By Rachel Dawson
With the start of a new year, power customers will see a new charge on their electricity bills.
The Oregon legislature passed HB 2165 at the end of the 2021 session, which requires utilities to collect a monthly charge beginning January 1 for transportation electrification infrastructure. Of the funds collected, at least half must be spent on “underserved communities.”
Everyone will pay to support the 1% who can afford to register an electric vehicle (EV) in Oregon. And while some funds will be spent on underserved communities, the reality is that most EV owners are wealthy Portlanders.
Oregon politicians think they are smarter than the market. Just like with the rise of gasoline-powered cars in the 20th century, the free market will come up with a solution if there is sufficient consumer demand for a product. We certainly didn’t need the government to build gas stations to get people to buy cars. All new technology comes with risks. By funding EV infrastructure with utility rates, that risk now falls on ratepayers.
The state should stop subsidizing the EV industry and instead allow entrepreneurs to invest in EV infrastructure when there is real need for the product.Rachel Dawson is a Policy Analyst at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
CHRISTOPHER A DRAUS
Yes, thanks for a “Right To The Point” Opinion.
I agree with you.
I live in Portland. Over the past 31 years, it became apparent to me, that Portlanders are too trustworthy of elected officials and have been duped by them. Duped so badly, that those Portlanders even vote for tax increases.
For 31 years in Portland, of the few bond measures/Tax increases that were rejected, those projects seem to get built anyway/ somehow, with other funds or back- room dealings.
Gerard Mildner
Rachel,
Nice article. You might take a look at DLCD’s “Climate-Friendly and Equitable Communities” project, which will require new residential parking garages to have 50% of the parking spaces wired for installing an EV charger.
Of course, that adds to construction costs for new housing and harms low-income households for whom housing is a much bigger fraction of their budget.
The cost-benefit on that proposal should be coming out in a few weeks.
Cheers,
Gerry Mildner
Associate Professor of Real Estate Finance
Portland State University
Bill Udy
Politicians are so arrogant to think that THEY know better than consumers what consumers need. I think someone wrote a book a while back about The Pretense of Knowledge (of government officals). What if the officials make a mistake and the expected uptake by consumers doesn’t happen? That means enormous resources are wasted or mis-allocated. If the sordid history of Tri-Met is any indication, billions of dollars get wasted, yet the politicians/bureaucrats that voted for or authorized the program, retire in luxury, never having to pay for their bad decision-making.
JimK
Here are some true climate facts:
• There has been less than one degree of warming from 1850 to 2012 (WG1AR5_all_final.pdf, Pg. 209 )
• There is no evidence that hurricanes have increased (WG1AR5_all_final.pdf, pg 178 )
• There is no evidence that storms have increased (WG1AR5_all_final.pdf, pg 178)
• There is no evidence that sea level rise has increased (WG1AR5_all_final.pdf, Page 306)
• There is no evidence that floods have increased (WG1AR5_all_final.pdf, pg 230)
• There is no evidence that droughts have increased (WG1AR5_all_final.pdf, pg 178)
• Man emits 6% of CO2 emissions, nature 94% (NASA’s carbon cycle chart)
• CO2 causes ONLY about 1/3 of the warming. (BAMS, Vol. 78, No. 2, February 1997)
• It is not possible to predict future climate. (TAR-14.pdf, Page 771)
(Links to evidence are below)
Fact is that there is nothing unusual about today’s climate and thus nothing to explain with man’s CO2. This well respected source debunks several popular lies about climate:
Here are Quotes & Facts from the IPCC (which is considered the bible of climate), NASA & the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
(You may have read other claims from the IPCC, usually from the Summary For Policy Makers without knowing that the summary is actually a political document written, word by word, by politicians from many countries including those looking for cash handouts. The below is from the science part of the report.)
