Say what you will about carbon sequestration, but if a governing body unanimously supports it, said governing body obviously knows a) there is an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere that is damaging our environment, and b) humans are causing that excess in CO2.Thus, the Hillsborough County Commissioners, which voted to support allowing companies who exceed carbon emissions standards to buy up green space in Hillsborough County, which will then be preserved, gets a gold star.
It was Commissioner Al Higginbotham's idea. Higginbotham is a Republican, as are most of his colleagues on the board.
“We’ve got to find a way to maintain and protect our lands,” Higginbotham said.
Such a program would quantify the amount of carbon that preserved green spaces in the county take out of the atmosphere, which would constitute carbon credits polluters could buy to offset their environmental impact.
"I think we recognize that this goes beyond politics," said County Commissioner Kevin Beckner, one of two Democrats on the commission. "This is about people, this is about our community."
Most likely, writesTampa Tribune reporter Mike Salinero, such companies would come from places like California, which has a cap on allowable carbon emissions, which the companies can avoid by buying carbon credits, even if those carbon credits are in places as far away as Florida's Lower Green Swamp Preserve (formerly Cone Ranch), to offset the amount of carbon they're spitting out into the atmosphere.
Obviously many environmentalists would prefer it if those companies could reduce or eliminate their carbon footprint by using renewable energy and cutting back on wasteful practices, but these days they'll have to take what they can get.
The money could go toward maintaining land bought through the county's Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program, or ELAPP; it costs some $2.7 million annually to maintain the 61,500 acres the county is protecting, and county officials worry the program's funding could dry up.
Beckner told the other commissioners the action is in sharp contrast to what's going on at the state level, where Governor Rick Scott and others don't even want to admit climate change exists.
"I just think it's a shame that when we have issues like this sometimes they get politicized and, especially, when you read about what's going on at the state level, when there's science that directly talks about the impacts on the environment, that these issues have become to politicized," he said. "So thank you for depoliticizing it and for taking on this issue."