A case for a carbon tax
More than three decades after acid rain in the Adirondacks killed off the fish in Lake Colden, brook trout have again been found there.
This is a huge victory with implications far beyond one lake in the High Peaks. It offers hope that humans can, albeit with much work, undo not just the environmental damage they did in the past, but the damage they’re doing now — harm that threatens the entire planet.
The past devastation of Adirondack lakes and the dangerous changes in the climate today have a common cause: the burning of fossil fuels. Emissions from power plants in New York and the Midwest led to acid rain, which due to prevailing winds fell especially at high elevations in the Catskills and Adirondacks, killing forests and lakes.
It took a more than a generation, starting in the 1980s, but stronger state and federal emissions standards slowly cleaned the air and returned the ph level of lakes to normal. And then, last month, the state Department of Environmental Conservation found a self-sustaining population of brook trout in Lake Colden.
Fossil fuel burning has also been implicated in global warming and climate change, problems that scientists say we can still address — if we act over the next few decades, before we pass a tipping point.
New York took an important step in 2005 by joining the multi-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade program through which polluters have a choice — to reduce emissions or buy credits that allow them to emit more carbon dioxide.
RGGI was a good start, but it’s time to take a stronger step: a carbon pricing program that makes power producers pay a tax based on the CO2 they emit. That would make cleaner energy sources like wind and solar more competitive and spur more development, use, and eventually lower prices for green energy. Carbon pricing could help New York meet the ambitious goals of the recently enacted Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which requires the state to achieve 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040.
The ideal, of course, would be a nationwide carbon pricing program, but we’re not likely to see one from a Trump administration that’s determined to undo a half-century’s worth of environmental progress, and is more interested in rescuing the falling profits of Midwest coal plants than protecting the environment and public health in downwind states like New York. Progress will take far more environmental leadership from the president’s Republican colleagues in Congress, including Rep. Elise Stefanik — whose district includes Lake Colden, and who can see firsthand the value of smart environmental policy,
The disappearance of the brook trout from Lake Colden was a warning sign. Their recovery is an example of how much we can accomplish with time, enlightened leadership, and thoughtful legislation and regulation. The brook trout, it’s worth noting, is the official fish of New York state. In that sense, its story — still unfinished — is a symbol of our mutual perils, and possibilities.