEbrawls everywhere is what is nutty.
Penalize industry and you won't HAVE the revenue to your greeny shit.

 

As far as wear is concerned, likely so. Road wear goes up much
greater than linearly with weight.

 

Bull. There's still plenty of vacant land there; the only reason
housing is expensive is that the eco-nut movement "protects" most of
it in order to MAKE it expensive.

Both areas have adopted so much eco-nut regulation that it's next to
impossible to build or expand power plants. Thus it's a race to see
which area will outgrow its installed capacity first. Up to last
year I would have bet on CA, but now that Schwarzenegger (a Democrat
in sheep's clothing if there ever was one) has managed to ruin CA's
economy even more than Gray Davis did, New England may get there first.

California has put off the problem for a few years by building wind
power plants (and forcing utilities to subsidize them), but the sites
where they'll work are pretty much exhausted (unlike New England, where
I hear Ted Kennedy still prevents them being built where they would
spoil the view from his beachfront house).

Two things are nutty about the environmental movement. One is that it
is based on assertions of emergencies that just don't exist (and the
fact they don't exist is obvious to anyone who knows what he's talking
about). The other is that the movement explicitly rejects the only
two mechanisms that could solve such a problem if it did exist -- the
free market and new technology.

You need to read the works of Julian Simon, especially "The Ultimate
Resource 2".

 

No, they preserve the land so that there will be nature there in the
future, like a national forest is preserved to keep the forest.

Certainly, with so many companies making do with the technology they
have, the economic slowdown has greatly affected many companies in the
Silicon Valley area, causing many lay-offs. The state universities
have limited the number of students in attendance and cut budgets,
which affects the communities in which the universities are based. The
economic problems have limited biotech R&D as well as biotech and
technology IPOs as well as start-ups. Clearly, these problems were not
caused by the gubinator.

Not to mention by using other forms of solar energy (the winds are
created by energy from the sun).

I have to disagree with you here. There are major environmental
problems, like the lowering of thee water tables and water shortages
in many parts of the world, including US West, global heating,
disappearing forests, decrease ocean pH (as result of CO2, which is an
acid) and a generally degraded environment.

The free market system doesn't work properly unless the enviornmental
cost is included. I see what you mean. It is not like any
environmentalists are suggesting people use electric cars, hybrid
cars, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, power from waves,
improved computer efficiency, flourescent lights or anything like
that.

Jeff

 

If you want to preserve land you buy it add rules to the title and pass
it on in your family or to a group that will preserve it by obeying your
legally binding wishes.

A national forest or other government controlled land is protected so
long politics make it so. Those in government will gladly lease the land
to their friends to exploit the natural resources. Not being owners but
merely renters of 'public land' they will destroy it entirely.

Passing laws to restrict your neighbors from building on their land
after you built on yours is just plain incompatible with liberty.

The free market does include the environmental cost. Except there hasn't
been a free market in the modern age. What was decided is that
certain people were allowed to foul their neighbors' and public lands
and waterways. A true free-market property rights system would have
requred that the pollution remain on the property of those creating it
or otherwise safely disposed of.

The system that is in place is one where the government allows those
with the right connections in the political system can dump a particular
amount of their wastes into the waterways, are allowed to have so much
pollution damage their neighbors' property and so on. Then instead of
actually going to a property rights point of view environmentalists want
to tax end users for the 'environmental cost' of the products. The
tax is placed on products that are made regardless of how
responsible the manufacturer is and favors the politically connected
persons (who are favored by the existing regulations). It's absurd.

True environmental costs will be reflected once we have system
based on property rights instead of political power.

 

New England (at least my part) has the means to create plenty of clean
power. The nuke plant in Seabrook was supposed to have a second
reactor, but that was squashed. The amount of additional power that
second reactor would generate is huge.

There is also a plan in the works for underwater turbine in the
Piscataqua river. We'll have to see how that progresses.

There is currently a company in Newburyport, Mark Ritchey Woodworking,
that is putting up a wind turbine to provide their own power. It's in
the middle of an industrial park, not like it overlooks anyone's
yard. Still, opposition was fierce and they were dragged to court
countless times over it until the judge finally had enough and gave
them the go-ahead while pre-emptively squashing any further appeals.

It can be done, and we have the means. The problem is those opposing
every step to get it done, while of course running 5 ACs in the summer
and being part of the cause of the brown-outs. Everyone wants
"something done", but whenever anyone does something those same people
object. It's both frustrating and amusing to watch.

 

Bull. There's still plenty of vacant land there; the only reason

If there were ever a shortage of scenic, natural terrain, then the price
of land kept that way would rise enough that it would pay to maintain it
and charge admission to the hikers, campers, and hunters.

The fact that it hasn't happened yet through the free market shows that
there is no such shortage, nor any prospect of one. Way too much land
is unbuilt and going to waste now. Anyone who tells you different is
lying.

 

You just need to fly across the country and look out the window to see
how much land is uninhabited.
pj