Past time to go big
Block Island Wind Farm
Old Higgins Farm Windmill, in Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod. It was built in 1795 to grind grain. Many New England towns had windmills.
“By partnering with our neighbor states with which we share tightly connected economies and transportation systems, we can make a more significant impact on climate change while creating jobs and growing the economy as a result.’’
-- Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker
Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and the District of Columbia have signed a pact to tax the carbon in vehicle fuels sold within their borders and use the revenues from the higher gasoline prices to cut transportation carbon-dioxide emissions 26 percent by 2032. Gasoline taxes would rise perhaps 5 to 9 cents in the first year of the program -- 2022.
Of course, this move, whose most important leader right now is Massachusetts’s estimable Republican governor, Charlie Baker, can only be a start, oasbut as the signs of global warming multiply, other East Coast states are expected to soon join what’s called the Transportation Climate Initiative.
The three states account for 73 percent of total emissions in New England, 76 percent of vehicles, and 70 to 80 percent of the region’s gross domestic product.
The money would go into such things as expanding and otherwise improving mass transit (which especially helps poorer people), increasing the number of charging stations for electric vehicles, consumer rebates for electric and low-emission vehicles and making transportation infrastructure more resilient against the effects of global warming, especially, I suppose, along the sea and rivers, where storms would do the most damage.]
Of course, some people will complain, especially those driving SUVs, but big weather disasters will tend to dilute the complaints over time. Getting off fossil fuels will make New England more prosperous and healthier over the next decade. For that matter, I predict that most U.S. vehicles will be electric by 2030.
Eventually, reactionary politics will have to be overcome and the entire nation adopt something like the Transportation Climate Initiative.