A very simple point, brought home to more Americans every day due to the disaster that British Petroleum arrogance and potential criminal negligence has wrought in the Gulf of Mexico:
If we are going to move Beyond Petroleum, it is time to start bringing “externalities” into the cost of fuel. These externalities include:
- Paying for both sides of the struggle with violent extremism.
- Sending U.S. treasure overseas, every day, that could be spent employing Americans and strengthening U.S. society.
- The ‘socialized’ risk of ecological damage.
- Climate Change & Global Warming.
- Increased cancers and other health problems for American citizens.
There are huge “external costs” not accounted for in the price of gasoline at the pump. Every one of us is contributing, without any real accounting or understanding of our role, to the poisoning of the air we breathe and the poisoning of the water our children drink. We are contributing, each time we fill up the tank (directly or indirectly), to the resources available to inculcate too many of the next generation of Islamic children around the world in the Wahadist propaganda of anti-modernity hatred. We are, every time we use plastic or buy food truck in from far away, contributing to the undermining of America’s future prosperity and security by worsening climate change.
It is time to turn the tide … to turn the tide on climate change’s rising seas … to turn the tide to reduce (rather than increase) the likelihood of another Deepwater Horizon … to turn the tide toward something better.
And, sparking that turning that tide will require national will. It will require national outrage over what BP has done. It will require national understanding of the risks we face and that we are creating. And, it will require a national awakening to the real benefits and the tangible opportunities for setting a path off oil.
And, with that realization and determination firming, the time will become ripe for putting in a gas tax that will begin to price in “externalities”, a gas tax that will incentivize Americans off oil and a gas tax that will provide a revenue stream to fund clean energy alternatives and energy efficiency to hasten the end to our oil addiction.
A steady, incremental but certain, imposition of a gas tax will create a strong signal that will spark ever-greater investments into energy efficiency and alternatives to oil — investments from the individual (where to live, planning trips more carefully, deciding what car to buy) to the community (Plug-In Hybrid Electric School Buses) to businesses (invest in alternate fuel research). A Gas Tax will help change American society, change it for the better, change it into a more secure and more prosperous American for living and as-yet-to-be-born citizens.
To move Beyond Petroleum, it is time to sign up to pricing oil for the damage that it causes because poisoning the air that our children breath shouldn’t be considered an ‘externality’, poisoning the seas where our food comes from isn’t an “externality” to my life, and sending funds to those funding some of the most radical fundamentalist religious education (that encourages violence against modernity) isn’t an externality — we need to sign up to pricing our costs. And, well, if we use the raised resources correctly, we will set ourselves on a path for a 21st century American revival to something better than the nation has every seen. Truly, a sensibly structured gas tax is a tool to help U.S. achieve “a more perfect union”.