Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

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Everybody breathes, so let’s tax air

HONOLULU (Honolulu Lite Newswire) » Flush with success after imposing a 12 percent tax on all water used by Hawaii residents, state legislator Hermina Morita is now proposing a 10 percent tax on the use of air.

"People use a lot of air and never have to pay for it," Morita said. "And the whole time people are using air, breathing it and stuff, air pollution is increasing dramatically around the world, causing global warming, melting glaciers and leaving untold numbers of polar bears stranded on little ice floes until they float to places like Boca Raton, Fla., where they become really hot and confused. I propose a 10 percent tax on air, which will be used to develop giant air-cleaning-machine technology to save the planet."

She pointed out that according to a study in Denmark, people breathe roughly 50 liters of air per minute, which works out to 72,000 liters of air a day per person or 2.3 BILLION liters of air a month for everyone on Oahu.

"I'm not sure exactly how big a liter is. I didn't even know air came in liters. But people are going through a lot of liters of air, and they don't pay for any of it!" she said. "People should be willing to pay a small tax on the use of air in order to save the environment and stuff."

Morita has become the darling of the Hawaii Legislature, having raised more than $5.4 billion in tax revenue beginning with her tax on bottled water.

"I looked at all those bottles of water being sold in the stores and thought, Whoa, that's a lot of water! We should tax that! And use the money to protect Hawaii's precious watersheds that give us our life-sustaining water."

She then realized that the same water that was filling up those bottles actually was being pumped directly into every house and business in Hawaii.

"And I thought, Whoa, that's even MORE water than in the little bottles and stuff!" Morita said. "Tap water should be taxed, too. Then we can REALLY protect the watersheds and maybe eventually be able to upgrade the watersheds to waterhouses and more efficient waterbuildings. With all the technology and stuff we have today, why are we still using sheds, anyway?"

Realizing that most of the water piped to houses eventually ended up in the sewer system, Morita then was able to pass a tax on toilet usage.

"By taxing each time a toilet is flushed, we are able to get people to cut back on flushing toilets, and the money is used to improve our sewer-treatment thingies," she said. She added that some of the "flush money" also is used to treat people suffering from cholera and typhoid as a result of only flushing their toilets once a week.

Now Morita has set her sights on air.

"I looked around at all the free air people were breathing and thought, Whoa, we gotta tax that stuff!" she said. "It's for the good of the planet, so people should just cough up the air taxes and shut up."