When forming environmental policy, one would expect that a concerted effort is made to achieve maximum results that best protect the environment. However, if you are in charge of environmental policy making with the Inslee administration you may spend more time forcing “lifestyle change…than actually helping the environment,” according to Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center.
Myers criticizes Inslee’s arbitrary limits on carbon offsets, including investments in projects that cut carbon emissions. These investments are popular among businesses who struggle to cut their own carbon emissions and, under former Governor Gregoire, they were limited at consisting of 49 percent of a company’s carbon reductions. Now, Inslee is trying to bring that number down to only 10 percent.
Despite carbon offsets being extremely helpful—companies can help alleviate environmental stress on any number of projects of their choosing—it would appear that Inslee is more interested in regulating businesses. Not only are carbon offsets used by Seattle City Light (the “Greenest Utility in the Nation”) to achieve carbon neutrality, but the Governor’s office “funds projects for methane capture to cut carbon emissions – the very projects used by carbon offsets.”
Inslee’s new approach does not produce results, rather it guarantees people will have to sacrifice more for the sake of his aggressive “green” agenda. As we have seen before, Inslee is less interested in actual science than he is in the politics of science. Unfortunately for Washington State, Inslee’s “symbolism of sacrifice trumps sound science and policy.”
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