Re: theWatt Podcast 77

By the way, I read an article by a gentleman that developed the original CAFE standards. He had a couple of interesting points.
1) There is no way to prove that CAFE standard did anything. The market would likely have moved to more efficient cars anyway. However, he felt that CAFE accelerated the process.
2) He prefers gasoline taxes to CAFE standard because he feels that they are more effective. Note the MPG does not say anything about the number of miles driven per year. The miles/year are increasing in the USA.
3) He thinks that taxes are not likely to pass and would accept new CAFE standards (which they have now completed) as a second, much less preferred, solution.

He struck me as a very thoughtful and experienced policy guy that so perhaps taxes are the way to go, but personally I think there are more effective ways.

Ben, revenue neutral taxes? Perhaps in Canada, but fat chance in the USA. Here is the situation in the USA, "we will build a new road and put a toll on it for 5 years and once the road is paid for, we will take out the toll booths." Then the toll booths stay forever. Now it is very hard to get a toll booth installed because no one believes it will ever go away. I think the same feeling would go for any revenue neutral system here.

Thanks
John C. Briggs