While I am no admirer of the present administration, I agree that both
parties in the US are at fault. The Democrats seizing on high fuel
prices as an issue is a disaster, leaving little hope of appropriate
energy prices emerging in the US any time soon.
It is of course true that, especially in the short run, higher fuel
costs are regressive. The appropriate position in my opinion is some
compensatory tax on the rich (a windfall tax on oil profits being
quite reasonable under the circumstances) and a subsidy for the poor.
To blame the current administration for oil prices may be an easy way
to score points. (I overheard a blue collar type paying for gas in
rural Michigan mutter "Man, this Bush is killin' me") but it's
irresponsible. Costs of a finite resource will inevitably go up, but
probably not fast enough. It is our responsibility to encourage the
costs to go up as quickly as is reasonably tolerable.
Under the circumstances, including an increasingly pervasive confusion
about what taxes are for ('it's YOUR money, it's not the government's
money" say the Republicans, and nobody points out that, well, no, it's
actually the government's after all, see all those signatures and
seals and stuff?) it's hard to imagine the US taking the lead in
implementation of a sensible policy. Even though mitigation
technologies may be developed here, they will likely be first deployed
elsewhere.
The blind aversion to nuclear power on the part of any political party
that takes the environment seriously is not specific to the US,
though. At least Mr Gore discussed the matter in his speech, in
contrast to his total omission of a nuclear option in his movie.
mt
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