Thad Curtz

There are a lot of 2- and 3-year-old electric vehicles on the market now, and they can be extremely good deals. In 2022, Congress passed the (absurdly named) Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). This created strong incentives to buy electric vehicles, along with incentives for energy efficiency, wind, solar, and other energy innovations. If you were buying a electric vehicle, you could only get the incentives for cars that were built in the USA.

Tim Sheldon, one of our local state Senators, recently voted to move an important bill out of committee “on reducing carbon pollution by moving to a clean energy economy.” This surprised a lot of people, including me. Sen. Sheldon, a Democrat, has caucused with the Republicans for a number of years, and none of them voted to move the bill forward. (That didn’t surprise anybody.) Sheldon said he expected to “get a lot of criticism” for the vote. I think he should get a lot of support for it.

Unfortunately, our local state Rep. Drew MacEwen seems to miss the obvious conclusion in his recent piece on going to learn about clean energy in Scandinavia. The first half was all about Denmark and Sweden’s impressive transition to renewable energy, and what a good thing that is. But the second half was all about how we don’t need a carbon tax! Apparently, he didn’t learn, or just chose to skip, the fact that Sweden has the most effective carbon tax in the world.