Rashelle J.M. writes: I think that the gas problem is mostly because people are driving larger vehicles. This conveys to me how greedy people are! I also see very conservative people who are riding scooters to work! People who conserve should be rewarded! I myself drive a 4 cylinder car. Now, with that said, I propose that if people buy bigger vehicles that they pay bigger prices at the pumps. The gas pumps are computerized, so, why can't gas be priced by size of engines?
Ok, how about we put in place a system where SUV drivers pay a per mile premium at the pump proportional to the fuel efficiency of their car relative to other cars. But wait, gas prices already work that way...
Let's take an example. Consider the driver of a large SUV that gets, oh we'll be generous and say, 20 mpg. Compare that to the driver of a smaller car that gets say 30 mpg. A $3.00 gallon of gas will get the SUV driver 20 miles of driving while the car driver will be able to drive 30 miles. That's $.15 per mile driven for the SUV driver and $.10 per mile for the more efficient car driver. The SUV driver is paying 50% more for gas than the car driver.
Now what about the environmental costs of driving an SUV versus a more efficient car? Don't SUVs impose higher environmental costs on society than do morefuel efficient cars? Sure, the SUV imposes environmental costs proportional to the difference in fuel efficiency. So in the above example the SUV driver emitting 50% more stuff per mile than the car driver. How can we get the SUV driver to pay this proportionate difference in social costs of driving. A per gallon gas tax will work.
Let's go back to the example. Suppose 10 units of environmentally bad stuff--the units and numbers here don't really matter and I'm too lazy on a Friday to look up the real numbers--comes out of every gallon of gas burned in a car or SUV. That's .5 units of bad stuff per mile driven in the SUV and .33 units of bad stuff per mile driven in the car. Now let's slap a $1.00 per gallon tax on gas to account for the environmental costs of driving. How much does the SUV driver get taxed per mile? $.05. How about the car driver? $.033. That's a 50% per mile higher tax on the SUV driver than the car driver. If we calculate the tax per unit of bad stuff, the SUV driver is taxed $.10 per unit of bad stuff and the car driver is taxed $.10 per unit of bad stuff.
