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Gas fees: The good, the bad, and the curious

I'm not sure, exactly, whether this news is promising or disappointing: The San Jose Mercury News reported last week that environmental advisers to Governor Schwarzenegger are calling for a new fee on gasoline. Money raised by the measure would fund incentives for reducing climate-warming emissions.

The good news here is that they're considering fees on gasoline in the first place.

The bad news is that the proposed fees are tiny -- just 2.5 cents per gallon, which isn't enough to affect consumption more than a nominal amount.

The good news is that the fees will go to a good cause: There are a lot of inexpensive ways to reduce emissions, so the fees, as small as they are, could do a lot of good -- especially considering that California uses about 15 billion gallons of gasoline per year, so a 2.5 cent per gallon fee would raise $375 million annually.

The bad news is that opponents are already up in arms, blasting the idea as an unnecessary new tax on gas.

Bipartisan plan aims to revamp U.S. fisheries law

Congress is plotting its first revamp of fisheries law in nearly a decade — and it’s about time. Every boat counts. Photo: iStockphoto. Scores of fish stocks are dwindling in U.S. waters (as they are around the world), and only one of the eight federal fishing zones in the United States is widely considered to […]

Great minds, etc.

Yesterday I wrote about America's shame in Montreal. Today, the New York Times, which clearly knows a good idea when it sees one, is running an editorial called "America's Shame in Montreal."

A spoof and a serious energy plan

First: Engineer-Poet is right -- somebody has way too much time on their hands.

Second: via Oil Drum, check out the collective efforts by Kossacks to develop "A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security." They're on their fourth draft, and it's really shaping up into an impressive piece of work. I would quibble with a few details, and with the excessive focus on command-and-control regulation, but my one broad criticism is that they've ended up with a kind of melting pot of every single progressive energy idea on the planet.

As an exercise in visualization and planning, it's great, but if this is going to be picked up as an actual proposal, it's in dire need of some editing. Some tough choices need to be made. There's no way, in today's political climate -- or any I can foresee -- that this country is going to be able to process 20 major pieces of legislation all at once. Especially since for each one there's going to be a major lobbying push against it by entrenched powers.

But regardless: Very nice work, and a rather inspiring example of grassroots collaboration. I'll be following the progress.

Great Expectations

Big Great Lakes cleanup plan gets an OK, but no federal funds U.S. EPA administrator Stephen Johnson and a bipartisan coalition of Midwestern lawmakers and officials approved a 15-year strategy to restore the Great Lakes on Monday. But the Bush administration says it won’t fund the plan, which may cost up to $20 billion. The […]

Off Season

Climate change is messing with the seasons in a Rocky Mountain forest Since 1968, researchers have gathered air samples from near the summit of Colorado’s Niwot Ridge in the Rocky Mountains, and tracked carbon dioxide levels in the conifer forest below. They’ve amassed the world’s third-longest record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that record provides […]

Haul Out the Folly

White House makes last-ditch effort to open Arctic Refuge to drilling The Bush administration is mounting a last-ditch effort to persuade Congress to approve drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before lawmakers break for the holidays. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao are out furiously shopping talking points: It would supply […]

Milbank on the refuge

Bush administration officials sense that their best chance in years to get drills into the Arctic Refuge is slipping away, so they're putting on a PR offensive.

This isn't particularly newsworthy. Still, it's nice to see Dana Milbank, the Washington Post's excellent political reporter, writing a column with just the right degree of mocking skepticism, calling Interior Secretary Gale Norton "the administration's Ahab" on the subject and busting Labor Secretary Elaine Chao for passing on talking points straight from a rightwing think tank (drilling will create a million jobs -- by all accounts, she said it with a straight face).

Anyway, it's a bracing exception to the normal stenography of mainstream Washington reporting. Give it a read.

Is the world ready to waltz with nuclear again?

Most of us know what torture it is to be a wallflower, so it’s hard not to feel at least a slight frisson of sympathy for the nuclear industry. Once considered “most likely to succeed,” this promising power source found itself stumbling in the 1970s. It was bad enough after Three Mile Island in 1979 […]

Stevens rumor

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is not Jon Stewart's favorite person. Last week on The Daily Show's he did a memorable segment called "Who the F**k is Ted Stevens?" (Video here.)

Why is that? Well, consider the following.

He and his fellow drilling monomaniacs in Congress have inflated the (already-inflated [PDF]) projected revenue from Arctic Refuge drilling to $5 billion, though the Congressional Budget Office has not yet changed its official scoring.

Last week Stevens was openly discussing scaring up support for refuge drilling among Gulf-state Democrats by tying it to hurricane relief. Holding devastated families hostage. Classy.

But the latest rumor -- and right now it's only a rumor, mentioned in CongressDaily -- takes the cake. Apparently Stevens is considering holding up the Defense Appropriations Bill until he gets refuge drilling in the budget reconciliation bill, which is in conference committee. Holding the military's budget hostage. Quite a mensch!

Anyway, if anyone can verify (or disconfirm) this rumor, let me know.