By Jaye Bell
The latest commissioners’ money scheme seems to be ‘carbon credits’. Remember ‘cap and trade’ pollution credits? If business owner A ran a pollution-free business and thus did not need the ‘pollution credits’ assigned them by the government they could sell them to owner B who needed additional ‘pollution credits’ so the government did not fine them. This could be an agreeement with anyone anywhere in the world.
Coming soon seems to be ‘carbon credits’. One situation may be where owner A has a pristine piece of forest land ( such as OUR county forestlands ) which absorbs carbon dioxide while owner B’s business exudes more pollution than the government says they are alloted & thus will be fined. Owner B then finds owner A and pays a large sum of money for A’s ‘carbon credits’ . Voila…no government fine and happy pollution.
Another case is a ‘wetland bank’ ( as noted 9-27-11 in The World) where owner A has ( or creates ) a wetland. Owner B’s business damages ( or wants to extend into ) a water source such as a stream. Owner B finds owner A and with an exchange of money for ‘wetland credits’ there is no fine and both are happy.
In either case owner A can never change their land ( such as log it ) as they sold its use as ‘carbon credits’ or ‘wetland credits’. Thus, as the ‘credits’ were already paid for, if owner A wanted to sell, who would buy? Property taxes, if applicable, would still need to be paid yearly ( unless the commissioners decided to put them in a plan that took them off the tax roll ). Would the taxes be levied on the old property value or on the newly found value of the land ( perhaps $100,000 an acre )?
If OUR land’s ‘carbon/ wetland credits’ are sold by our three commissioners for an expedient dollar today, the land would be of no value to us tomorrow! What happens to the logging/etc jobs? If it had been farm land what about the loss of product and jobs?
What happens if some of the ‘credit’ land is damaged by fire,etc, and therefore no longer fullfills the government ‘credit requirements’ that business B paid for? How does owner A give the money back to owner B?
What kind of ‘easy money today’ are our three commissioners willing to accept in exchange for binding OUR lands to owner B iinto perpetuity?
‘Easy money today’ does not sound all that ‘easy’.
