Citing efforts to “go green” the Teton Village Association recently doubled the price of parking at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.  Carpools with three or more people still park free in the “cheap” lot furthest from the lifts, but everyone else will have to pay $10 per day instead of $5.  Rates for the more expensive lots remain unchanged at $15 per day.

The reasons given for this abrupt 100% price increase are “green” initiatives to decrease traffic on the Village Road, increase public transit use, and to limit the CO2 emissions resulting from Teton Village’s tourist trade.

Jim Terry, president of the Teton Village Association, is quoted by the JH News and Guide saying, “We are doing our part to reduce traffic on the Village Road and reduce CO2 emissions by rewarding using mass transit and encouraging carpooling.”

Most people would equate “rewards” and “encouragement” with freebies or discounts: doubling prices is definitely a deterrent, perhaps a punishment, and certainly NOT an incentive.  It sounds like quite the money maker to me, but others disagree.

“It is not a revenue-driven move,” says Susan Bybee, executive director of the association.  Hmmm….

This move is meant to appear progressive on paper, but will prove quite profitable in practice.  A corporation comes off compassionately committed to conservation while drastically doubling prices.  Wealthy people who can easily afford to solo commute and pollute are still welcome to do so: they just have to pay a higher price.  Working class folks will have to find another way or pay a more painful price to play.

One comment made by Steven Pembroke on the JH News and Guide article stands out as well informed:

…or ban driveway melt systems, or uproot their open air natural gas firepit in front of Terra.

Interesting that while TVA sells day passes in the lots, JHMR sells the season parking passes – which just got more comparatively affordable with the daily price hike. Disingenuous to separate JHMR from the equation here.

Then there’s START’s capacity to handle the shift in ridership. A lot of those busses were packed at peak hours last year. Now what.

Just seems like poor PR for the paper to have to break this, putting jhmr on the defensive, rather than for the resort to get in front of the message early on by giving a heads up and the rationale. As it is, it smells as if they were trying to send one under the radar.

The whole situation stinks, but the odor is worth contemplating because it provides an excellent local example of a disturbing global trend: greenwashed greed.  Let’s dive deeper, shall we?

The mainstream media continually tells us to be terrified of CO2 driven climate change and to feel guilty about our own greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously selling us a competitive, consumer capitalist culture.  The average newspaper is 70% advertisements, 25% fluff, and 5% actual news.  The advertisements and fluff tell us to be mindless and consumeristic.  The actual news presented paints a hopeless and pathetic picture of where our senseless greed has put us.

Striving to sustain a hopelessly unsustainable system while competing to meet our personal needs and consumeristic wants is the message we’re fed, the mission we’re given.  It’s a classic Catch-22.  Examples abound…

Climate change and overpopulation are blamed for rising food prices while rich countries throw away half the food they produce.  The United States turns 40% of the corn it produces into fuel, a move that increases global food prices in a major way.  “Environmental crusader” Obama pledges to go it alone on climate change while simultaneously approving pipelines to profit from the dirtiest oil of all: Canadian tar sands destined for China.

The bitter ironies are readily apparent to anyone capable of seeing through systems.  The deeper truths accessible only to those who really read between the lines and dive deeply into thought are even more disturbing.

Whether market-driven or governmentally enforced we’re told that higher prices and more taxes are the only way to save humanity from itself.  Radically changing the system itself is not presented as an option.  Revolutionary energy technologies that literally render fossil fuels obsolete cannot even be considered.

The “solutions” we are spoonfed —  carbon taxes, cap and trade, fee and dividend, and other “sustainability initiatives” of all sorts — are essentially the same thing: greenhouse gas emitters paying to play.  Those who can’t afford to pay are forced out of the way.  It works something like this.

Who pays?  Everyone.

Who do the costs ultimately fall on?  Consumers (aka people).  Oil companies etc. must raise prices in order to remain profitable.

Who can afford to pollute to their hearts’ content?  The rich and large corporations that can afford to lobby for loopholes.

Who suffers a lower standard of living?  Those of us who actually work for a living.

Who gets priced out of existence?  The global poor that were already barely scraping by.  Small businesses.

Who benefits?  Big business.  Big government.  Big financial interests.  Mother Earth?  Not so much.

Geopolitically, poor and developing countries are forced to follow the dictates of wealthy central planners pretending to have the planet’s best interests in mind.  This government of globalists may well have environmental issues in mind, but they certainly don’t act against their own interests either.

In my opinion the most important point to consider is that government revenues generated from greenhouse gas emissions will remove any legitimate government motivations to phase out fossil fuels.  Many politicians are dumb, greedy, power hungry liars, but they know enough not to kill their own golden geese.

A meme comes to mind…

I am more concerned with environmental issues than anything else, and I used to accept and promote the CO2 centric view of climate change.  Then I did my own research and realized there was a lot more to the story than the mainstream media and government funded “scientists” let on.

I could wax poetic on this topic all day long, and I have.  In fact, I made a video yesterday.  It’s 16 minutes long because I had a lot to say.  I hope you watch it with an open mind.