This is a yearly punitive sin tax assessed because someone feels a moral imperative to coerce the behavior of others.

> “You can’t ban sales of these things,” says Mary Cheh, a D.C. councilmember who developed the new fee structure, “but you can make them pay their own way.”

My 3 ton pickup truck is my sole vehicle, and has been driven a total of 19,000 miles over the past eight years.

That’s an average of 2,375 road miles per year, over eight years.

In absolute terms, I’m doing a lot less damage to the road and producing a lot less pollution than the individual commuting to work every single day, even if they’re driving an EV (charged by our existing non-renewable infrastructure!).

My truck will also last me for at least another decade, further avoiding the massive carbon footprint inherent in building a new vehicle.

It’s reminiscent of our sugar tax. I now pay an extra 60 cents for a diet, sugar-free soda when we go out for hamburgers, because restaurants are required to collect the tax if you could get a full-sugar soda at their soda fountain.

In a city that was already the healthiest in the country, and has absolutely no obesity problem.

Assessing the cost of externalities is fine.

Useless laws that do nothing — other than soothing the anxiety and moral panic of their authors — externalize the cost of doing so onto the rest of us.