Letter to the Editor: Carbon tax is one way to reduce footprint

William Witham published a letter in the Delaware State News that slams our concern over the climate crisis as totally unnecessary, since “humans cannot halt climate change” (“Focus on climate change is ‘totally unnecessary,’” June 21).

We discover a reason for this diatribe in the last sentence of his letter, where he protests the mandatory Delaware regulation proposal to force replacing internal combustion engines with electric vehicles. As a political conservative, I understand his complaint about government regulation, but the increasingly sharp fear from thousands of expert climate scientists all over the world warns us that dealing with the climate crisis is monumentally necessary, since science has proven humans are causing it.

The Citizens’ Climate Lobby has consistently supported recommendations from these scientists and conservative political leaders to impose carbon taxes that rise over time, making fossil fuel emissions unattractive to the bottom line. Our failure to impose such taxes will now place similar costs upon our own shoulders, since countries around the world are now charging U.S. customers their carbon tax for inadequate efforts on our part to reduce the carbon footprint associated with our manufacturing processes.

This market solution is known to be a strong, effective approach to cooling the planet, while offering cash dividends to citizens, helping them pay for energy as we shift to solar and wind. The failure of the USA to impose these border adjustment taxes means we will now shoulder costs from other countries to deal with their fossil fuel expenses. If we, in the United States, could agree to add carbon taxes ourselves, then border adjustment taxes from other countries could be turned off. We are stabbing ourselves in the foot, thinking we are avoiding taxes but end up paying taxes to others instead of ourselves.

Meanwhile, the heat gets worse, fires get worse, floods get worse, and storms cause more damage, as insurance rates climb ever higher and higher. Who is fooling whom?

Ted Spickler

Dagsboro