Some problems with your solution immediately come to mind for the short term.

1. We would be gravely affected between the time the tax was implemented and the changes occurred. Everything we do or buy would be more expensive to the point where a recession would become a depression from which we may never recover. We are already on that precipice.

2.Building nuclear power plants would probably take 30 years, plus whatever time it would take for the naysayers to stop fighting them. Energy has to originate somewhere so electric cars would just move the source from gasoline consumed in the car to oil consumed by the power plants - (albeit more efficiently).

3. There are no electric vehicles available even if we had the electricity. Designing and building electric cars would take a few years.

4. Distances between everything are far greater in the USA than in any European country. While public transportation works in densely populated areas, it is much less likely to be successful in the US. Europeans and Japanese jump on a train or bus like we jump on a plane......because their cities are so much closer together.

Long term your solutions make sense, but a better plan is needed to get from here to there.

How about cutting back our driving by 20% to start with. If everybody was forced to cut back by 20 percent by either incentives or rationing, the gas price would fall like a stone and many of your benefits would be realized. Reducing unnecessary trips to the store, carpooling to work, penalizing gas guzzling vehicles, telecommuting, teleconferencing, are steps in the right direction that would require little heartache. I recently read that a 20% reduction in consumption would lower gas prices to the $1.50 range. I have already reduced our family gas consumption by 20% with no hardships, just a policy of combining trips to the store, switching to suppliers of services, like doctors, that are closer to home, etc.

One of the big problems at the moment is that a free market is not in play. While I believe that consumption is increasing in third world countries, it is not happening at a rate that would support a doubling in oil prices in a year. So the supply side is being controlled by said assholes who have decided to sell less and raise prices. We are stupid to have got ourselves in the position of being dependent on them.

By the way, what's wrong with covering Arizona with solar panels?

Colin

Colin

I try to critique as if you mean business.....

http://colinwardmusic.com/

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