Encourage behavior you want more of and discourage what you don't want: public transportation becomes heavily subsidized, moving to no charge eventually; all non-emergency business close on Sundays (like the good ole days); increase air travel tax; turn yards into vegetable gardens; subsidize bicycles; remove the tax break for families who bear more than 2 kids and any family with more than 2 now who have more; tax meat...

I like everything. I would add education in conserving. Teach people how to conserve. What helps and what does not help.

Question: Would the tax apply to electicity generated by fossil fuels?

Rick

Don't you understand that what you're suggesting would be considered evil socialism by many, many powerful and not-so-powerful people in the United States? You're not just suggesting a change in policy, but in effect mandating a change in culture and in Americans' basic identity as a people.

You might as well be King George trying to tax tea, because rebellion is what you'll get.

Change the culture and the politics and the policy will follow. Don't, and, well, it'll be more of the same.

This tax increase is only $0.0714 per gallon per month

By the way, just to be clear that tax would be incremented by this amount every month. In other words, at the end of 3 years, the total tax will have increased by $2.57/gallon. That will influence behaviors, in my opinion.

Robert, if you give a tax credit that offsets the impact, then people still have enough money to just pay the increased costs, and in addition you have nothing left to funnel into alternatives. So, how much of total fuel usage is by those making $50,000 or less ? In the US, and in the world. That percentage is key to understanding whether there would be a significant reduction in useage and whether you would have much left over for alternatives.

Cut the defense budget to about 10% of the current levels and take the extra money and start buying american made windmills, solar cells, hybrid cars, bicycles, and trolley systems. No purchases (of anthing) from foreign countries unless they implement wage, energy efficiency, environmental, human right and retirement/welfare programs that meet certain set levels.

Significantly increase foreign aid for birth control, education, sustainable farming and human rights.

Buy all coal and natural gas powered power plants from owners and replace with nuclear plants.

go back to a non-fiat monetary system.

eliminate income tax and fund the government entirely on estate taxes, heavily biased to large estates. Eliminate all methods of transfering wealth without taxes.

universal single payer health care with maximum overhead costs of 5%.

Set a national goal to completely eliminate the use of fossil fuels by the year 2057, with a 50 reduction in the next 20 years.

As dictator I would establish an energy and efficiency production authority to coordinate the following.
I would have engineers design a standardized thorium-floride reactor along with creating an accelerator driven reactor to handle the waste generated by uranium reactors.
I would have engineers design a standardized F-T system for biomass to liquid fuels. Kudzu, native grasses, and algae would be the feedstocks according to location.
I would use Government owned land to create algae farms.
I would use idled auto factories for the manufacture of wind turbines and turn the Great Plains and other similar areas into huge wind farms.
I would put water turbines in the Gulf Stream and other ocean currents where practical.
I would build a 500kv dc grid over the entire world as envisioned by Bucky Fuller.
As renewable energy capacity grows I would first close the coal mines and then the oil fields and finally the nat gas fields.
I would halt the construction of skyscrapers and as much as possible move housing, businesses, and industry underground. The savings in energy for heating and cooling would be enormous.
I would ban the manufacture of incandiscent light bulbs and look for more energy efficient alternatives for TVs and computer monitors.
I would bring back the street cars lines in our cities and rebuild the intercity rail network. There would be separate rail lines for passengers with their electric cars and for heavy freight.

How about a mandatory 4 day work week? The goal would be to try to reduce energy usage by getting everyone to stay home and not drive anywhere. This would be a huge cultural challange. People would be tempted to drive to the mall or go somewhere by car. You would have to convince people that they should use that extra day to plan to make the 4 working days as productive as 5. Actually, i think being as productive in 4 days as 5 is a challange that Americans can handle and would want to take on.

RR. I would modify your approach by allocating carbon credits to each adult citizen based upon an overall cap to be reduced each year in accordance with a plan to eventually reduce our carbon emissions by 80%. If this were combined with a tax, there would be a double incentive to conserve. Those who used less than their carbon quota could make money by selling their excess credits. Those who used in excess of their quota would incur additional costs because they would have to buy additional credits.

Potentially, a carbon credit system could subsitute in part or in full for a tax rebate system.

Another reason I favor an energy quota system is due to the uncertaintly of the effects of a tax/rebate system. As others have suggested, some people will take into account the fact that they are going to be "made whole" by tax rebates or reductions intended to make up for the higher energy or gas taxes.

