I couldn’t believe it. As I perused my local paper this morning, I came across a short article that first appeared in the Virginian-Pilot. According to the paper, David Paylor, director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, said the “state wants to expand its use of ‘nutrient trading’ to cut pollutants damaging the [Chesapeake] Bay.”
What? Virginia wants to use “cap-and-trade” to control pollution? Well, how ironic. What conservatives say is evil for the federal government to do regarding carbon dioxide pollution apparently is just fine for Virginia.
According to Paylor, under such a proposal if a sewage plant wants to expand and release more nutrients into the Chesapeake Bay, it would have to find a way to offset new pollution by purchasing pollution credits from someone else. Paylor’s example had the polluter buying an offset from a farmer who had created a buffer to protect a creek from runoff. Paylor noted that legislation to allow cap-and-trade would be introduced at next year’s General Assembly.
Right wingers regularly trash the Republican-originated, market-based pollution trading idea as just another way to add to the cost of a service. Get ready for the silence from them on this one, even though – using Paylor’s example – the cost of buying offsets would add to the cost of sewage service for the taxpayers who use it.
You know, I just love it when hypocrites don’t even realize that they are hypocrites. Cap-and-trade works. I guess that’s why the state is now espousing it.
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