Residents of New Hampshire could soon have their ability to choose how they live, how they travel and what they buy taken away from them.
The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services (DES) is currently considering a large basket of costly new taxes, subsidies and regulations designed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. They include statewide restrictions on zoning, housing development, energy use, industrial processes and transportation.
Last December, Gov. John Lynch created the New Hampshire Climate Change Policy Task Force to work in conjunction with DES to develop policy options designed to address global warming. The DES, in turn, hired a global warming alarmist group called Carbon Solutions New England (CSNE) to serve as a technical consultant to the task force on scientific and policy issues related to global warming.
CSNE writes on its Web site that “we must achieve an urgent and unprecedented level of carbon dioxide emission reduction over the next decade . . . addressing the interdependent issues of energy and climate requires a transformational response.” This transformation envisions the state restricting personal freedom in an effort to coerce individuals into making the “right” decisions as interpreted by the state.
Even more distressing is that Cameron Wake, who represents multiple organizations and is CSNE’s director, has monopolized the information that is presented to the task force. Wake has also presented material in conjunction with a related organization called Clean Air-Cool Planet (where he is identified as “chief scientist”) and on behalf of the University of New Hampshire’s Climate Change Research Center, where he holds a full-time position.
The task force has neither heard testimony nor been presented any evidence that contradicts the viewpoints held by CSNE. As one official document states, CSNE is to “inform and support the development of technical and policy consensus.” Allowing for open and honest debate before the task force would certainly not generate the consensus sought by these alarmist advocates, as CSNE has been allowed to set the agenda and control the process. The executive branch has effectively given them carte blanche to develop their own policies that are designed to address their foregone conclusions.
One policy being considered would dramatically increase the proportion of land that is state owned in order to prohibit development on that land. The very purpose of this would simply be to force individuals onto smaller plots of land and into smaller homes.
Other policies under consideration include: taxing individuals for each pound of trash they produce; imposing higher automotive registration and insurance rates on individuals who drive more; increasing gasoline taxes; reducing the availability of parking; and establishing “Residential Behavior Change Programs” that would employ community networks to intimidate individuals into “making sustained, socially beneficial changes at the household level.”
According to official DES documents, “behavioral change strategies that target the root causes of climate change inaction should be employed through a comprehensive system of outreach activities that do not rely on information-based campaigns.”
What benefit might Granite Staters reasonably expect to receive in exchange for their freedom? Realistically, they should expect these policies to have no effect at all on global warming. Thomas Wigley, a well-known climatologist who served as an adviser to Al Gore, has concluded that a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale (in line with the Kyoto Protocol) would have no measurable effect on temperature over the next century. If the entire world could have no measurable effect, it is absurd to presume that New Hampshire could have any effect on temperature by acting alone.
Control of public policy in New Hampshire is under siege from environmental extremists who care little for individual rights. The policies likely to be proposed by the Climate Change Policy Task Force would lay the foundation for a carbon police state in New Hampshire. Granite Staters should be extremely skeptical of any policy proposals to come out of this task force because executive branch officials certainly haven’t been.
Geoffrey Lawrence is a research analyst for Climate Strategies Watch, a free-market, limited-government project that assesses global warming commissions in the states.