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Let’s Talk Gas Tax (Poll)
Robert Rapier, The Oil Drum
When I look to our energy future, and consider all of the possible scenarios and how we can potentially transition to a more sustainable way of life, there is no option that makes as much sense to me as taxing gasoline at a much higher rate. I want to open up a dialogue with TOD readers – especially those who don’t think this is a good idea – to see if we can work our way through the obstacles that would prevent a gas tax from being enacted.
First, I would like to poll the readers to get an idea of where people stand on this issue. The current federal gasoline tax is $0.184/gal. How high do you think gasoline taxes should be?
The advantages of having a higher gasoline tax, or more appropriately a fossil fuel, or carbon tax, would be many in my opinion. They include:
(18 Sep 2006)
Wild Hair
Jim Kunstler, Clusterf*ck Nation
… Which leads me to the real subject of this Monday blog, which is the question of oil prices. Cheerleaders for an obsolete reality, such as Michael Lynch and Forbes Magazine, are hailing the current drop from the mid $70-range to the low $60-range as an epochal tide-turning return to the salad days of cheap oil. (Lynch predicts it will go down to the $20’s.)
Here are some of my current theories. For one thing, being at-or-near peak does not remove price volatility from the picture. It may, in fact, increase volatility as oil markets — like any large-scale complex system — are likely to be destabilized by the uncertainties of what peak will do to all the other big complex systems in our hyper-connected world.
What we’ve probably seen over the summer, with oil prices entering record territory, is large users laying in inventories in fear of even higher prices.
… But here’s one thing I wonder: what if the number one user of oil products in the US had laid in huge inventories of the stuff earlier in the year and has lately withdrawn from bidding in the futures and spot markets? I am speaking of the US Military. It would make sense, against the background of Iran rattling its nuclear capabilities, and the Israel / Hezbollah affair, that the US armed forces filled their tank farms to the max this summer and are now stepping back from bidding on any additional oil for the time being. This could be easily “managed” by the people who run this massive organization — namely, the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the rest of the civilian authorities based in the executive branch of the government. They don’t have to consult with congress on their oil purchases.
I apologize for veering into conspiracy territory on this — and I don’t have a shred of evidence that this is happening. It’s just a thought, a caprice, a “wild hair,” a theory. Surely there is some enterprising graduate student or trust fund nerd on the peak oil web sites who might investigate this dark notion. Has the US military gone on an oil-buying vacation as we head toward the elections?
(18 Sep 2006)
Liberal Democrats unveil plans for ‘new home’ and ‘green’ car tax
Daily Mail
Families would be hit by a £4,500-a-year home and car tax bombshell unveiled by the Liberal Democrats last night.
Sir Menzies Campbell’s party wants to impose a new house price tax of £2,000 – on top of existing council tax rates of more than £1,000.
In a separate move, the Lib Dems are planning to radically increase rates of vehicle excise duty to cut greenhouse gas emissions – with a typical family car facing an annual bill of £1,500.
The moves are part of an overhaul of Lib Dem tax policy launched to coincide with Sir Menzies’ first party conference as leader which began in Brighton yesterday.
…Sir Menzies insisted yesterday that radical green taxes were needed to redistribute wealth and help the environment.
(18 Sep 2006)
Critics call World Bank energy scheme misguided
David Fogarty, Reuters via AlertNet
SINGAPORE – A World Bank scheme to bring electricity to the world’s poor is short-sighted and won’t curb climate change or help the people it’s aimed at, environmental groups said on Sunday.
The Bank released a progress report on Sunday looking at ways to fund cleaner energy projects in some of the world’s poorest regions and drive economic growth in those areas.
The report, entitled Investment Framework on Clean Energy and Development, says an estimated 1.6 billion people do not have access to electricity.
Environmental groups said the Bank was missing a huge opportunity to promote the use of renewable energy by instead backing conventional fossil-fuel based generation.
“We certainly agree that renewable energy is a very good way to reduce energy poverty,” said Peter Bosshard of International Rivers Network. “We just wonder why the World Bank doesn’t do more of it,” he said in Singapore.
(17 Sep 2006)
US to cut funds for two renewable energy sources
Mark Clayton, The Christian Science Monitor
Geothermal and hydropower are mature enough for private enterprise to take the lead, the government says.
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Out at the Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River, a new turbine is being tested that generates more electricity, but won’t kill so many fish – thanks to research dollars from Uncle Sam.
Down in California’s Long Valley, on the Sierra Nevada range, federal researchers are working to boost efficiency of geothermal energy, which uses the earth’s natural heat to generate power.
But renewable energy advocates may have to kiss goodbye those and other research projects. The US Department of Energy (DOE) is quitting the hydropower and geothermal power research business – if Congress will let it.
Declaring them “mature technologies” that need no further funding, the Bush administration in its FY 2007 budget request eliminates hydropower and geothermal research, venerable programs with roots in the energy crises of the 1970s.
