Tax now

Bought gas the other day. Back on June 28, I paid $4.06.9/gallon. This past Wednesday it was $1.59.9. Pretty good, huh?

I don't think so. The last thing we need is to once again be lulled into complacency about energy costs and revert to our taste for gas-guzzlers and gas-guzzling ways. Already the fevered calls for energy efficiency are dying away, and one suspects that sales will soon be picking up for SUVs, big pickups and other super-sized low-efficiency vehicles.

Let's not fool ourselves. The cost of fuel has plummeted because the economy has plummeted. Once the economy gets rolling again, fuel prices will rise again, and we will be staring at $4.00 gas and worse, probably much worse. There aren't any major new sources of oil out there. We simply cannot drill our way out of the inevitable crunch. It is not be possible to drive down the road to our future in gas guzzlers.

Nor do we want to. Global warming is real, and really dangerous. We must do whatever we can to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and one of the best ways is to wean ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels. We may already be out of time; at the very least, we're running out of time.

Many options are before us; some focus on conservation, others on developing alternatives. Both basic approaches must be employed, but one of the simplest, quickest and most effective was demonstrated pretty convincingly when consumers reacted to the skyrocketing gas prices last spring by curtailing their driving and shifting towards more fuel-efficient vehicles; sharp increases in energy costs promote conservation effectively and quickly. To put it crudely, we need high fuel costs to break our addiction to gasoline.

Right now, gas prices are low. This is the time to bite the bullet and increase gas taxes. Nobody likes taxes, but backtracking to wasteful driving habits would be worse. Even a dollar per gallon tax would not bring prices at the pump back to the levels we've seen over the past year and a half, but it would ensure that real incentives to conserve would remain in place.

One of best the arguments against such an increase is that it would disproportionately affect low-income drivers who need their cars to get to work but cannot afford modern, fuel-efficient vehicles. However, there is a way around that dilemma: a targeted tax rebate to low-income wage earners to offset the cost of the new tax. Even better, such a rebate would encourage further conservation, because eligible taxpayers would qualify even if they changed to more efficient forms of transportation.

The time to enact this tax is now, while the cost of gas is abnormally low. The initial adverse impact on family budgets would be small, and consumers would have time to adjust their habits by the time prices reach for the sky again. If we let this moment pass, it will be much harder to do in the future ... and for the sake of our future we cannot afford to delay any longer.

Sixty-seven years ago we were complacent as Japanese bombers approached Pearl Harbor. This time the danger is even greater, our adversary is fully apparent, and there is far less excuse for complacency.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 December 2008