Last week, the
New York Times published an
extraordinary editorial complaining that "Right now, everyone is using the atmosphere like a municipal dump, depositing carbon dioxide free." The
Times editors suggested that the government "start charging for the privilege" by imposing a "carbon tax."
We all knew it would eventually come to this: the
New York Times thinks the government should tax us for breathing.
Of course, the editorial was supposed to be aimed at big corporations who build coal-fired power plants--but why should the logic stop there? Right now, eight million people are walking around on the streets of New York City heedlessly inhaling precious oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, treating the skies over their fair city "like a municipal dump, depositing carbon dioxide free." Shouldn't they be forced to pay for the "privilege," too?
And the connection
is a logical one, because the generation of power by industrial-scale power plants is as much a vital activity as breathing.
I mean this in a literal, biological sense. In biology, "respiration" doesn't just refer to the act of breathing; it refers to the chemical reactions made possible by breathing. My dictionary defines this sense of "respiration" as "the processes by which a living organism or cell takes in oxygen from the air or water, distributes and utilizes it in oxidation, and gives off the products of oxidation, especially carbon dioxide." (Wikipedia has
all the biochemical details.)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/pri...breathing.html