Preach it, Tom:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/opinion/27friedman.html
With a couple of reservations, I’m totally on board with that. First off, the moniker “Geo-Green” isn’t going to appeal to anyone except Europeans and Nader supporters. Something a bit more broad would be in order, like “New Fuel” or “Smart Policy.” (haha)
And secondly, I’m not entirely sold on his fixed-at-$4/gallon gas price hike. Sure, it will change the habits of those of us buying new cars, but what about those of us who can’t afford a new car or simply don’t want the financial ball-and-chain of car payments over a half-decade or so? It’s an area where applying our efforts toward developing a renewable, cleaner alternative to gasoline (one that would work in existing engines) starts to make a lot of sense. Heck, we did it with air conditionning, a staple of American life, when we switched from R12 to R134 in the early ’90s. Sure, the 134 doesn’t cool quite as effectively, but it’s environmentally-friendly, a recharge is dirt cheap at your corner auto parts store, and heck, it cools. Those were the goals. So the path for technological transition has already been blazed, many times over. A/C is just one example. Thinking of ways to apply government pressure toward the end of developing a new fuel is a bit more problematic, though–nothing immediately comes to mind except the administration simply acknowledging the issue and the goal, starting dialogues, and leading by example, ideas the editorial put forth.
We shall see.
“The revenue from these taxes would go to pay down the deficit and the reduction in oil imports would help to strengthen the dollar and defuse competition for energy with China.”
You’d think that alone would be a selling point for the people who don’t give a rat’s ass about the environment.
Screw OPEC. I’m telling you that they’re conspiring against us progressing in transportation technology…
You’d think so, but many of those people align themselves more closely with Republicans, who tend to favor supply-side economics as a means of boosting the economy (and strengthening the dollar and paying down the deficit), and thus would be against levying a tax to help accomplish that…
Yeah. That was the paragraph I almost wrote…
It’s disheartening how much influence the big-money lobbyists have.