$7 a gallon gas?

Fuel Taxes Must Rise, Harvard Researchers Say
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
To meet the Obama administration’s targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon.

To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving would simply have to increase, according to a report released Thursday by researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The research also appears in the March edition of the journal Energy Policy.

The 14 percent target was set in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget for fiscal 2010.

In their study, the researchers devised several combinations of steps that United States policymakers might take in trying to address the heat-trapping emissions by the nation’s transportation sector, which consumes 70 percent of the oil used in the United States.

Most of their models assumed an economy-wide carbon dioxide tax starting at $30 a ton in 2010 and escalating to $60 a ton in 2030. In some cases researchers also factored in tax credits for electric and hybrid vehicles, taxes on fuel or both.

In the modeling, it turned out that issuing tax credits could backfire, while taxes on fuel proved beneficial.

“Tax credits don’t address how much people use their cars,” said Ross Morrow, one of the report’s authors. “In reverse, they can make people drive more.”

Dr. Morrow, formerly a fellow at the Belfer Center, is a professor of mechanical engineering and economics at Iowa State University

Researchers said that vehicle miles traveled will increase by more than 30 percent between 2010 and 2030 unless policymakers increase fuel taxes.

[From Andy R.: March 4, 7:58 a.m. | Update ] Rush Limbaugh weighed in on this post yesterday, as some may have surmised given the spike in comments, and the tenor of many. Some important points were raised by his audience, including a listener calling from his car in Nebraska to say how a gas tax would unfairly burden workers in sprawling states with no public transportation options. I’ll be posting more from the research team on some of this.

Since the research was done by a team from Harvard and published in the NY Times it is doubtful that the study was funded by those "evil oil companies" that are intent on pillaging the planet and wrecking the environment of "mother earth".

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson is intent on exercising her court appointed authority to regulate the economy:

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said Wednesday that an effort in Congress to stop the agency from regulating pollution linked to climate change would be an “enormous step backward for science” if successful.

Testifying before a Senate Appropriations panel, Lisa Jackson defended EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare by contributing to global warming.

That “endangerment” finding requires EPA to regulate emissions under the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, Jackson said.

“The science behind climate change is settled,” Jackson said during testimony Wednesday morning before the Senate Appropriations Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee hearing on EPA’s 2011 budget request.

“Multiple lines of scientific inquiry” and the consensus of climate scientists hold that climate change is happening and humans are the cause, Jackson said.

Fom her statements it would appear that Lisa Jackson has been without internet access since last November. That "consensus" she speaks of is in tatters. Even the UN has ordered a independent review of the science after all the errors in the IPCC report were exposed. Errors, which incidently, all favored the theory that climate change was being driven by human activity. The fact is that satellite data shows that there has been no appreciable warming in the Earth's atmosphere since 1979. Humans have burned a lot of fossil fuels since that time, it's curious that all that CO2 hasn't had a measurably significant impact.

You can bet that Ms. Jackson's regulations will have an immediate impact on the living standards of every American. I think even the very wealthy will feel the pinch of $7 gas. After all, if gas is going up to $7 what will jetfuel cost? Those Gulfstreams have pretty big gas tanks.