One of the difficulties with any scheme, whether it be quota or taxes is the short to medium term inelasticity of energy demand. For those who live in energy inefficient homes far from work or shopping, they will have difficulty cutting their energy use without significant investments involving home retrofitting, new cars, moving, etc. and, therefore, will be significantly impacted, especially if they have a low or moderate income.
Arguably, they should have gotten the message long ago. In any event, as a matter of public policy, these people should be forewarned by starting with small tax increases and/or relative liberal energy credits, and then increasing the rate of increase over time.

Very well said. So far the public is waiting for leadership from the government. That won't happen until it is made clear to them that they'll be thrown come next election for failing to provide said leadership. What the public needs to do is take some responsibility -- this is a democracy, after all, and that's our job. But we can only do that if we're sufficiently well informed. We really do need to demand that the gov't engage us in open and transparent conversation unencumbered by back-room lobbyist access. But in the end, we need to realize that while scientists can provide data and government (ideally) leadership, in the end it will be our actions that determine hoe painful the future is going to be.

This is a repost from another thread, but its part of what I would do.

I think you misunderstand what I am trying to get at. Let me be a little more elaborate on what I was thinking. Contrary to what many might say, there is more then enough uranium and thorium to allow us to produce most if not all of our electricity via nuclear fission. The current breakdown in energy generation in the US is:

18% Nuclear
15% Hydro
2% Wind and Solar
5% Oil
14% Natural GAs
46% Coal

From my understanding, Coal and Nuclear are considered 'base load' energy producers, as they can not be turned off and on quickly enough to meet rising and falling energy demand. Instead we use oil, gas and hydro with a dash of renewable energy generation to meet peak load.

As per these limitations, its hard to have more then 50% nuclear energy generation unless you have a viable way to either store the energy, or export the energy to other countries. France does the latter, but no one does the former.

Hydrogen of course is extremely difficult to store for long durations, and very difficult to transport from one location to another for on site use, such as in transportation. But it seems to me that people have largely ignored one option.

What I'm suggesting, or at least asking questions about, is what is preventing the US, aside from political opposition, from increasing our nuclear energy generation ratio to around 60%, and using the excessive energy generation for hydrogen production from electrolysis. The hydrogen could be stored in large containers at night time when not needed, and used in hydrogen fired power plants during the day to meet peak load, as opposed to using NG.

Any excessive hydrogen generation could be processed into ammonia for fertilizers and for upgrading very heavy hydrocarbon deposits for limited oil use in earth moving equipment or transportation. Granted, such a schemed would reduce the already extremely high EROEI of nuclear from 100+ to 1 to perhaps 33% less, as energy is obviously lost in creating and storing hydrogen than can be produced by using hydrogen in a gas fired plant.

The benefits of such a setup are numerous:

1. As I already mentioned, the hydrogen can be used for a variety of critical fields.
2. We would not require a complete retooling of our infrastructure to store energy, unlike other proposals to have giant molten salt flats or huge caverns of latent wind energy, or even pumped water storage in a mountain hold.
3. It would replace most, if not all of our electrical carbon pollution in the long term.
4. We could build both nuclear and hydrogen fired gas plants at the same site, eliminating much of the transportation costs.

Assuming such a plan were put into place, I could easily see a setup like this:

60% Nuclear
15% Hydro
25% Hydrogen Gas
+10% Hydrogen 'storage' and 'upgrading'

In short, to me it seems to be a win-win situation for all. But that brings me back to my original question:

Assuming this setup in which hydrogen generation is obviously not a problem, what are the technical limitations to using hydrogen instead of natural gas in a gas fired power plant?

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Now, in addition to this, I would mandate that all new vehicles produced would be hybrids, followed by plug in hybrids and eventually full EVs. This transition would take 5-10 years until every new vehicle produced is an EV. I would also ban incandescent light bulb sales from the beginning, and set up a new building code that requires one light switch operated power outlet to be placed in every room in the house. Think of all the 'phantom load' energy we would save :P

I like the impulse behind this thought experiment (my partner and I have "if I ruled the world" conversations often). I offer only the following modifications/suggestions:

1. It needs to be global -- the problems facing our neighbors to the south (Cantarell crashing, storms, food shortages, refugees from their southern border) prove problems won't respect borders so solutions mustn't either. An equitable allocation of food and resources globally is the only long term solution, along with a massive reduction in population. Specifically, the dictator of the world would need to:

a) Set population targets --I don't recall specifics of carrying capacity but a target like 900 million by 2200 using contraception is probably ideal. Thoughts on this (and the nonviolent ways of achieving it) are welcome of course.

b) Price true costs of items -- not just the hydrocarbon component, which a carbon tax begins to approximate.

