fuel prices

[Mux213]

Ivan,

Indeed, whether you tax the person or in some other way get the money so that using something environmentally dirty or use something in a more dirty way costs more then when someone uses something more clean.

The thing is, that would only work if that tax, or other form of money charged, is actually used to reduce the impact of those poluters or put into researching alternatives.

Right now this is not the case and that is what I am trying to point out. It doesn't matter HOW you get the extra money, it matters what that money is used for.

Aslong as road taxes are used to fund stupid projects that have nothing to do with making the environment better, or used to make stupid polititions make loads of money, things will not get better.

If tomorow Toyota (our favorite car brand) puts a fully electric car on the market that you can plug into your wall socket at night to charge, and drive endlessly the next day that would be the thing we want.

So people will start buying this car. The car probably will cost more then your average car but people will be spending the extra cash because they save alot of fuel costs.

As more people buy these cars, less people drive poluting cars.
As a result the goverment will stop the tax benefits on non poluting cars (right now you pay alot less BPM on the prius for instance), the goverment will start taxing electricity more, which doesn't only make these cars more expensive to own, they also put people's normal electricity bill through the roof, and before you know it, everyone is back driving their old diesel cars and has their own diesel generator in theback yard because its a hell of a lot cheaper to polute the world, then to save the environment.

The only way this is going to work is that the tax that is charged extra over poluting cars compared to clean cars is all poored back into doing other cool stuff for the environment so that at the point where the poluting cars are no longer sold, and the goverment no longer gets that extra income through the extra tax, they wont care because a goal has been reached and the extra money is no longer needed.