Environmental vanity plates don’t stop SUV pollution

This news was just too good to pass up:

Coloradans looking to help the environment may soon be able to showcase their efforts through a new license plate.

A bill to create the “Colorado Carbon Fund” special plate is expected to pass the House Transportation Committee later Thursday afternoon. Senate Bill 186 has already passed out of the State Senate.

Great. An effort to scale down carbon emissions is cool. The plans for carbon emissions? Mostly ineffectual - they dodge the real problem, which is that the modern American (and Western) automobile lifestyle is choking out the planet. Carbon offsetting offers a bit of preservationism, but when the land for trees runs out, it’s just out - the scarcity of free land will drive the price up to a degree that makes these buy-back programs completely ineffectual.

What they do accomplish, very effectively, is that they offer a bit of moral soothing to the more conscientious consumer. The real damage, though, and in fact the way in which carbon off-setting increases the damage, is that they allow those people who may have looked into alternate ways of living and inventive means of minimizing their carbon footprint to continue living in excess without that sense of responsibility.

The requirements are pretty lax:

To qualify for the plates, drivers will need to make a donation to the Colorado Carbon Fund, which is a voluntary carbon offset program being created by the Governor’s Energy Office. They will also need to pay $55.36 for the plate. The Carbon Fund will be up and running later this spring to direct money toward Colorado-based projects designed to promote clean energy and climate mitigation projects. Vehicles over 16,000 pounds will not be eligible to a Colorado Carbon Fund license plate.

I hate beating up on people that are trying o help, but this one’s just so silly - $55.36 cents isn’t even a full tank of gas for some of the trucks that qualify. What this bill really does is let SUV owners in Colorado keep rolling around in their fancy trucks and not feel bad.

Colorado’s doing a lot of good things for the environment, but this isn’t one of them. Give the article a read - it details a lot of the better plans they’ve got.

SOURCE: http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=89709