I agree with the spirit of the bill, as taxes on fossil fuels will hopefully disincentive use of them.
I feel like I should elaborate more on this. Normally I disagree with the Government tellin the private sector what to do by taxing some things more and other things less, but these are truly extraordinary circumstances -- if we do not find a way to curb consumption of fossil fuels, the consequences will be far more punishing for our economy than anything these taxes could ever cause.
However, going too far too fast would have very severe short-term repercussions for our energy industry -- something we also want to try and avoid. It is possible to strike a balance between these two goals, of course, and I look forward to vigorous debate over this issue.
I agree. Obviously, we can't just completely realign the region's energy industry too quickly. It's implausible and would likely be economically destructive. Assuming we're not in a budget crunch, I think it might be useful to try redirecting revenue we get from this to projects that help with sustainability like public transit, funding more renewable forms of energy, etc. I think that there's probably more that we can do, but it might be best to work on that once we see what the regional economic situation looks like.
