Happygoguy must not live in Texas, well, maybe Austin. Probobly does not own a smart car either. I just want one because they look cool. I'm not getting rid of my truck or any other vehicles. If I save money on gas, it just means I get to drive more for the same amount of money. If my smart car saves the world too - then great.
i won't even waste my time replying to happygoguy's tripe. I'm am soooo tired of the environmentalist wackos and their self-righteous viewpoints that are not supported by any facts. But they just LOVE to tell everyone how we must change our lifestyle to save the yellow-cockaded woodpecker, or some such other nonsense. Grow up people and join the real world. And for heaven's sake, take a look at the facts before you believe the environmentalists preaching. You should demand intellectual rigor from these snake oil salesmen instead of falling head over heals for their emotional platitudes.
"kind of like the U.S. does with foreign countries. its all a big no no. i hope we come to peace."
"A decade after a bloody separatist war with Serbian forces that claimed 10,000 lives, lawmakers pronounced the territory the Republic of Kosovo and pledged to make it a "democratic, multiethnic state."
Tell that to these people who we helped in battling the Serbs those 10 years ago. We aren't trying to rule the world, we are trying to end tyranny and repression in the world. The Kosovars came to peace with our help.
Now, if Russia and Serbia will just butt out, we'll have another strong ally
So, Happy boy, leave the environmental and political slogans to your heroes Gore and Hillary.
There is some evidence that oil production peaked a couple years ago and with demand rising steadily in India and China, I believe we either need to do something now or we will be forced to do something more drastic in the future. I prefer driving small cars, but I don't think everyone should be forced to drive them.
My solution is to raise the gas tax by $3 a gallon in the U.S. The extra money raised would be required to go toward three things:
50% toward improving and maintaining existing roads and building new ones so bridges don't fall into rivers in Minnesota and potholes actually get fixed. There is currently too little money going toward maintaining our roads.
25% toward mass transit projects. I use the Washington D.C. Metro whenever I can, but I can't use it for commuting, because it doesn't extend far enough south. We do have a commuter rail system down to Fredericksburg, but I can't use it because I have to be to work before the trains even start running in the morning and the closest train station to my work is many miles away. It's also very unreliable. If mass transit fit my schedule and dropped me off close to work (and was reliable enough to get me there on time), I would use it.
25% toward alternative fuels so we could wean ourselves off imported oil.
A $3 higher gas tax wouldn't force anyone out of their gas guzzlers, but it would give them a lot of incentive to buy more efficient vehicles. If you really wanted to keep your 10 MPG vehicle, you still could, you'd just pay a lot more to drive it. You could also keep it for times you need the room and buy a smart car for when you're commuting by yourself. The new CAFE standards don't put any sacrifice on the consumer, they put it all on the car makers.
Europe has huge gas taxes and look at all the cool small cars they get compared to us.
If you're worried about gouging the poor with a huge gas tax increase, add a federal tax deduction for anyone with a car (one per person, no matter how many cars they own) to offset the tax up to some minimum point. I'll bet people would still move toward much more efficient cars so they could use the tax deduction for other things besides gas.
If we don't do something now, oil will continue to get more scarce and the price will keep going up anyway, until only the richest people will be able to buy gasoline.
4two4me **- read more. There is tons of oil out there that we aren't pumping yet. There is also shale that until now hasn't been economically viable to dig up because the cost of a gallon of gas has been too low, there are huge programs that have begun in western Canada when the price of oil got above $60 a barrel. Raising taxes is not effective at reducing fuel consumption - you can read about how it was tried in the 1970s, and when it failed it was repealed in the 1980s. I would love for alternative energy sources to be used more - not because we're running out of oil, because we're not - but so we could make the Middle East dictatorships less powerful in the world.
Its a complicated issue and there are lots of well written documents, articles, books, etc. that get into the details. When I talk with people I always recommend they read more and don't take my word as gospel. One good non-political place to read about subjects like this are the websites of Popular Mechanics and PopSci.com They are non-political, just giving the facts.
But to stick with your thoughts, and they are nice thoughts - the theory of "peak oil" isn't supported by the geologists, and higher taxes don't have the desired effects (this method failed in the 1970s).
Even some of the oil company commercials I've seen lately say we will run out of oil and need to start switching to something else.
I respectfully disagree with you that higher taxes don't work. They already ARE working in Europe. The average European car gets much better gas mileage than the average one in the U.S.
Finally, even if peak oil is far off in the future, it doesn't make sense to be giving so much money to some of the most unstable parts of the world. As you know, most of the 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. We are spending billions of dollars on the war in Iraq, which is certainly a LARGE hidden tax on oil, yet exports of oil from Iraq have not exceeded pre-invasion levels (in fact, they have been well below on average since the invasion).
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