“What we do well is research and funding of new, novel technologies,” says Craig Stevens, chief spokesman for the DOE. “From a policy perspective, geothermal and hydro are mature technologies. We believe the market can take the lead on this at this point.”
Still, “zeroing out” such research could end up being a penny-wise, pound-foolish move, some energy advocates say. Any savings from the cuts would be nil since all of the nearly $24 million ($1 million from hydropower and $23 million from geothermal) research funding would go to other programs such as biofuels.
“I’m just astonished the department would zero out these very small existing budgets for geothermal and hydro – it makes no sense at all,” says V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, an environmental group based in Sacramento, Calif. “These are very important resources for our energy future that could replace the need for a lot of coal-fired power plants.”
Indeed, the costs of lost opportunities from dropping such research could be enormous in the long run, recent federal studies suggest.
(15 Sep 2006)
The Good News About Oil Prices Is the Bad News
Daniel Akst, NY Times
THE bad news about energy just keeps coming. Oil prices have fallen sharply since July. Nuclear tensions with Iran and Alaskan pipeline troubles haven’t caused an upward spike. A weakening real estate market and other possible harbingers of recession suggest that oil demand – and therefore prices – could erode even further.
Finally, in something like the coup de grâce, Chevron and its partners announced a new oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, one that could increase America’s oil reserves by as much as 50 percent.
What’s that you say? You think this sounds like good news rather than bad? You figure cheaper oil would boost economic growth while slashing the income of such lovable oil exporters as Iran?
Don’t kid yourself. Anything that reinforces the role of fossil fuels – particularly oil – as the industrial world’s primary energy source is bad, not good. Anything that prolongs the life of the internal combustion engine is a negative, not a positive. Anything that makes it cheaper to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is cause for mourning rather than celebration.
What we need is not lower oil prices but higher ones – significantly higher, enough to deter consumption and make us look seriously at alternatives.
Of course, it would be nice not to have to rely on cartels and circumstances to make us moderate our consumption. Hefty taxes on carbon-based energy, the proceeds of which could fuel research into nonfossil alternatives, would be a much better approach, since then at least we’d be paying ourselves instead of our friends at the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. As a bonus for saving the planet, we might even undermine the intolerance and autocracy that are abetted in many places by oil money.
Daniel Akst is a journalist and novelist who writes often about business.
(17 Sep 2006)
Christian Science Monitor op-ed piece in a similar vein: The only way to kick our oil habit.
California, Taking Big Gamble, Tries to Curb Greenhouse Gases
Felicity Barringer, NY Times
SACRAMENTO – In the Rocky Mountain States and the fast-growing desert Southwest, more than 20 power plants, designed to burn coal that is plentiful and cheap, are on the drawing boards. Much of the power, their owners expected, would be destined for the people of California.
But such plants would also be among the country’s most potent producers of carbon dioxide, the king of gases linked to global warming. So California has just delivered a new message to these energy suppliers: If you cannot produce power with the lowest possible emissions of these greenhouse gases, we are not interested.
“When your biggest customer says, ‘I ain’t buying,’ you rethink,” said Hal Harvey, the environment program director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, in Menlo Park, Calif. “When you have 38 million customers you don’t have access to, you rethink. Selling to Phoenix is nice. Las Vegas is nice. But they aren’t California.”
California’s decision to impose stringent demands on suppliers even outside its borders, broadened by the Legislature on Aug. 31 and awaiting the governor’s signature, is but one example of the state’s wide-ranging effort to remake its energy future.
The Democratic-controlled legislature and the Republican governor also agreed at that time on legislation to reduce industrial carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent by 2020, a measure that affects not only power plants but also other large producers of carbon dioxide, including oil refineries and cement plants.
(15 Sep 2006)
Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly) has a long positive post about this article:
the New York Times makes a point today about California’s dedication to efficiency and conservation:
This is the state whose per capita energy consumption has been almost flat for 30 years, even as per capita consumption has risen 50 percent nationally.
Actually, as the accompanying graph shows, it’s per capita electricity usage that’s remained flat while it’s increased 50% in the rest of the country. If you look at total per capita energy use, it’s actually declined since 1970 (compared to a modest increase in the rest of the country). At the same time, smog levels in Southern California have been substantially reduced. And do you know why? Largely because California has passed laws forcing it to happen.
Of course, we all know the result, don’t we? As the Republican Party and the corporate community are so fond of declaring, regulation like this inevitably leads to economic disaster. Businesses fail, incomes drop, and the economy goes into a tailspin. It’s nothing short of a disaster.
And yet, the predictable screeching of the corporate community, delivered on pretty much an annual basis, appears to have been wrong. California’s economy has been doing just fine during the decades we’ve pursued these policies. Imagine that.
Anyway, it’s a good article, and goes to show the kinds of things we could be doing nationwide if conservative politicians could put their Chicken Little campaign contributors on hold for a few minutes and take a look at how it’s possible to cut energy use dramatically – and reduce our dependence on foreign suppliers – without ruining the economy. The energy industry might not like the idea, but the rest of us would.
