Gas taxes could improve environment

On Monday the Department of Revenue reported that Georgia's gasoline tax will decrease by 2.7 cents per gallon beginning in December. The price for a gallon of gasoline also includes a 7.5-cent state excise tax, 18.4 cents in federal taxes and a local tax that varies by county. After jumping to over $3 a gallon following the Hurricane Katrina crisis, gas prices seem to be stabilizing to a much-reduced cost. Just this week the price at the pump seems to be around $2.10 or $2.15 for the regular stuff. And this is really making me angry.

Don't get me wrong. It's not like I have excessive wads of cash taking up space in my already-cramped studio apartment. I wish. But when gas was going for over three bucks a gallon I was actually motivated to use my car less. You see, before the inflated prices I was able to tune out the reports on global warming and the harmful effects of vehicle emissions and happily drive my car two miles to the grocery store or a mile to school.I refused to carpool. I liked my space and my time to myself. But when prices were increasing with no end in sight, I realized how wasteful I was.

In this lovely country of ours, the only true motivational force for the masses seems to be the green stuff. Trees? No, dollar bills.Dropping gasoline prices makes it easy to forget the importance of conserving fuel and seeking alternative transportation methods. When gas is cheap we fail to take a forward-looking approach to our nation's excessive fuel consumption.

We only care about how much is in our wallet and fail to look beyond this to the bigger problems caused by these puny gas prices. You see, the citizens of practically every other country around the world are paying nearly twice what Americans are for gasoline. On average, 60 percent of the price of European gasoline is due to taxes. Because of increased cost of fuel, many Europeans have adopted changes in their daily routine to enable them to bear the cost of leaving the house.

Driving more cautiously, walking more, driving less in general-these are all tactics used to reduce their overall fuel consumption. But these trends haven't caught on in the States. At least, not yet.

In an annual report, the Environmental Protection Agency quoted the industry-wide fuel economy of 2006 model-year vehicles to be around 21 miles per gallon. Now contrast this with the findings of a comparable study by the Paris' International Energy Agency, where the average light duty vehicle gets an impressive 32.1 mpg. This makes sense when we learn that France's tax rate on gas is around 400 times the rate in the States. When faced with highly-taxed fuel costs, European citizens have demanded more efficient vehicles. With gas at $2-something a gallon, few Americans have been impacted enough to change their ways. Despite the fact that more eco-friendly cars are available today than in decades past, we also offer such absurd things as hybrid SUVs. And owners of more compact hybrids continue to be called "tree huggers" while Hummer H3 sales are up 120 percent compared with the same period a year ago.

Now, of course, it is true that our economy is heavily dependent on the trucking industry, so raising gas prices significantly could impact the costs of consumer goods. My solution for this is offering a temporary tax break until these industries are able to implement alternative energy into their companies. Also, cab drivers, mass transit companies and low income folks would get a break. But as for the rest of us? Get over it.

And we would. Like our sister countries overseas, we would learn to cope with the ridiculously high-priced gas, probably by abolishing those 45-minute commutes, taking MARTA, carpooling, walking and getting more of those cute little scooters seen around midtown.

If gas was taxed heavily enough (think increasing the current cost per gallon fivefold or so), I believe we would finally kick this nasty dependence on foreign oil. Then the revenue from the increased prices could be used to fund alternative energy research that would lead to a cleaner, safer, more eco-friendly country.