I am very dismayed when reading an article like this. A tax will not serve the purpose of reducing our dependence on foreign oil. There needs to be a comprehensive plan for installing alternate energy supplies. Mandating higher milage effiencies from automotive Manufacturers is a good start. How about nuclear facilities being installed? In general we do as a country need to have energy independence first and worry about being politically correct and green after we make sure we can stay warm and not be held for ransom by oil interests.

More global warming nonsense. Do you think there is a link between GHG’s and warming, or are GHG’s a by-product of a warmer Earth? Real science would demand elimination of all other possibilities. What about Mars? It’s warming at the same rate as the Earth. How many SUV’s are registered on Mars? Maybe it’s solar activity? That hasn’t been eliminated. How about the last time the Earth’s temperature increased… before the industrial age; care to explain that? Is it possible that the Earth’s temperature is cyclical and has and will always vary? Do you trust the IPCC? Do you trust them after their bias and willingness to ‘bury’ and facts that don’t support their assertions have been uncovered?
This is nothing more than a global wealth redistribution scheme. Is the rest of the world who would benefit from this redistribution going to return the products and services that the western world developed during this period that make their lives better? The reality here is that we do have an obligation to do what we can to be better stewards of our planet. That ‘revolution’ has already begun. But to accept this manufactured nonsense, that the normal and natural by-product of respiration is a harmful gas is a joke. This administration is misguided and is on a path to destroy everything pervious generations of Americans have worked to achieve. Our economy and economic health depend of inexpensive and abundant energy. Putting these kinds of restrictions on energy will be the final nail in our coffin. It will certainly close the lid on many small and mid-sized businesses, the engine of our economic growth and prosperity. Is that the change you voted for?

The replies to this article show how difficult the psychology of this challenge is. Americans are a spoiled lot. Nations like Norway have been paying high prices for fuel for decades now. It is working very well for them.
The higher price is exactly the incentive the market needs to change habits and get more fuel efficient.

The money collected in taxes does not leave the national economy. It is used to build efficient infrastructure and to reduce other taxes, including tax breaks that encourage more efficiency.

If we stay on our current course, the price of fuel will tend to rise anyway and that money will not be available to reduce other taxes, and we will continue to be burdened by inefficiency.

Nations like Norway have been paying high prices for fuel for decades now. It is working very well for them.
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Norway is roughly the size of Montana and has roughly the population of Alabama (and it’s a pretty centralized population due to geography and climate).

I’m not sure that’s a very valid comparison.

LearningWhy thinks: “The money collected in taxes does not leave the national economy. It is used to build efficient infrastructure and to reduce other taxes, including tax breaks that encourage more efficiency.” Does anybody else believe this?

The only ‘shovel ready project’ Obama has funded is his own shovel, and he continues to shovel this $#&!. I’m disappointed that the more trusting Americans apparently eat this up! I really loved the part about reducing other taxes! That’s really a hoot. The way this administration spends, they will not be able to reduce any taxes, and they are still going to enslave our children because of their lack of restraint.

I feel the warm guiding hand of Obama…. and it’s reaching into every part of private business. Someone needs to tell the ‘first fraud’ that private business and individual initiative is what built everything good in America. His ‘central committee’ mentality didn’t cut it in the USSR, and it’s not going to cut it here. Someone pass the vodka.

The central conclusion of the study is correct–that to reduce use of fossil fuels they must become more expensive. One of the ironies of the CAFE standards, which 70′s politicians, in a triumph of cravenness, foisted upon the car companies, is that it made cars more expensive, but the act of driving cheaper. So people ended up buying houses farther and farther away from work, driving more and more and, lo, our fuel use skyrocketed. Great job, Congress. But they were visionaries, and the car companies and oil companies got the blame, so of course even with the evidence that their actions helped create an almost irreversible structural dependence on oil they voted for another round of CAFE mandates, even as GM was going bankrupt.

In spite of the dubiousness of the global warming issue, the goal of reducing fuel consumption is not such a bad thing. There is the matter of dependence on foreign sources, which it is a national security issue. But fossil fuels are a finite resource and their cost will rise of their own accord as they get harder and harder to extract and transfer payments to supplier countries will get higher and higher, and ultimately oil will get too expensive to use. It would certainly be better to have alternatives in place as we get nearer that point, to avoid the chaos of disruptions, and the only way to do that is to bring the cost of fossils closer to that of the alternatives. The question is, could not the market do that on its own, in time, or do we need prodding (in the form of a tax)?

Alternatives are getting cheaper, but it is doubtful they will become as cheap, at least in the near term, as oil is now. I am sure the market would ultimately solve the problem on its own, but perhaps not in the smoothest way. For that I think it might not be a bad idea to advance the day of reckoning with a gradually increasing tax on fuel as long as it is offset by decreasing taxes elsewhere. It would give people more time to adapt. And to be effective it has to affect decisions at the pump, which is why I don’t think things like credits, industrial blueprints or other solutions remote from the problem would work. But you can trust politicians, especially the current crop, to mangle beyond recognition any sensible approach (Exhibit A: healthcare). Anyone who thinks this Congress would offset a fuel tax with tax decreases elsewhere is delusional. They would love such a tax…it would certainly help them get out of the enormous hole they’ve dug for us with “stimuli” and Obamacare, yet I think the directness of a fuel tax scares them.

Taxes in any form are a drag on the economy. But depending on their structure they will drag more in some places than others. Some are so hidden and subtle that you don’t know what they’re killing. With this Congress taxes can only go in one direction, so I hesitate to even countenance the notion, but had we saner people in government a fuel tax could replace a more destructive indirect tax, say that political darling, the corporate tax. As with all taxes there will be winners and losers, but as long as it is considered a national goal that the greens be winners and the ungreens losers then on balance I think it is better to create them upfront rather than unintentionally, or through the politicians’ favorite, carefully coordinated cronyism. And it is certainly better than having the likes of Lisa Jackson picking winners and losers by fiat.

Unfortunately politicians know that people get angrier at a direct tax they can put their finger on than the more insidious indirect taxes, so obfuscation is the rule. Death by a thousand cuts. Such is the democratic way.