Raising fuel prices across the board is the only way to lessen the future impact of the forthcoming, and unavoidable, global warming disaster, according to Ellie Whitney, guest opinion columnist for The Times of Trenton. Ironically, she said this as New Jersey, along with much of the northeast, is prepping for a major winter storm that includes blizzard warnings.
Citing the worst of the past year’s weather (although apparently not this week’s weather) as evidence for global warming, Whitney claimed that the rate of climate change is happening too fast to prevent disaster. Then she suggested that the best way to lessen the damage was to “collect a fee from all fossil fuels at their points of entry into our economy from wells, mines, ports and pipelines.” To “make foreign trade fair,” she also recommended that foreign countries pay a fine for any carbon emitted during the transportation of goods into the U.S.
Whitney’s analysis of global weather was dire. “Climate scientists predicted the oceans would warm and turn acidic, polar ice and permafrost would melt, sea levels would rise and extreme weather events would become ever more violent and frequent. But no one foresaw how rapidly these changes would take place.” According to Whitney, carbon dioxide levels are at “a concentration higher than at any time during the last 800,000 years.” Which was a bit before the time we started monitoring such things.
