EDITORIAL: Abrupt climate-change reversal
Global Warming on Free Republic
Posted on 04/03/2012 9:11:23 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
With a lower price tag and speedier plan to start zipping bullet trains up and down California, Gov. Jerry Brown's ambitious new high-speed rail proposal is still wobbly on one vital ingredient: billions and billions of dollars.
The state still has no guarantee on where it will come up with about 80 percent of the funding needed for a project that high-speed rail leaders announced Monday will cost at least $68 billion. But bullet train backers are now touting a new wild card ..
Anywhere from $2 billion to $14 billion a year could be in play for high-speed rail, thanks to a new proposal to use money from a pollution auction established by the state's landmark global warming law.
The money -- expected to start flowing to the state in November, when it begins selling permits that allow industry to emit greenhouse gases -- could either be a brilliant savior for the cash-strapped rail project or a disappointing enigma that disappears under legal scrutiny and opposition from businesses.
At a news conference Monday in Fresno, rail leaders did little to play up the new funding possibility, nor did they return calls seeking more detail. But critics said it is likely to set off a massive legal showdown between business interests and the state.
"It's the winning-the-lottery scenario," said Dorothy Rothrock, vice president of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association. "Counting on cap-and-trade revenues might not be the wise thing to do if it is so legally suspect that the money will never show up."
The state's new 212-page business plan released Monday begins with the phrase "Better, faster, cheaper," a mantra supporters repeated .. It lowers the project cost from $98 billion, but is still double what voters were told when they approved $9 billion in bonds in 2008.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
this is like a time-delayed april fools joke..
pig .. lipstick .. yada yada..
Moonbeam Rising
People have been talking about replacing income/payroll taxes with these type of carbon taxes. This shows how politically naive such thinking is. I wonder if the California public sector unions will try to push their wants in front of the queue. I can imagine this will denigrate into a bunch of hungry mean dogs fighting to get the bone.
People have been talking about replacing income/payroll taxes with these type of carbon taxes. This shows how politically naive such thinking is. I wonder if the California public sector unions will try to push their wants in front of the queue. I can imagine this will denigrate into a bunch of hungry mean dogs fighting to get the bone.
biggest polluters pay.. before they move out of California.”
Bingo! He still doesn’t have a clue.
California will soon have to build border fences to keep businesses from fleeing.
“I can imagine this will denigrate into a bunch of hungry mean dogs fighting to get the bone.”
Absolutely! You should have seen the dogfights over the Alameda Corridor construction bone in the early ‘90’s.
Incredible!
I seriously think that Jerry Brown is senile. He has no grasp on reality. He is in cloud cuckoo land.
Of course Marxist/totalitarian minds don't grasp that without the profit motive, operators of businesses will stop producing and simply jump on the "high-speed" gravy train to nowhere.
There is very little interest for high speed bullet trains in California, yet the politicians continue to sell it as a panacea for all that ails the state.
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/uploadedFiles/Routes/Project_Sections/San_Jose_-_Merced(1)/Merced-Fresno_032911.pdf
EDITORIAL: Abrupt climate-change reversal
Global Warming on Free Republic
Is this going to be one of those deals like the tobacco settlement? Where people stop doing the thing government claimed they wanted them to stop doing, thus cutting off the taxes, thus causing government to wail that they're not getting enough taxes? Even though the activity in question was so loathsome we'd all be better off if every stopped it, supposedly?
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