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Sure they do every vehicle has a road impact. Semis pay a large share through fuel consumption. All EVs need to be taxed appropriately for their impact on local roads. This goes on maintenance as well as expansionary programs where they certainly add to traffic.
We either need to add it to property tax or your electric bill or a registration tax.
That being said our road tax system is a bit antiquated. It was set up in the days when heavier vehicles that beat up the roads more were much less fuel efficient thus helped pay for the roads through excessive fuel consumption. Now we have heavy vehicles that get either better gas mileage or use no gas at all but still beat up the road nonetheless. Imagine the out of whack tax structure when electric semis or buses start tearing up roads and paying nothing.
Also Tesla owners and all EV owners should be charged significant environmental impact taxes for the Lithium that needs to be mined and the battery waste that is created and highly toxic.
Gas cars would be prohibitively expensive if all cars were taxed proportional to environmental impact, buddy boy.
Gas cars would be prohibitively expensive if all cars were taxed proportional to environmental impact, buddy boy.
Not really. The asphalt roads are made of and the plastic you typed this on are all cheap because they’re by products of oil. So it all washes out at some point.
Still not sure of your point. Asphalt and plastics don't balance environmental costs. If you tax oil appropriately by environmental costs, then I would guess the cost of asphalt and plastics would go up. As they should.
Those are indeed byproducts, but peanuts.
Still not sure of your point. Asphalt and plastics don't balance environmental costs. If you tax oil appropriately by environmental costs, then I would guess the cost of asphalt and plastics would go up. As they should.
If you raise taxes on petroleum products to offset their environmental impact, petroleum derivatives will not be the only things that see a cost increase. Those higher costs will be passed down onto everything that is moved from one place to another in the country (or world). Food, gravel, people, 2x4's, the widget that keeps your chair from falling backward, everything that can't be pumped through a pipe or transmitted through a wire or airwave is moved by truck, train, airplane, or ship, all of which move via the rapid oxidation of millions-of-years-old sunlight stored in long-dead plants and animals. The only reason we were able to move from a primarily-agrarian lifestyle, and increase our population from about one billion people in 1800 to the current 7.7 billion today, is due to the development and use of fossil fuels.
Knowing what we know now, maybe that wasn't such a great idea after all. But it's water under the bridge, and those eight billion people are sure to get more than a little cranky should you determine they should all starve to death in the cold and dark should we shut off the oil and gas spigots.
Now, I've heard it said that "We didn't get out of the stone age because we ran out of stones". And we don't have to wait until we run out of coal until we decide to move to cleaner sources of energy. But people need to understand that it's not going to happen overnight - the transition is going to take generations to accomplish. Unfortunately, if Algore is correct, it may get a little messy on this old planet in the meantime, and as it does, the "urgency" to make changes will become more evident and prioritized more highly.
And if it turns out that we have built the modern world up "on credit" from cheap fossil fuel energy, and are going to have to pay that debt off in the future, via higher costs for energy, environmental remediation, etc., then every person in the world's standard of living is going to go down because of it, think of finding out your home has a second mortgage on it that you didn't know about but are responsible for paying off. Forget about the iPhone XXIV, Starbucks and Netflix for the next thirty years. Will humankind need to cull its numbers greatly in order to make it all work, or will it revert to the second oldest profession (war) to make it happen?
Oh, well, best get down to it then. Who's going to volunteer to be the first to enter the disintegrator? And retirement? All Eskimos over the age of 70, please report to the nearest iceberg (good thing the polar bears will all be dead). And Donald? You listening? Please provide the launch codes to the Boomer submerged off the coast of the DPRK, K.J.U. needs to go bye-bye in the first ten minutes - one less thing.
So if cars go electric, how long until there's an electric tax to pay for road repair? Non driving homeowners and renters will then pay their share of road repair.
If you raise taxes on petroleum products to offset their environmental impact, petroleum derivatives will not be the only things that see a cost increase. Those higher costs will be passed down onto everything that is moved from one place to another in the country (or world). Food, gravel, people, 2x4's, the widget that keeps your chair from falling backward, everything that can't be pumped through a pipe or transmitted through a wire or airwave is moved by truck, train, airplane, or ship, all of which move via the rapid oxidation of millions-of-years-old sunlight stored in long-dead plants and animals. The only reason we were able to move from a primarily-agrarian lifestyle, and increase our population from about one billion people in 1800 to the current 7.7 billion today, is due to the development and use of fossil fuels.
