Fee on hybrids could be bad for climate

I was surprised and confused to see Jake Griffin's recent column discussing the idea of adding an annual fee onto electric and hybrid cars. For a state so heavily dependent on agriculture to propose such a fee seems, at best, short sighted.

The most recent U.S. government National Climate Change Assessment contained an entire section on damage to Midwestern agriculture and concluded that unless abated, climate change "will reduce Midwest agricultural productivity to levels of the 1980s." The report's team, led by an agency of the Department of Commerce with input from 12 agencies, determined that the evidence for this climate change "consistently points to human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse or heat-trapping gases."

A farm state such as Illinois should be doing everything it can to encourage people to minimize their emission of these greenhouse gases and supporting the use of hybrid vehicles is just one small way. The imposition of an additional fee on hybrid vehicle would have the exact opposite effect.

As the column itself points out, three out of every five states do not currently have an additional fee on hybrid vehicles. Why should Illinois be part of the minority imposing the tax when it is so clearly not in the best interest of Illinois farmers along with every other resident?

Tom Carter

Geneva