Originally Posted by Mike Brewer
I for one have cut my gas useage down to less than $100 a month, and I cover over 200 miles a week for my work alone. I use public transportation - the Washington D.C. Metro system is one of the best anywhere - and am careful to "zone" my activities so that I can take care of several things at one visit anytime I'm in a given area. I'll wait to do my grocery shopping, for example, until I have something else to do in that part of town and then I'll make one trip for both.
I know it sounds like a reach, but I also spend some time each week writing to Senators and Representatives in Congress regarding the self-destructive tax system we work under right now. The most serious obstacle to alternative fuels right now is that nearly everything that has to do with transport in the US, from roads to construction to clean ups, is based on...you guessed it...gas taxes. The less gas we use, the more money we lose for road projects. Right now, there's no other source of revenues for these kinds of things, and when roads fall apart, trade falls apart. There's an environmental incentive to use less gas, but the economy is literally built around our consumption of it. Unless we can make some changes and cut the taxes on gas, develop our revenue from other sources, and make (as opposed to "find") ways to keep up the roads using other means while at the same time making gas affordable again, we're only going to see things get worse.
By the way, if the government decided, for example, to cut taxes on gas to a standard sales tax level, we'd save over a buck a gallon right out of the gate. If they instead increased vehicle sales taxes (just the tax - not the price of the car) by 10%, license and registration sales taxes by 10%, and instituted a tax on insurace for an additional 3%, we'd be ahead of where we are now, and the consumer savings would ultimately work out higher in the long run. In other words, the government would make the same money for the same projects on the same vehicles, except instead of taking their money out of the gas tank, they'd be taxing the thing that uses the roads - no matter what kind of fuel it uses.
That in turn would free up the auto industry to make alternative fuel vehicles, and the government could support it because there would be no economic disadvantage to non-petroleum vehicles. The government could even authorize grants and research funding for alternative fuels, confident that any developments in those areas would return their money in sales of the end products. The roads are secure, the oil is cheap, and the revenues actually increase over the long run. It's an all-around win.
The trouble is, it takes a tax hike on some products up front, and partisan politics would tear that apart no matter how good an idea it might be.
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