Calling all greens: Barack Obama, battling to remain the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary, this weekend took on the most sacred cow in American politics: cheap gas.
Campaigning in Indiana, Obama distanced himself from the gas tax "holiday" proposed by Sen. John McCain, saying it may not bring down prices and would require raising other taxes to pay for highway maintenance.
"The only way we're going to lower gas prices over the long term is if we start using less oil," Obama said in Anderson.
McCain pounced, saying through a campaign spokesman that "Americans need strong leadership that can deliver lower gas prices and a healthier economy, not Barack Obama's inexperience and indecision." Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, did likewise, unveiling a new ad calling for suspension of the gasoline tax -- a proposal first advanced by McCain on April 15.
As U.S. political campaigns go, the contrast between McCain-Clinton's playing the gas-tax card and Obama's brave clarity couldn't be clearer.
What the 2nd Amendment is to the gun lobby, and lapel flag pins are to summer soldiers, energy prices that reflect and internalize costs are, or ought to be, to greens.
The dirty not-so-little secret about U.S. energy policy, the Original Sin underlying our 35-year-old energy crisis and the now-exploding climate crisis, is cheap energy, and Americans' ingrained entitlement to it.
Low energy prices -- kept low with tax breaks, ruined mountaintops, scarred lungs, and now-fracturing ice shelves -- are what enabled suburbia, the "love affair" with the auto, and the hellspawn of SUVs that has begun engulfing China. Only high energy prices -- prices that internalize the grievous costs of energy extraction and combustion via gas taxes and revenue-neutral carbon taxes -- can instill the incentives and propagate the behaviors that will move us and other nations off of oil and off of carbon in the nick of time.
McCain has no clue. Clinton surely does, but can't pass up a chance to pander. "Hillary Clinton knows it's time to act, take some of the windfall profits of big oil to pay to suspend the gas tax this summer, investigate the oil giants for price gouging and collusion," her ad says. Right. Shadow-box at Big Oil while taxpayers and the climate absorb the punch. Here's the ad:
An 18 cent-a-gallon 100-day "holiday" adding up to ten billion dollars may not be much in the grand budgetary scheme. It's the principle that matters: closing the reality gap between the low price of energy and its outsize cost. With the Indiana and North Carolina primaries a mere ten days away, Obama's stance shows that he not only gets it but is willing to stick his neck out for it.
Energy prices that tell the truth. This -- not renewable fuel standards, not tough talk on Yucca Mountain, not even a moratorium on new coal plants -- is this century's defining energy policy issue.
Chuck Norris on Copenhagen
The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’
Comments
View as Flat
David Roberts Posted 1:46 pm
27 Apr 2008
"It isn't right that oil companies are making record profits at a time when ordinary Americans are going into debt trying to pay rising energy costs," [Obama] said. "That's why we'll put a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use it to help Indiana families pay their heating and cooling bills and reduce energy costs".Everybody panders.
grist.org
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:25 pm
27 Apr 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Theogarver Posted 4:26 pm
27 Apr 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 4:54 pm
27 Apr 2008
I would prefer he just advocate cutting subsidies directly, oil companies get 18 billion per year, and giving it out in per kwh subsidies for GHG free energy and conservation.
The windfall tax idea is at least closer than cap and trade ever gets to making the old energy economy give up it's stranglehold on pork barrel billions. Most cap and trade just gives the major portion of permits to grandfathered GHG spewers.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Bart Anderson Posted 5:12 pm
27 Apr 2008
"The only way we're going to lower gas prices over the long term is if we start using less oil," Obama said in Anderson. Unfortunately, though, this is no longer true. Even if we in the US use less oil, gas prices will still go up, due to demand in China/India and to oil reserves that are more expensive to exploit.
Candidates can't be too upfront about this, because voters aren't ready for it. On the other hand, whoever is elected had best make policy based on the assumption of ever higher oil prices.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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katakanadian Posted 10:12 pm
27 Apr 2008
True but at least the price will go up more slowly if the U.S. cuts back substantially in its consumption. Unfortunately, it's hard to get people excited about inflation being only 15% instead of 30% because people only notice that they are paying more.
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Shel Posted 11:33 pm
27 Apr 2008
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Delay And Deny Posted 1:27 am
28 Apr 2008
...energy prices that reflect and internalize costs.
I love it! Greens are the real Neo-Cons!
They want a true free market; one that rationalizes all costs.
So, I'm sure if you wouldn't object to us taking away all the subsidies for "mass transit" as well?
Texeme.Construct(Participant)
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EarthlingAngst Posted 1:47 am
28 Apr 2008
EarthlingAngst
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Kit Stolz Posted 6:16 am
28 Apr 2008
"McCain came out with a proposal the other day that was every bit as clueless as his many gaffes on Iraq. He wants to suspend the federal gas tax for the summer driving season.
"The effect will be an immediate economic stimulus, taking a few dollars off the price of a tank of gas every time a family, a farmer or trucker stops to fill up," McCain said.
No, it wouldn't. McCain is failing to take two things into account:
Supply.
And demand.
The supply of gasoline during the summer months is limited by refinery capacity. If demand rises, as it traditionally does in the summer driving season, the price will remain roughly the same even if the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon is lifted, says Len Berman, director of the Tax Policy Institute in Washington.
"The elasticity in supply is very low, so a cut in the gas tax is mostly just going to translate into higher prices," said Berman.
Florida officials tried the same stunt several years ago, says Fred Rozell of the Oil Price Information Service, the national authority on oil prices, based in Lakewood. They cut the state gas tax, but prices failed to drop accordingly. Why? It's hard to tell, said Rozell. Maybe people were driving more or maybe the service station owners were just pocketing the difference.
"The state spent all this money to see if gas stations actually chopped the price off," said Rozell. But the results were inconclusive.
And when it comes to cutting the federal gas tax, Rozell agreed with Berman that the supply for the coming summer is already set, so cutting the tax would not necessarily lead to a drop in prices."
For more, see:
http://achangeinthewind.typepad.com/achangeinthewind/2008 ...
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human power Posted 7:40 am
28 Apr 2008
I'm not buying it. Considering the need to reduce the American carbon footprint by 80-90% in the next fifteen years there is no way to get the top 10% of wealth-holders to reduce their emissions adequately by pricing alone and still allow the remaining 90% to live. We can institute individual GHG quotas to share the "burden" of sustaining life on Earth across income classes or we can kiss our behinds goodbye. Sadly, most Americans seem willing to choose the latter.
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