Houston and surrounding areas flooded for the third time in two years. Billions of dollars in damage will be paid by us all. The thing is, we know this was caused by climate change and we already know who to blame.
Climate Change is just one issue
Many of our brothers and sisters on the Right are always fixated on someone taking their freedom away. Yet, they never go one level deeper to understand how their freedom is not being taken by the government “we the people” but from many corporations.
People in the Houston area and those affected by the progressively increased severity of storms have given up their safety, their freedom. How? It is clear that there are companies selling a product that affects us all, in many instances in a detrimental manner. And we have done little to force them to stop and to make those they’ve harmed, whole.
The new climate change catastrophe affecting the U.S and beyond are not acts of God. They are the results of the action of corporations that have been allowed to use ideology and misinformation to provide a product in a detrimental manner.
So how do we solve the problem? A very high tax on gasoline (and other hydrocarbons) could solve the problem. But that collected tax must go to solve the problems created by these companies.
The refining and burning of hydro-carbon without sequestration create corporate imposed illnesses. The climate changes it causes create floods, heatwaves, damaged food production, and more.
The collected taxes should be used to do several things. It should be used to provide healthcare. Additionally, it should be used to create an infrastructure to mitigate flooding in some areas and lack of water in others. It should be used to free us from oil in the long term. Subsidize turning every building into a solar generating and wind use station (where applicable) with battery storage. And lastly, it should be used to create a massive worldwide reforestation program.
Overtime, reforestation will sequester the excess carbon as we move to net-zero carbon emissions. And we will be healthier.
This will be complicated to implement but it is a starting framework. We need to make the decision that this is where we need to go and then fit our economic system to do it. Those who believe in freedom and justice should love this. After all, all minerals should be owned by us all. After initial cost recovery, it should all be in the commons.