1. Earth only warmed 0.78 degree C up to 2012.
“Using Had-CRUT4 and its uncertainty estimates, the warming from 1850–1900 to 1986–2005 (reference period for the modelling chapters and Annex I) is 0.61 [0.55 to 0.67] C (90% confidence interval), and the warming from 1850–1900 to 2003–2012 (the most recent decade) is 0.78 [0.72 to 0.85] C (Supplementary Material 2.SM.4.3.3).”
Pg. 209 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_all_final.pdf
2. Man emits about 6% of total emissions.
Add the numbers on this NASA diagram: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/page1.php
3. CO2 causes only about 26-32% of the greenhouse effect. H2O causes 60-75%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#Greenhouse_gases which is based on Table 3 of: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Vol. 78, No. 2, February 1997 –
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477%281997%29078%3C0197%3AEAGMEB%3E2.0.CO%3B2
4. We do not have enough data to say that hurricanes have increased.
“Confidence remains low for long-term (centennial) changes in tropical cyclone activity, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities.”
pg 178 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_all_final.pdf
5. We do not have enough data to say that storms have increased.
“Confidence in large-scale trends in storminess or storminess proxies over the last century is low owing to inconsistencies between studies or lack of long-term data in some parts of the world (particularly in the SH). {2.6.4}”
pg 178 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_all_final.pdf
6. No evidence that normal sea level increase has accelerated.
(Note that sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age – the issue is whether it is rising faster.)
“When a 60-year oscillation is modeled along with an acceleration term, the estimated acceleration in GMSL since 1900 ranges from: 0.000 [–0.002 to 0.002] mm yr–2 in the Ray and Douglas (2011) record, 0.013 [0.007 to 0.019] mm yr–2 in the Jevrejeva et al. (2008) record, and 0.012 [0.009 to 0.015] mm yr–2 in the Church and White (2011) record. Thus, while there is more disagreement on the value of a 20th century acceleration in GMSL when accounting for multi-decadal fluctuations, two out of three records still indicate a significant positive value. The trend in GMSL observed since 1993, however, is not significantly larger than the estimate of 18-year trends in previous decades (e.g., 1920–1950). “
Page 306 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_all_final.pdf
7. No evidence that floods have increased (per IPCC)
“AR4 WGI Chapter 3 (Trenberth et al., 2007) did not assess changes in floods but AR4 WGII concluded that there was not a general global trend in the incidence of floods (Kundzewicz et al., 2007). SREX went further to suggest that there was low agreement and thus low confidence at the global scale regarding changes in the magnitude or frequency of floods or even the sign of changes.”
pg 230 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_all_final.pdf
8. No evidence that droughts have increased
“Confidence is low for a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century, owing to lack of direct observations, methodological uncertainties and geographical inconsistencies in the trends.”
pg 178 of https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_all_final.pdf
9. Prediction of future climate is not possible.
“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. “ https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/501.htm (IPCC third Assessment Report (2001) Section 14.2.2.2, page 774) and Page 771, https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-14.pdf
This shows that THERE IS NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY.
Also see: http://www.debunkingclimate.com/arguements.html
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate/alarmist_claim_rebuttals_updated/
More Information:
https://notrickszone.com/2021/10/25/in-a-few-days-clouds-affect-earths-radiation-budget-by-more-than-co2-does-in-270-years/
A Potted History of Glaciers
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/11/11/a-potted-history-of-glaciers/
Swiss Billionaire Bankrolling Dark Money Group Pushing for Biden Climate Initiative
https://freebeacon.com/policy/swiss-billionaire-bankrolling-dark-money-group-pushing-for-biden-climate-initiative/
New Study With Groundbreaking Results: “Connection Between Cosmic Rays, Radiation Budget Reaffirmed” https://notrickszone.com/2021/10/31/new-study-with-groundbreaking-results-connection-between-cosmic-rays-radiation-budget-reaffirmed/
CO2 FOLLOWS TEMPERATURE:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257343053_The_phase_relation_between_atmospheric_carbon_dioxide_and_global_temperature/link/56e4581508ae68afa1106148/download
Bill MacKenzie
I thought the feds were giving Oregon millions for EV charging stations and support. Why do we need new state taxes?