Raising Interest rates would be the fastest way to make energy more expensive. It makes everything more expensive and prevents inflation. It wasn't until the 80's after the interest rates shot up that efficiency of US cars began to rise. During the 1970s when the gasoline tax was enacted it did nothing to curb demand.

>I think that we need to offset an energy consumption tax by abolishing the Payroll Tax

That won't happen. What do you believe abolishment the payroll tax will accomplish?

FWIW: I think your interpretation of future Oil production is right on the money.

US Federal reserve is not directly controlled by congress. To accomplish a goal of global conservation, all that is required is to convince 12 people to raise interest rates. Congress is powerless to stop them from raising rates. If you think about, these 12 people have more power than the president, the congress and the senate to influence conservation. The policies enacted by the Fed are the only ones that broadly affect the global economy.

Raising rates would also force Congress to cut spending any move to a balanced/sustainable budget.

US Gov't Spending whether taxes have gone up or cut has not declined in that last 60+ years. Most of the revenues collected by higher taxes will not but used to cut deficit spending, but to fund new or increasing funding of gov't programs (usually entitlements). You find data that supports this from the Annual Federal Spending reports posted on the Treasury's Web site. The GAO also has releases some reports about this as well.

Ideally if you wanted to impose a Energy Tax, the way to do it is to have the gov't cut spending, abolish the creation of new spending programs and cap all existing programs. I would also sugguest that the GAO and Federal Reserve be granted line-item veto rights to all future bills that affect spending, revenue(taxes) and budgeting. We need people that can directly influcence spending that aren't worried about losing a election because they didn't increase entitlements, subsidizes, etc.

Before anything can be done, we need a way take away Congress's ability to create wasteful spending. However since the likelyhood of that happening is Nil, its pointless to discuss this further.

However, a US energy tax still does not address consumption outside of the US. I would be pointless just conserve US Domestic consumption if the rest of the world (mainly Asia) continues to expand their consumption.

In my opinion the US gov't as it is, is done by 2015. The widthdraws to support the absurdly huge entitlement programs, coupled with soaring federal, local, trade consumer, corporate debt, and the pending shortage of energy has doomed its future. We have all already depleted all of our capital resources, its there no longer is a path out of the ditch that has been dug.

Thanks