Maryland county moves to make polluters pay

I have some shocking news. Are you sitting down? Good.

Here it is: Despite the congressional near-total paralysis -- and in some cases outright regression -- on climate, we actually can make polluters pay for their climate change pollution. Maryland's Montgomery County (where our own office happens to be located) shows the feds one way it can be done:

A Maryland county bordering Washington, D.C., today passed a $15 million “carbon tax” designed to show that other counties and cities can – and should – move forward against coal in the wake of federal gridlock on global warming.

The Montgomery County Council voted 8-1 today to adopt the carbon tax. In a county of nearly one million people the tax will apply to only one entity: the 850 megawatt coal-fired power plant owned by Mirant Corporation just 40 miles from the U.S. Capitol. At least half of the money will be used to fund county energy efficiency programs.

. . . . .

“With this heroic vote in the D.C. suburbs today, the coal lobby might want to prepare for local actions across the country,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, which supported the bill. “Local power-plant taxes are legal and now necessary given the success of the coal industry in watering down and delaying real action on coal pollution in Congress.”

Apparently there was a contingent of rowdy (a redundant adjective for sure) Tea Party protestors at the hearing, loudly denying the very existence of climate change. But the bill passed anyway, and the skies didn't fall, the gates of hell didn't open beneath us, and no one was forced to join the Comintern. Life goes on.

While Montgomery County chose a carbon tax to put a price on Mirant's pollution, a national effort to put a price on carbon may use some other approach or a combination of approaches. The important thing is to end the invisible subsidy we provide to dirty energy by not making polluters pay for their emissions, which is what makes dirty energy comparatively (and falsely) cheap. The activists who fought so hard to get this done (including our friends at CCAN) deserve a pat on the back for showing us all that perseverance pays -- in this case, by making polluters pay.

Do you have a dirty energy source in your community that should get the "Montgomery County Treatment"? Let us know -- sign up for the Dirty Energy Hunt today.