In the United States, cheap fossil fuel has eroded communities. We’re the first people with no real practical need for each other. Everything comes from a great distance through anonymous and invisible transactions. We’ve taken that to be a virtue, but it’s as much a curse. Americans are not very satisfied with their lives, and the loss of community is part of that.
— Bill McKibben

Cars, cars everywhere

That’s a quote from an interview with activist and author Bill McKibben.  He’s right about cheap fossil fuels, and the erosion has not just been social. It’s also been an erosion of our healthy atmosphere. The cheaper gas became, the more people drove, flew in planes, turned on the air conditioning and cranked up the heat.  When something is cheap, people obviously feel they can use more of it.  Cheap indicates plentiful, even if it’s not true.  If gasoline and jet fuel were much more expensive (and they will be some day soon anyway) via a tax, it would seem a very bad idea to waste it.  Obviously, wasting non-renewable resources is a bad idea to begin with.

Raising the price of gasoline and all fossil fuels is a no-brainer way to reduce their use.  Taxing gasoline would be a simple way to reduce the use of it and we’ll probably see that start to happen in 2010, or 2011, as the EPA cuts down on emissions from all sources as they are expected to under the Clean Air Act. As with reducing cigarette smoke in public places, this will also improve air quality and public health!  (And Republicans should love this idea, because improving public habits to improve health is their health reform plan.)  Actually, some Republicans do like the idea quite a bit.  Republican Dick Lugar, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a Republican from Indiana, and wrote this for the Washington Post:  Raise the gas tax, a revenue-neutral way to treat our oil addiction. He wrote:

“A gasoline tax is transparent, easy to administer and targeted at the one sector that burns most of our oil. We know it would cut imports. When gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon last year, Americans chose to use less, leading to a major drop in gasoline consumption. The gains from accurately priced gasoline would grow as Americans demanded more fuel-efficient vehicles, chose non-petroleum alternatives to power them and found public transit options that work. Pricing gasoline to reflect its true cost to the nation would help spur a vast market in which oil alternatives such as advanced biofuels would become competitive and innovation would flourish.”

He’s absolutely right.  Taxing coal, natural gas, and putting a price on all carbon will be the next logical steps.

Solar EVC

It makes sense to focus heavily on cars,  since nearly everyone in the U.S. drives personal vehicles, and much more than in other countries. We could easily cut emissions by taxing gasoline more, and that could lead to more money for states [...]