guyy

I'd be for it if they were going to cut military spending or shut down the torture camps or something like that. Otherwise, it's a bad idea.

loquitur

A gas tax holiday is a terrible idea. In fact, I think gas taxes should be doubled or tripled. Anything that raises the price of gasoline is good for the country. It's good for the environment, it encourages better land use, it frees us from dependency on some of the world's worst regimes. The higher the price of gasoline the more likely it is that we'll find a better alternative that is economically feasible.

Ustwo

loquitur you surprise me here, I didn't see you as a social engineering type via artificial pricing.

While all of your points are valid lets look at places where they have been doing just that, pretty much all of western Europe and Canada. Have they come up with better solutions? Alternative fuels?

You could argue that they have better public transportation systems and I'll grant you that, (well I can't say it for Canada), but beyond that, they have weaker economies, and higher prices on just about everything. Now how much of that is due to their artificially increased fuel costs and how much is due to their putative tax policies I don't know but it can't be helping.

America is a massive country and in order to operate at full potential we need cheap energy. I have complete faith that at some point we will find alternative energy sources which do everything you are looking for, but scientific progress isn't just based on need and money. Discoveries and ideas are more luck and rare genius, and limiting ourselves prematurely doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

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ASU2003

Well it may help if the oil companies can't buy out and shelve any possible cheap alternative to fuel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_...ydride_battery
http://www.gassavers.org/archive/ind...ts/t-6853.html

Cynthetiq

I do believe that there were some experiments with alternative fuels particualarly LPG, liquid propane gas. It burns much hotter and the conversion to the vehicle isn't significant. It wears the engines out much faster if I recall correctly.

I don't know how pervasive LPG is in other countries. I know we tried it here under CNG, compressed natural gas modifications.

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flstf

I live in the country and heat my house with propane and the price has skyrocketed in the last few years. Apparently it follows the price of petroleum.

dc_dux

At some point, we would have developed the atomic bomb through luck and rare genius....but the $2 billion ($28 billion in '08 dollars) federal investment between 1939-44 certainty helped produce it in time to make a difference in WW II.

At some point, we would have competed successfully against the Soviets in the space race through luck and rare genius....but the $23 billion federal investment in the decade of the 60s certainly propelled the US ahead.

Scientific progress to support the national interest is absolutely based, in part, on need and money. Luck and rare genius is a luxury when time is not an issue.

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loquitur

Ustwo, those other countries don't have the entrepreneurial tradition we do. Around here, if there is a market niche to be served, someone will serve it.

I see no reason to continue enriching Hugo Chavez and the Saudi royal family by paying them for the right to pollute our air and use up our land in inefficient ways. The pricing mechanism is the ONLY form of social engineering I find acceptable, because it preserves people's freedom. No one is forced to do or not do anything; they simply have the right to choose whether or not to pay for their preferences.

Ustwo

The ideas were already there, it was the matter of secrecy and production. There are already billions spent on alternative fuel research.

Using the same logic, why hasn't aids been cured or cancer? It certainly isn't a lack of funds.

The space race, was in the long run, a waste of much of that money. Its enormously expensive to build rockets and the like, it again, wasn't the science that was new here, it was the scale. We then did an amazing thing going to the moon, and then gave up on it as we 'won' the space race. We are now starting over, in early planning, 30 years later.

Mind you, I am not opposed to public funding of alternative energy, and the examples you gave were both public funding. It has nothing to do with the gas tax we are talking about, or gas in general, in fact its quite the opposite.



We are better at it than most places, but its still no guarantee of results in any given time frame. We still need our Wilbur and Orville here and maybe its 10 years maybe its 50. There is still an insane amount of money to be made, so I don't see that as being that much more of an incentive.

Artificially putting something out of someones price range with taxes is no less totalitarian than banning it outright. I would support an outright ban of dealing with such governments at least thats honestly representing the issue. Higher taxes on ALL petroleum, foreign or domestic, enemy or friendly nation, is just taking a cut and making life harder on some people who can't afford it.

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dc_dux

Here is the latest Republican solution announced, in very general terms by the Sen Minority Leader yesterday:

* open parts of ANWR and the OCS to drilling

* invest in the the development of oil shale in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah

* invest in clean, coal-to-liquid fuels

* accelerate the development of advanced batteries to power plug-in hybrid vehicles

* encourage the construction of new refineries

* suspend filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for six months

http://mcconnell.senate.gov/record.c...297147&start=1

Anyone impressed?

This is the week of dueling energy plans. The Dems will be released later today.

Now if they could only work together on something sensible and meaningful with a focus on long-term, environmentally and economcally sustainable solutions and a recognition of the need for short-term sacrifice.

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loquitur

We also should make it easier to build big, honkin' nuclear plants. Lots of 'em. They are clean, safe and renewable. And they don't depend on fuel from despotic misogynistic anticapitalist anti-American antiliberal anti-enlightenment totalitarian regimes.

aceventura3

Not impressed, but I have not been impressed with Democrats on this issue either. This has been on the table almost 40 years, and we are having the same discussions.

I know I should not say this, but perhaps this whole issue is over-blown and the problem is not as bad as we think it is.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1209...googlenews_wsj

http://mises.org/story/1892
This is a few years old but it helps put things in perspective when adjusting the price of oil in constant dollars over time.

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Ustwo

Now thats something I can get behind 100%. Any self proclaimed environmentalist who isn't for expanding nuclear power doesn't grasp the issues well enough to be taken seriously.

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smoore

Didn't we miss the boat re: nukes? Some tell me that they are prohibitively expensive to build now due to regulation and construction costs. Hindsight being 20/20 we should have done it in the '70s.

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loquitur

No, not if you build a bunch of them. The first one is pricey but the learning curve kicks in, and so do economies of scale. The first one would be a few billion, but each successive one gets cheaper.

And they create their own fuel.