Bright ideas from Hawaii’s legislature:
House members introduced House Bill 2421, a “barrel tax” or “carbon tax bill”, which will increase the tax on unrefined petroleum by $1 per barrel. Their reasoning, they want to discourage Hawaii’s “dependence” on fossil fuels through taxation and encourage renewable energy use and creation.
Meanwhile, as the debate proceeds:
The heads of Tesoro are considering whether to keep the Kapolei refinery open or cut back on operations and only import crude oil to Hawaii. Chevron, which manages the only other refinery in Hawaii, also is considering cutbacks. If either company eliminates or reduces its operations, economists say there would be immediate and noticeable cost increases at the gas pump and on Hawaii electricity bills. Hawaii consumers already pay the near highest gasoline taxes and highest cost for electricity in the nation.
Don’t worry: the stimulus has created so many jobs in Hawaii that they can afford to pay for unnecessarily expensive energy in service of an ideological agenda. It’s part of the platform on which President Obama ran, is it not?
