A Gas Tax

Don't just vote Green.  Think Green.  That is, consider ways of operating that are sustainable.

You can vote for me in this election, or you can say, for whatever reason, that you choose not to, but you have to consider the perspective that is offered by the Green Party.  Reasonable, thought-through solutions for the major problems that we face are on offer; all considerate, thoughtful citizens must engage with them.

We just had in the Gulf of Mexico an oil spill of approximately 200 million gallons.  The heavy use of toxic dispersant will probably aggravate the ecological damage, but even if we set that aside, there are significant issues that arise in connection with our society's heavy reliance upon carbon-based energy sources.

Economic activity is only going to be stable if it is sustainable.  That means we have to pay for the 'externalities' of the production of energy: specifically, the government has to put a tax on gasoline that reflects the burden of producing the fuel for our automobiles.  We can continue if we choose to drive a car, but we have to stop subsidizing the depletion of our oil resources, so that the real costs are ignored.  Rather, the true cost, the cost of spewing carbon dioxide into the air, that of fighting foreign wars to secure the oil supply, and that of cleaning up the inevitable spills, has got to be paid by those who consume the end product.

It's simply common sense. 

Some balance has to be reached.  Mark Engler, a columnist for the liberal journal In These Times, author, and contributor to the anti-war blog TomDispatch, estimates, using documentation from the New York Times editorial page, a Cabinet-level advisor for the Reagan and Bush administrations, and the British New Economics Foundation, that a conservative estimate of the true price would be $15 a gallon.

I'll take the difference and halve it.  I advocate a gas tax of five dollars a gallon.  Imposed by the federal government throughout the United States, with exceptions for gasoline used in agriculture.