Paper Companies’ Windfall of Unintended Consequences
Jamie found a post on ScienceBlogs that serves as a stark example of the law of unintended consequences, as well as the ability of private industry to game a system of laws to their advantage. It seems that large paper companies stand to reap as much as billion this year by doing the opposite of what an alternative-fuel bill intended. Here is the article from The Nation with more details and a mild reaction from a Congressional staffer. “[T]he United States government stands to pay out as much as billion this year to the ten largest paper companies…. even though the money comes from a transportation bill whose manifest intent was to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, paper mills are adding diesel fuel to a process that requires none in order to qualify for the tax credit. In other words, we are paying the industry — handsomely — to use more fossil fuel. ‘Which is,’ as a Goldman Sachs report archly noted, the ‘opposite of what lawmakers likely had in mind when the tax credit was established.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
