I’m pretty sure we’d go all Marie Antoinette on any politicians so stupid as to try this crap in America.
Why are many European carmakers now planning to build electric vehicles? Because many European cities are widely expected to ban high-emissions vehicles from their city cores over the next decade–perhaps even vehicles with any emissions at all.
Now, Paris may be the first city to experiment with such a policy. Next year, it will begin to test restrictions on vehicles that emit more than a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometer–the measure of a car’s contribution to greenhouse gases.
An official within the Parisian mayor’s office, Denis Baupin, identified older diesel-engined cars and sport-utility vehicles as specific targets of the emissions limit.
“I’m sorry,” Baupin said on RTL Radio, “but having a sport utility vehicle in a city makes no sense.” He suggested that Parisian SUV owners replace their sport utilities with vehicles that are “compatible with city life.”
We know what to do with mayor’s assistants who judge us for the cars we drive.
Off with their heads!!
But more interesting is what these simple regulations wind up impelling people to do.
London’s congestion-charging scheme, which levies a fee of £10 (roughly $15.50) to enter a large area of the central city during weekday business hours, permits zero-emissions vehicles to enter free.
Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars, including the low-speed fiberglass G-Wiz–despite major safety concerns with the vehicle.
Electric cars such as the 2011 Nissan Leaf are expected to sell for the same reason. In fact, Nissan plans to build up to 50,000 Leafs a year at its plant in Sunderland, England, starting in early 2013.
These kinds of policies will be late in coming to America if they ever arrive at all. The Republican Party appears to be little more than a jingoistic extension of an ExxonMobil board meeting. We’re more likely to start giving out free Hummers than we are to tell Hummers that they aren’t welcome in Times Square.
It’s the only way to get people to respond. Tax cuts/credits don’t work. You must hit people’s wallets.
Cap and trade is shit compared to a carbon tax. The right seems determined to get a consumption tax through, so let’s fight for one we can agree with: a carbon tax.
People always say the poor will be hit the hardest, but imo that’s not necessarily true, especially with gas taxes. Poor people don’t drive.
Not true. Plenty of poor people drive, especially in rural areas, because there’s no other way to get around. Ditto for the cities whose gentrification has forced many poorer people into suburban areas poorly served by mass transit.
Even in areas that do have mass transit, it’s often grossly inadequate, especially for people who have to work on nights or weekends. And don’t even get me started on transit accommodations in this country for the elderly and disabled.
Once you get outside the urban core of the 15 or so cities in our country with passable to decent mass transit – which doesn’t include most of the fastest-growing Sunbelt ones – our country’s non-automotive transit options are for shit. We’ve spent a century building this country around an urban geography of the automobile. Quite aside from the cultural infatuation many people have with internal combustion engines, the only way to get people away from using them is to give them something better. Simply making it unaffordable, without investing in alternative means of transportation like affordable electric cars or public transit, isn’t just unjust. It’s also really inefficient, because without alternatives people will hang onto their gas-burners far longer.
Meh:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2009/01/cars_are_expensive_poor_people_take_the_bus/
Subsidizing car ownership isn’t going to help either. Of course I agree with providing alternatives, but we won’t see alternatives until we’re forced. That can only happen with a carbon tax (or as we’re seeing here, a congestion tax).
True, lower income folk do drive a lot, except in areas with decent mass transit. Consider a place like Vail or Aspen, where there isn’t any affordable housing anywhere. The low wage workers either must accept substandard quarters on site or drive from places like Glenwood Springs or Leadville, often in the worst snow conditions.
It’s actually kind of sad — many or most will insist on buying a beat up old American-made pickup — a bargain at the used car lot but a huge money eater in terms of repairs and fuel.
Of course, I used those towns just as an illustration. But you don’t need a famous ski resort to find low wage people driving as much as 60 miles one way for a day’s work. It happens all over the country.
Even in cities with good public transport, as Denver now has, all the prime land by the transit stops is in huge demand from the yuppies, so the low wage workers either live in near slums or far away.
So, if the gas tax is hiked a ton — which is a good idea, first proposed by John Anderson in the 1980 presidential campaign IIRC — what does that do to the low wage worker? Well, realistically the market does adjust. Either the employers will need to increase compensation OR they will need to arrange transport. The latter would make sense in a place like Vail — frequent worker busses to the towns where the workers live.
However, the adjustment to that situation would be painful, and the pain would mostly hit the low wage workers the hardest. And of course you can be sure Rush and company would take full advantage of that. So a much better policy would be to first establish a network of worker transport — both through employer incentives and through local transport agencies — and after that was in place then hike gas prices to the sky.
Of course, not a chance in hell of happening in the U.S. But I’ve pretty much described the defacto policy that’s been in place for 3-4 decades in Western Europe.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
I would venture to say the reaction here would be quite different. Think about the health care town halls. Then envision if those people had been allowed to bring guns, pitchforks and clubs to those little get-togethers.
The crazy would come out like moths to a porch light on a hot summer night.