Knowing what we know now, maybe that wasn't such a great idea after all. But it's water under the bridge, and those eight billion people are sure to get more than a little cranky should you determine they should all starve to death in the cold and dark should we shut off the oil and gas spigots.
Now, I've heard it said that "We didn't get out of the stone age because we ran out of stones". And we don't have to wait until we run out of coal until we decide to move to cleaner sources of energy. But people need to understand that it's not going to happen overnight - the transition is going to take generations to accomplish. Unfortunately, if Algore is correct, it may get a little messy on this old planet in the meantime, and as it does, the "urgency" to make changes will become more evident and prioritized more highly.
And if it turns out that we have built the modern world up "on credit" from cheap fossil fuel energy, and are going to have to pay that debt off in the future, via higher costs for energy, environmental remediation, etc., then every person in the world's standard of living is going to go down because of it, think of finding out your home has a second mortgage on it that you didn't know about but are responsible for paying off. Forget about the iPhone XXIV, Starbucks and Netflix for the next thirty years. Will humankind need to cull its numbers greatly in order to make it all work, or will it revert to the second oldest profession (war) to make it happen?
Oh, well, best get down to it then. Who's going to volunteer to be the first to enter the disintegrator? And retirement? All Eskimos over the age of 70, please report to the nearest iceberg (good thing the polar bears will all be dead). And Donald? You listening? Please provide the launch codes to the Boomer submerged off the coast of the DPRK, K.J.U. needs to go bye-bye in the first ten minutes - one less thing.
You raise some good points, I'm sure there are a bunch of things that may increase in cost due to reduction of oil production / demand. I'm not an economics modeler, I'm sure someone could estimate what the increase costs would be. However, my guess is it wouldn't cause some massive inflation in prices. If your widget costs $11 instead of $10, I don't think this would ruin the world economy. Especially since the transition is going to take probably 20 years.
You raise some good points, I'm sure there are a bunch of things that may increase in cost due to reduction of oil production / demand. I'm not an economics modeler, I'm sure someone could estimate what the increase costs would be. However, my guess is it wouldn't cause some massive inflation in prices. If your widget costs $11 instead of $10, I don't think this would ruin the world economy. Especially since the transition is going to take probably 20 years.
Ze, I'll be the first to admit that I'm a moron. Since I retired, though, I've spent some time thinking about this stuff, and what I so crudely tried to communicate above is just self-evident to me (similar to the framers of the D.O.I. about 240 years ago, but I ain't in their league).
But it isn't even as simple as transportation costs. That aluminum widget on the back of your chair? The energy to make the steel to make the truck that mined the bauxite? Dead dinosaurs. The energy needed to refine the aluminum? Ditto. The gas for the car used to get to work by the guys in the widget factory? Again, Sinclair. I'm guessing here, but I think the energy sector is likely the biggest industry out there - maybe second only to agriculture? Gotta look that one up. Bottom line, the disruption required to make meaningful changes from Dirty to Green, is going to take a lot more than twenty years. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but again, it's going to have to get pretty messy on the surface before people will make the sacrifices necessary for it to happen. Battery/electric automobiles are but a small, albeit significant pimple on the a** of the solutions necessary. I've often heard of a "curse", typically attributed to the Chinese, that says "May you live in interesting times". Without some huge leap forward in non-fossil energy production (nuclear is the only thing out there that has a chance currently, in my opinion). Things are going to get VERY interesting. Modern man may have built a completely unsustainable world, and he is just starting to understand the implications. Greater minds than mine are going to have to figure this one out. Peace.
Switching transportation to mostly electric will have a huge effect on oil demand.
I can really say much on all the various industrial needs, but I imagine a bunch of it can also be met by electric motor and cheap batteries. Electric motor will be superior for high-torque requirements, it's only about having enough energy stored to do the job.
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