JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Brian Austin Whitney Blog Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

It would take someone being 100% straight with the people and making the entire process 100% transparent. i.e. all the money could be traced and scrutinized.

I see this as a national security issue. I see it has a world health issue. I see it as a global enviromental issue. I see it as a common sense issue.

Right now the UK already imposes about 6 dollars a gallon in taxes. People there are pissed.. but they haven't been given a reasonable alternative beyond public transportation. I would have added an aggressive public transportation improvement segment for this, but I think that cost would exceed the cost of building stations and subsidizing cars. The great thing is that the fast you switched to electric or hydrogen, you'd avoid immediately not only the increase, but your operation costs would immediately plummet due to the cost of fuel being 2 dollars or less per equivelent gallon.

The government could ALSO extend write offs for those businesses making the transitions. In other words, we'd make switching so attractive, that nearly everyone with any financial resources would benefit. For those at the lowest end of the financial spectrum, We could offer additional financial support for them to switch to an electric or hydrogen vehicle. At the same time remember, the cost of gas would actually plummet to probably 2 dollars or less per gallon, so even with the tax, it wouldn't cost much more than it will cost without doing any of this. The tax is more to force people to switch than to raise the money. The relief on the government getting off oil (the Gov itself uses HUGE amounts of fuel) would also be a benefit.

If there was a candidate who suggested something this aggressive or even an aggressive but different approach, I'd vote for him or her without hesitation. We need an approach that approximates going to world war.. we geared up our entire economy for that and everyone benefitted and everyone had a job. Let's do the same with this. Let's kill the oil industry in 5 years. Once we're off that cycle and those that hold the world hostage are removed from the loop, we can refocus on even newer and better technologies and our entire quality of life and economy will thrive like never before.

Brian