Obama's enviromental plan: paying for contaminate?

It is great to hear that finally the U.S. government cares about global warming. It is important to say that the U.S. “is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, a leading cause in global warming.” (Information taken from the website: http://www.workers.org/2007/world/global-warming-0118/). In other words, this country is one of the biggest responsible for global climate change. The most worrisome issue related to Global Warming is the fast rate of climate change that is not allowing species to adapt at the same pace. The U.S. is also suffering the consequences of climate change such as increasing the frequency and intensity of natural disasters like tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and droughts among other disasters. Although the death toll and economic loss due to natural disasters is increasing, the U.S. government had not taken actions before. However, president Obama wants to effort to address global warming. Obama’s energy plan consists of reducing oil imports, creating green economy and limiting greenhouse emissions. Despite these goals seem to be necessaries for the economy and environment, it is questionable how Obama plans to accomplish them.

According to an article called Energy, published by the New York Times on February 26, President Obama says that reducing the greenhouse emission will produce 150 billion to support renewable energy project and to pay middle-class tax credit. Well, have you asked yourself how to obtain that money? The answer is selling to industries the right to emit greenhouse gases. In other words, I can understand that if people have money to pay, then they can contaminate the atmosphere. Is that morally right? Should we pollute our planet because we have money to pay for it? I think, there are better ways to make income and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions such as supporting alternative energy, improving public transportation, reducing the consume of fossil fuel energy, increasing taxes to big cars and educating people. However, I do agree that paying taxes to pollute or carbon trade is a good starting because it can lead to techniques such as carbon sequestration, that today many industries are applying in other countries like Norway. In conclusion, the motivation for taxing greenhouse emissions should not be seen as a source of money, instead it should be seen as mitigation for the global warming.