So you are fine subsidizing oil companies by allowing them to externalize their costs?
Also shipping is starting to switch to natural gas; you may think this a good or a bad thing, but a tax on diesel would increase that.
Re:Tesla Unveils New Finance Product
by raverbashing on Wednesday April 03, 2013 @08:59AM
(#5485715)
No, you do it by taxing gasoline and diesel
You can discriminate between uses in a way similar to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_diesel#reddiesel
Taxing fuel is very much solved problem elsewhere.
You just tax the carbon emissions.
Exactly. Tax the negative externality [1]. Let people make decisions factoring in more of the costs.
Taxing carbon emissions is a fine idea, but gasoline (and other petroleum products such as diesel) also need to pay for the costs of US mid-east policy. We've never had terrorists blow up buildings or a marine barracks because of our coal mining activity.
For example: Will you tax diesel as well? If not, then people will switch to that, with poor results for our air quality.
If yes, then suddenly every since thing you buy will be more expensive, since it's all shipped.
And those are just the first two things that popped into mind - there will be a LOT more consequences.