Letter: Carbon tax won’t slow global warming

Regarding the Aug. 14 TCH Forum, “Is carbon tax proposal best solution to issue?” — the guest columns for and against Initiative 732 seem timely, but both ignored important points.

1. Both agreed that we need to limit carbon emissions due to climate change. This tax will do nothing to stop climate change, simply because Washington is not a significant CO2 contributor. If the state cut all its CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2030, it would only decrease the global addition rate of ~2 ppm/year to the atmosphere by .01 percent, which would have no discernible impact on global temperatures. It would not reduce droughts, reduce sea level rise, increase the future snowpack in the Cascade Mountains or reduce the acidity of Puget Sound.

2. Yorman Bauman of Carbon Washington suggests this carbon tax, “...will be a model for the nation.” It seems a bit disingenuous for Washington (with 90 percent of its electricity coming from non-fossil fuel sources) to be promoted as a model for states like Utah (electricity is 97 percent fossil fuel), Colorado (63 percent), California (54 percent), and Montana (50 percent), saying ‘be like us’ and tax your current abundant, low-cost, on-demand electricity sources out of existence.

The earth has been slowly warming for over 300 years, and no carbon tax is going to change that.

This story was originally published August 30, 2016 at 4:24 AM with the headline "Letter: Carbon tax won’t slow global warming."