The Oil Drum

Apropos of yesterday's gas tax report and discussion, today we bring you Alan Drake's ideas on post-peak mitigation. Alan is an engineer, former accountant, and professional researcher based in New Orleans with best hopes for many. Alan would also like to thank the lovely and talented Wendi Berman for her editing skills and assistance.

Many proponents for public spending on Post-Peak Oil mitigation are attracted to gasoline and diesel taxes or more generic oil and/or carbon taxes. In an era of rapidly increasing oil (and all other energy) prices, passing such taxes will be politically difficult and take precious time.

I would like to propose an alternative tax for Phase I of Peak Oil mitigation that adheres to Sen. Russell Long’s famous dictum “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, let’s tax that fellow behind the tree!”

World Trade Organization (WTO) rules allow for a specific exemption that will allow the United States of America to impose a non-discriminatory tariff (it applies to all goods and taxable services, with a specific exemption for essential goods) if the funds raised are used to reduce our structural trade deficit, i.e. our oil consumption.

Specifically, the WTO allows nations with a structural balance of trade deficit (which the USA certainly has) to apply a non-discriminatory tariff if the funds from that tariff are used to reduce the structural trade deficit (which reducing oil use certainly would do). A separate section of the WTO treaty allows the importing nation to exempt “essential” goods.

In 2006, the USA imported $1.861 trillion in goods (and exported $1.023 trillion). This allows for significant revenues from a small percent tariff.

Good News? Subway and Bus usage is up despite ongoing capital projects that produce baffling subway re-routes every weekend and slow buses service because of traffic congestion.

Average weekday subway ridership rose to 5.076 million in September, the highest level since transit officials began making monthly calculations in 1970, New York City Transit said yesterday. It was the first time since 1970 that the average weekday figure passed 5 million on the subway. Combined subway and bus ridership in September was 7.61 million on an average weekday. That was the highest combined figure since December 1970, when it was 7.627 million.

However this is still significantly down from December 23rd 1946 when almost nine million (8,872,244) trips were made on NYC transit subways and buses.

Photograph of crowded L train from lauratitian on Flickr