For example, according to reports from the UN and U of Chicago industrialized animal agriculture contributes 18% of global warming emissions, the largest fraction -- even larger than transportation. A mechanism (probably a tax) to capture the costs of production previously externalized is a must. My goal would be a local, low-carbon, essentially vegetarian diet. Education on nutrition, support for localization, and a mandate for locally-derived solutions (to match cultural, ecological and financial constraints) would be key.

c) Create a new class of crimes against humanity -- crimes against the environment. Corporate heads of polluting companies and their politician toadies would be held responsible and corporations could receive the death penalty (though people wouldn't). Run it as part of the International Criminal Court.

Hi Robert,

I'm glad to see this topic, and hope it's continued in future days, (esp. as I'm out of time for today). Just one "technical" Q:

"So, starting today, the tax on fossil fuels will be increased by $3/(barrel of oil equivalent) per month for at least the next 3 years..."

Just so I'm clear...how and upon whom (exactly) would this tax be imposed? On the companies who do the importing? So, the oil is taxed coming into this country? (And including that which is produced in US?) In other words, a tax on imports? Any chance you could get into more specifics on the actors?

I recall previously your mention that removing oil co. subsidies wouldn't amount to much (relatively speaking)...how would that compare to this increase tax?

/

This tax increase is only $0.0714 per gallon per month

For context, this corresponds to about $2.50/gal after the 3 years, which would raise the price of gas in the US to about $4.50/gal, or 25% less than most Europeans pay currently. So it's certainly doable.

why is it that broadly speaking, human kind continues to overlook its latent propensity to hoard and gather [the c21 hunter gatherer]and ultimately 'own'. We have collectively decided that 'WE OWN GLOBAL WARMING'It's become a catch cry so loud at the political/prolitaria coal face that it makes it easy to imagine the likes of even Georgey Orwell rolling in his grave and shouting 'ITS 36!' Every dolphin feeding coral kissing tree hugging carbon dioxide respiring charity starts at home philosiphising oxegen thief has drawn the shallowest of conclusions from almost infinitessimal data availiable.[not that Iam a psalm 8er] But in our typically selfish myopia,it could be easilly argued, that we cant see the 'trees for the forrest' whilst simultaniously refusing to see the forrest for the tree that is living directly in front of us.It would be fair to say that our chapter of the human race started its pathway to the top of the food chain [and ownership perception]some 70,000 years ago [not even a jiffy on the cosmic and global calenders]when our self slaking self interested mitacondrial dna in the form of a small hungry african sub tribe walked out of the horn of africa into yemen and colonised the coastal rims of globe.Now in the scheme of all things including global warming and its more life threatening obverse phenominon GLOBAL COOLING,this treck that ultimately gave rise to us could be considered as THAT TREE GROWING IN FRONT OF US. That tree grew because of or latent propensity to evolve. Not just because we hunt and hoard and gather and protect what we perceive as 'our stuff' but because of that most wonderful of human traits ,the ability to 'ADAPT AND OVERCOME' or to be the devils'devil's advocate,buying on 'rumour' and selling on 'fact' or simply 'makin hay while the sun shines'.If there was a cosmic 'titles' office we couldnt possibly prove ownership unless we could post a case for squatters rites,but lets think for a moment about some of the other trees that havent been put into the equation ,and what made that tribe leave its comfort zone in the first place.[Or was it the secnd or third place]Yeah! the food dried up as the ice caps grew as the earth cooled as the atmosphere dryed as the global dynamics sine waved another chapter goodbye.Now its fair to say 'CONTINENTAL DRIFT IS STABLE[+OR MINUS A GONDWANA OR 2];POLARITY IS ROCK STEADY[+OR MINUS A HEMISPERE OR SO] SOL's THERMOSTATE IS UNWAVING [+ OR MINUS A K OR 2] THE OCEAN's DATUM IS FIXED[+OR MINUS 500meters OR MORE] ARABLE LAND IS PREDICABLE[+ OR MINUS AN ION OR SO ,AND GLOBAL TEMPERATURES,well in georgey's book the difference between 1948 and 1984 is 36.and the pendulum swings only when excited .LETS NOT GET TOO EXCITED.STAY TUNED FOR'CHINA EXCITES THE PENDULUM BUT ONLY EXASORBATES THE INEVITABLE.Remember the STONE AGE didnt end because they ran out of stones and from a a totally selfish perspective the weather is better where I am so its another tribe that will need to adapt and overome....REMEMBER THINGS STAY THE SAME FOR ABOUT A JIFFY AND THERES AT LEAST A HUNDRED OF THEM TO PICK ON EVERY SECOND.Thanx4takin1