zlacker

>>onnnon+(OP)
You can do something about this.

I got involved in climate advocacy in 2021. Since then I’ve successfully lobbied my local government to start an energy resources study, which will look at ways for my community to quickly transition to renewables. A small thing. But if we all do small things, it will add up!

Still though. My state, Arizona has really terrible people writing awful laws. This legislative session they’re proposing a 12.5% tax on purchasing solar if you’re not a utility, and a bunch of other regressive, anti-free market, pro-fossil fuel legislation [1]. We’re going to vote these people out of office this November and remove barriers to using our states abundant solar resources.

And since HN is a startup and technology forum, we need cheap utility scale energy storage as soon as we can get it. It exists, but solar+storage is just a bit too expensive for most regions of the country. If it does become cheaper than methane, that makes the move away from fossil fuels much easier. If you want to work on this, do it.

But also, citizens engagement is crucial. If you live in a regressive state like mine. It’s super important to get involved. If you live in a place that is going in the right direction, engage on the implementation details, there are so many ways good climate policy can get derailed in bureaucracies. There are a ton of groups that you can work with on this [2] [3] [4].

[1] https://legiscan.com/AZ/bill/HB2281/2024

[2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/

[3] https://www.sierraclub.org/

[4] https://www.environmentalvoter.org/

>>vegeta+to2
Quick google search of the AZ law says it will tax solar energy exported to other states and divide the proceeds among the local residents, which sounds a bit more nuanced than your summary. Not saying it's positive, but it's not clear to me that it's negative without more details; some form of this could incentivize more of the land to be used for solar, for example. I actually thought that this sort of law would be disallowed by the fed, since they reserve the right to govern interstate commerce.

>>garfie+rr4
>I actually thought that this sort of law would be disallowed by the fed, since they reserve the right to govern interstate commerce

Yes, the US Constitution gives regulation of interstate commerce to the federal government, but this has been worked around. Lots of states have "use tax" which is an obvious[1] tax on interstate commerce, but they skirt the Constitution by saying they're taxing "use" of the goods purchased within their own state, not the interstate commerce involved. It's possible the AZ law could be written in a way that claims to tax something that happens within the state, while still being for all intents and purposes a tax on interstate commerce. And probably nobody would do anything about it.

[1] The tax is computed 100% based on the money exchanged in interstate commerce, and 0% based on usage.