Green Options » gas-tax

Should the US Tax Mileage or Fuel? Guest Analysis

Popular Mechanics — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:30:33 +0000

This is an excerpt of a guest column Nick Chambers, editor of Gas 2.0, wrote for Popular Mechanics. You can read the whole column on the Popular Mechanics website.

The road trip—driving cross-country for days on end, crammed into a vehicle with your family—is virtually a required rite of passage for most Americans. The lure of the open road is as ingrained in our psyche and culture as the hamburger, football or fishing. So it’s no surprise that proposals for new types of taxes on these seemingly free highways—traditionally paid for by gas taxes and tolls—are causing an uproar.

Back in July of this year, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) proposed a bill that allocates funds to research the effectiveness of taxing highway usage by the mile. On the surface, the bill seems to be laying the groundwork for big government to track our driving habits while simultaneously discouraging the driving of more fuel-efficient vehicles. It doesn’t have to be this way.

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Breathing Easier: Beijing Extends Car Restrictions for Another Year

Elizabeth Balkan — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:26:21 +0000

Beijing authorities have announced that driving restrictions will be extended another year, as part of the city’s overall strategy to reduce airborne pollution and traffic congestion, according to reports from China’s state-run media. The plan hopes to take 930,000, or roughly 20%, of Beijing’s over 3.6 million vehicles off the road each weekday.

Starting Monday, April 13, cars will be banned from metro roads one day per working week, depending on the last digit of their license plate. There will be no restriction on weekend driving.

This measure represents the most strict action taken since lifting a ban that was put in place one month prior to and during the Olympics, wherein vehicles were prohibited from driving in Beijing every other day, as officials scrambled to achieve decent air quality and clear roadways for the competing athletes and attendees.

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The Case for a Fifty-Cent Increase in the Federal Gasoline Tax

Timothy B. Hurst — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:53:01 +0000

This morning, after I finished my weekend ritual of wasting another perfectly good hour listening to Car Talk, I clicked on over to CarTalk.com to check on something brothers Tom and Ray Magliottzi (aka: Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers) had mentioned during the show. While piddling around the site I found a link to an excellent audio rant from younger brother Ray who spoke passionately about why we should boost the U.S. gasoline tax fifty cents right now.

Several states are already mulling increases in gasoline taxes at the state level, but a Federal tax would create a different kind of revenue stream with a different kind of mission.

Both Ray and Tom argue that the revenue raised, somewhere between fifty and one hundred billion dollars annually, would be used to pay for infrastructure improvements and investments in a manufacturing shift in Detroit away from focusing on the automobile to focusing on the production of high-speed trains required by a revolution in American mass transit.

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Report: America’s Love Affair With Cars is Ending

Nick Chambers — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:14:07 +0000

According to a just-released report from the well-respected Brookings Institution, the US is experiencing its longest and quickest decline in the amount of driving since World War Two — a decline which the report’s authors claim marks a permanent shift away from the automobile and towards other forms of transportation.

The report, The Road… Less Traveled: An Analysis of Vehicle Miles Traveled Trends in the U.S., points out that the beginning of the current decline in driving predated the high gas prices of last summer and, as gas prices have come back down over the last few months, drivers are not going back to their cars (click the graph below for an expanded view of these statistics).

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Obama’s Green Job Plan x 10

Ramsay Mameesh — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:19:36 +0000

President-elect Barack Obama has promised $15 billion per year towards green infrastructure projects. While seemingly a large figure, it is a drop in the bucket, that will have little economic impact on the $14 trillion U.S. economy. And even though the Obama proposal will create 2.5 million green jobs within 5 years, that will do little to replace the 4 million lost manufacturing jobs since President Bush took office, or the 2 million jobs lost so far this year, or the who knows how many jobs that will be lost in 2009.

What is needed is a much larger investment in the Green economy, one that will create a new era of high paying middle class jobs, and an investment that strengthens the overall economy by reducing government budget deficits. An investment sufficient in size that will do more than simply stimulate consumption, or keep Green hopes alive, but an investment that will permanently transform the economy. And help America regain it’s economic, competitive, and technological advantage once again.

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Oh No! Gas Prices Are Falling!

Adam Shake — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:57:12 +0000

Every time the price of oil drops, the demand for that same product increases and the demand for alternate fuels, decreases. Why are gas prices falling?

China Daily reported that “oil dropped more than 6 percent to below $88.00 a barrel on Monday as a global market rout churned concerns that faltering fuel demand could slow further.”

In other words, we aren’t buying enough, so it’s time to lower the price. But can anyone other than the people vested in that market honestly say that we don’t use enough oil?

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Obama’s Plan to Reduce Foreign Oil Dependence

Sarah Lozanova — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:15:13 +0000

As Americans spend $41 million in foreign oil an hour and are left broke at the pump, what plan does Obama have to solve this problem?

Oil is destined to be a heated issue in this upcoming presidential election and Barack Obama’s opposition to the gas tax “holiday” has already been a hot topic. Obama has made it clear that national energy policy needs to be taken in a new direction.

“We send a billion dollars to foreign nations every single day and we are melting the polar ice caps in the bargain,” said Obama. “That has to change.”

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What We Pay For in a Gallon of Gas [graphic]

Timothy B. Hurst — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:43:53 +0000

(via U.S. Department of Energy)

Clinton Gas Tax Plan Doesn’t Need Economists, Just Good Implementation?

Timothy B. Hurst — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:27:21 +0000

I usually don’t watch the Sunday morning talk shows like Meet the Press or This Week. I’m not sure why. I think this is because I have a deeply ingrained aversion to them dating back to my childhood. You see, we really only had a handful of channels in those pre-cable days, and on Sunday mornings, before the cartoons really got going, three of those channels were running these incredibly boring talk shows - when they should have been running, at least from my point of view, cartoons. It was completely beyond me why they were running these shows at all, and not just doubling up on Superfriends or Scooby Doo! It seems I knew, even at that young age, that there were some things are just better off left till Monday.

What I’m getting at, is that I did not see Hillary Clinton on This Week with George Stephanopolous, on Sunday morning. But since we have a 24-hour media matrix covering every breath and every word in this presidential campaign, I was told all about it by all of my regular news outlets as soon as I got up. I was most struck by Senator Clinton’s reply to Stephanopolous’ question about the pushback her proposed summertime gas-tax holiday has received.

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