Letters to the Editor

• A Few Follow On Thoughts

  [Read the article: Chris Dodd pushes the energy envelope]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I couple thoughts to add to my rant on tax policy to address energy conservation:

  1) You can address the notion of whacking the middle class by increasing the per person tax exemption. The more in the family in theory the more you need to drive, the greater the personal tax deduction the greater the relief.

  2) Advocating the gas tax oversimplifies. I am not suggesting JUST a tax at the consumer pump, the increase in fuel taxes should cascade through to business, electricity rates and on down the line thereby encouraging conservation across all aspects of the economy. Preaching won't alter the behavior. It's going to have to hurt to get people to rethink their habits. Jack the price and the quick trip to the video store gets rethought. Trips get planned better to cover multiple stops. Hell, teens drive less, which is a good thing all the way around given their higher accident rates.

  3) It is great to seek to "send a message" with CAFE standards, but history shows the mandate is not necessarily going to be followed if the price of operating said entity is being subsidized. If we want behavioral change, you have to intervene in the free market, assign the externalities or true cost of consumption, and then let individuals alter their buying behaviors. Last year was a run on hybrids. Gas is back under $3.00 a gallon again and hybrids are now being discounted at the dealer. We're not complex beings. You want to alter the behavior, assign it at the pump. (With "at the pump" a euphemism for all energy costs.)

  4) Whining about the class differentials simply provides a convenient straw man for the radical left. (The right hates this for the government intervention into the free market, among other things.) The rich get to do as they want, and the poor suffer. Well, guess what? There's probably NOT a price point that compels the uber wealthy to curtail their energy consumption be it private jets, multiple cars, or multiple, vast homes. It also makes not economic sense to seek to add a cost multiplier to the uber wealthy as they burn fuels, either. The impact on the commons does not discriminate against the carbon emitted by the middle class or by an extravagant bash put on by MoveOn.Org to raise awareness about Darfur. It's egalitarian, and it is more than a little hypocritical to moralize about the evils of SUVs while then arguing against assigning cost back to the SUV because an interest group to which one loves to pander might not like the personal impact.

  5) A friend and I in discussing the economics of "green" opined that both sides are fatally flawed in their arguments. The left remains too ideologically unyielding in the standards they seek to impose overnight, which is just a continuation of the failed results of CAFE mandates. (The shift to SUV usage by driving out poor performing family rigs resulted in net Per Capita MPG actually declining for a period of time.) The right wants to react in knee jerk fashion against any government regulation on an area where government regulation (protection of the commons, assigning of externalities to the market) makes complete sense. Furthermore, the right can't seem to get beyond their fixation with government intervention to see that a shit load of money can be made in this enviromental transition period.

  All of it starts with assigning the true cost of consumption back to the markets impacted the most. Class warfare whines about the unfairness of it all do not take away from the fact we as a nation subsidize energy consumption on the one hand and whine about our energy dependence on the other.

  We can preachily tell people to drop their heating temperature two degrees and to buy a smaller car and to drive 55 and on and on and on, but real behavioral change will NOT happen until there's financial pain.

  Permalink Monday, September 10, 2007 11:34 AM