$27 per gallon gasoline tax (CCCT)?

Is it good idea for you, the USA & this world?

Early pioneers of automobile design, development, and production had little knowledge what the implications may be forthcoming in future years. Today 125 years later we find ourselves in a dilemma. Sitting at the precipice of a sordid planet, we can safely look back and now predict our future. We could list all the facts and figures, deaths and injuries, CO2 & CH4 emissions, asphalt, brick, gravel, and concrete roads, automotive transportation has touched.

It is hard not to notice the citizens of the United States of America tend to live with the biggest houses and machines money can buy. That is of course if you’re not living in a dense metro area where a developer has packaged you into compartmentalized boxes, with high rents, and views that may or may not be the best vision slots.

… all on rubber wheels

For those living in less dense areas perhaps a single family plot with a house, maybe a duplex, sited on a lot, they will find it is an automobile, and only an auto, that accesses that house and lot. Needless to say one must drive a car to that building by paved or graveled streets, roads, avenues, boulevards, lanes, circles and / or drives.

Some people to take the opportunity of land development and attached or detached, from their place, a garage, one car, two car, three car, seven car with a turntable, you name it, there is a carriage house for each automobile. Garages have their own separate century long history.

From the early beginnings the garage protected batteries, made safe against freezing radiators from expanding, (as antifreeze is yet to be developed) and provide heat to maintain the structural integrity of the car enclosure itself. The earliest garage may have been a modified carriage house, or shed, or barn, or some other specific building form. These structures likely housed the machine’s mechanics and chauffeurs. The garage has remained with us even as the automobile has been able to become it’s own garage, keeping rain out, solid paint finishes, added antifreeze radiators, cold start cold batteries, all on rubber wheels.

Socialization, not so much

Here is communal effort if we find petro prices steadily increase:

• Higher gasoline prices require people to share rides

• Less automobiles on the road hence more clean or breathable air, the pandemic suggested this to many

• The actual dollar amount to commute to work will be less

• Dollar spent for gasoline in a rideshare 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 less than standard single driver commutes

• Less CO2 and CH4 will be emitted as greenhouse gases into the upper atmosphere thus reducing climatic chaos

• From fossil fuel propelled cars, to hybrid cars, to electric cars, to driverless cars, car issues are not going away unless cars vanish, which is not likely soon

• The inconceivable number of fatalities and injuries will decrease. An estimated 4.8 million additional roadway users were seriously injured in crashes in 2020 ¹

People have become siloed in their automobiles, only a third enjoy the driving. What is going on with the other two-thirds? Socialization, not so much.

… a gallon of gasoline is $3.76 per gallon

What are the possible outcomes for raising taxes on gasoline consumption in the United States, or for that matter around the world.? We feel so helpless as individuals in a society controlled by corporate interests, which starkly do not match our own goals, ambitions and values. As Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has voiced for many years, a groundswell people driven revolution is necessary to change to the world … Ohhh to change the world. Recall the Senator’s presidential Campaign and plea for small donations where the discussed average was $27 per individual?

Yes, a currency number of $27 is also a good benchmark to set a gasoline tax price in the United States as soon as possible. What have you been sleeping, where have you been? COP 26 political world leaders obviously don’t want to solve the issue of the climate crisis or else their outcomes would be radically different. So where is that leave us? We should all advocate for a $27 per gallon gasoline tax for gallon pumped. The raised revenues are to be gifted to the people. Corporations, made up mostly of silly lawyers, will not be recipients of raised funds.

Let’s look at the national average in the USA today for a gallon of gas. As of November 8, 2021, in the United States of America the average price for a gallon of gasoline is $3.76 per gallon. ²

… logical reasons to advance a CCCT

As Sister Mildred would say near daily in elementary school, “put on your thinking caps”. Prophetic then, necessary now! Round up to four dollars a gallon (it will go up) then add a Countering Climate Crisis Tax of $27 per gallon, to add up with an average price of say … $31 per gallon of gasoline. Wow, put that gas into a gas guzzling auto tank of your automobile, of which some families may have two or three or five.

For ease of communicating let us use the acronym ’CCCT’ for taxing. According to the inflationary speak of the day, the talking heads around the country say most people cannot afford four dollars per gallon. How do we think they can spend eight times that price?

Before we dismiss the planet saving idea out of hand, there are logical reasons to advance a CCCT.

… and write down your comment(s)

Our premise is that we want to save the planet from miss guided human activity and vast debilitating greenhouse gases on our atmosphere, resulting with climate change. We need a plan and quickly respond to Mother Nature to guard from her aggravation of our lack of common sense, the brazen disregard to the consequence of polluting the upper atmosphere. If we collectively could not afford the fuel we would modify our way of life speedily and with purpose.

• We would band together to share rides in cars to commute to work and back

• We would use mass transit like the huge metropolitan areas use it

• We would demand safe reliable train travel, streetcars, inter urban linkages

• We would have substantially less bad air ito breathe, young children with less asthma

• We would immediately invent other environmentally sensitive, less destructive systems of roads and the machines they carry.

• We would not have need for acres of zoning imposed parking lots

• We would have parking lots that we would convert unused parking to forests, flora and fauna growths, bicycle parking.

• We would save 40,000 lives a year

• We would exercise

• We would spare 4,000,000 people a year from medically consulted injuries

• We would speak to one another again in civil and life giving ebullience

• We would at full tilt rid ourselves of a monopolistic global DEAD fossil fuel industry and a large junk of her sister companies, automotive makers

• We would not have 18 wheelers driving in our downtowns on Main Street

• We would hear no honking horns, no crashing of metal on metal

• We would help save our planet from its imminent discarding of earthlings

• We would be debt free not owning a car because costs like maintenance, repair, insurance, tags, registration, tickets, garages, car washes, car sales & service personnel disappear

• We would finally say goodbye to road rage and the peppered idiots that perpetrate the sickness.

• We would not have to suffer as much from respiratory, heart diseases, or cancers

• We would not have to waste hours in slow crawling traffic or gridlocked jams.

• We would have a brighter economy because we would’ve dropped the baggage

• We would re-evaluate work plans and the dignified value of each person worth, not based on the model of the car or lack there of

• We would realize gas prices which important for transportation is impacting households by holding us all hostage in ways we do not receive or perceive

• We would not have to fly ever again for business

• We would use the tax money generated do far more, projects, restoration, good design transportation, than we were thought possible by today’s standards

• You would insert your positive environmentally sensitive thoughts on a how we collectively act for the common good with a CCCT and unabashedly share and write down your comment(s)

So in the previous century, and a little more, with industrialization, humans have seemingly destroyed the earth. We can in this century reverse distruptions, and help stop the calamity, help others cope with a man made disaster. This is not a utopian message , it is a zoetic message.

Hypocrite

On Twitter Sarah Goodyear writes:

The neighborhoods of brownstone Brooklyn, where I am sure most people would say they are concerned about climate change, are lined with brand-new, gas-burning, super-expensive SUVs. Helloooo³

There really is no other noun to describe such a person that owns a SUV, yet marches in climate change parades, as the word “hypocrite”. A zoetic message today is simply consider ridding yourself of your car(s), don’t be a hypocrite.

1. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/preliminary-estimates/

2. https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/USA/gasoline_prices/

3. Tweet by @buttermilk1 10:13 AM 11/4/21