Just finished reading a solid post at
Gristmill on Obama's stance on the gas-tax holiday.
Low energy prices -- kept low with tax breaks, ruined mountaintops, scarred lungs, and now-fracturing ice shelves -- are what enabled suburbia, the "love affair" with the auto, and the hellspawn of SUVs that has begun engulfing China. Only high energy prices -- prices that internalize the grievous costs of energy extraction and combustion via gas taxes and revenue-neutral carbon taxes -- can instill the incentives and propagate the behaviors that will move us and other nations off of oil and off of carbon in the nick of time.
Simply stated, cutting costs isn't going to cut reliance on and/or overconsumption of oil. Gas has hit a point where overall US consumption is predicted to fall in '08 (
Business Week). However, it hasn't hit a point where consumption is going to fall so far that our C02 emissions will follow suit.
I'm no saint on this issue as I drive a hand-me-down '95 Jeep Wrangler. Right now I can't afford to buy a new Prius, or even Civic Hybrid. Still I have been looking at the used Civic Hybrid market.
If the auto industry had a
real interest in combating climate change, they would find a way to not only make more hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles, but (and perhaps of equal importance) they would find ways to make them affordable for middle class and low-income consumers who are the ones that will have their budgets crippled by rising fuel costs. Tax rebates are great, but as more people buy hybrid vehicles those rebates are decreasing. Maybe there's some great "affordable-hybrid" program I don't know about for low-income folks, but it would seem to be in everyone's advantage if the technology was more affordable.
Just my $.02. As for Obama, it's just one more reason I support the man, and a great example of a tangible policy change from "politics as usual!" Only time will tell if he A) gets the opportunity to put that difference into practice and B) follows up on that opportunity...
