Creating a sustainable society in Vermont can be promoted if the prices of products we buy and use accurately reflect the environmental and social costs embodied in them. This is currently not the case. It is much cheaper to do the wrong thing environmentally than the right thing, both for individuals and companies. For example, at $6/ton in Vermont it is much cheaper to take solid waste to a transfer station than to deal with recycling or composting it. A hybrid car having higher mileage and lower emissions costs $5-7,000 more than an equivalent gasoline car. A coal burning powerplant spewing mercury, sulphur, and nitrogen oxides into the air drifting over Vermont produces power cheaper than renewable energy such as solar, wind, biomass, or hydro. Chemical farming with nitrate and phosphorus fertilizers which turn parts of Lake Champlain into "dead zones", and pesticides which endanger human health, is generally more profitable than organic farming. In every case, the massive environmental and social costs are pushed off onto society, and are not reflected in prices, and not paid by producers.
Since taxes decrease consumption of the item taxed, a sensible strategy is to tax undesirable activities more, and desirable activities less. This leads to the Green Tax philosophy of "taxing bads, not goods", or "taxing waste, not work". If work, income, wages, and investments in productive activities are taxed less, these items will be encouraged. If resource depletion, land use, and pollution are taxed more, resources will be conserved, land will be used efficiently, and industry will avoid pollution. In this manner green taxes can stimulate the economy and protect the environment at the same time; the holy grail of sustainable development.