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The governement could easily cut pollution if they wanted. They could offer tax benefits to people that use public tranportation, carpool, live close to work, or put less than an average amount of miles/year on their car. There are other ways too, but these methods would have the additional benefit of reducing road maintenence. Notice how road maintenence contributes so much to road congestion and stop and go traffic? And stop and go traffic is a huge contributor of emissions.

I mean, I'm all for people having the freedom to drive whatever, but its ridiculous to see so many people driving 18 and under mpg vehicles ALONE to their job 25 miles away. But hey, we're keeping up with the Joneses, right?

Hi 93Hatch:

___Yes indeed. One of the things you will find among most CleanMPG members is we highly encourage you to walk, ride a bike or take public transportation first before resorting to turning the key. It is when you do turn the key that we can help even more :)

___As for the Government, it is in their best interest to keep our addiction going as that is where the money is. Public trans in many areas of the country is simply non-existent but that being said, more public transportation projects are planned and there are plenty of reasons without tax incentives to take what is available with gasoline at $3 - $4.00 and climbing.

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Mass transit is OK is a handful of places where geography constricts traffic. NYC, SF, Chicago. Otherwise it is an eighteenth century answer to the problem.

For the vast majority of Americans, mass transit does not go where they want to go, it does not go when they want to go and mass transit is unfortunately a huge opportunity for muggers.

People resent being as regimented as they are. They will doubly resent a transportation system that further regiments them.

If they really wanted to cut emissions, the governmental obstacles to nuclear power would be removed.

Well aside from the popularity of taxes to change people's lifestyle (Witness Bush's 2000 ad attacking Gore's $.50/gal green tax on gas), there are a couple problems.

1) It is very difficult for people to accept "subsidizing" other people. Even if a $2 subsidy gets people past the $1 "willing to switch" differential between cars and trains and saves $3 of pollution, its still perceived as a subsidy.

2) The effectiveness of mass transit varies. City bus systems are only effiecent on dense routes. The sparse routes to serve most of the city and/or poor people really drive effiecency down. Suburban bus systems are worse. Light Rail is a controversial topic.

The only mass transit system that's really a slam dunk is commuter rail. METRA, SEPTA and the like. Extremely dense heavy rail feeding into a central location. Even then, a local hourly car rental program and support from the suburbs for parking is needed to reach its full potential. Suburban support is really difficult to come by to get the necessary parking and/or busing for people traveling to the train.

Well, if a person got a tax credit for driving < 10,000 miles/year (just throwing a number out there) they could figure out a way to take advantage of it. Carpool, public transportation, combining trips, etc. Let people use their own brains to take get the tax break.

To cut emissions you must cut consumption, lower the speed limit to 55 again....

To cut emissions, use the power of the government to force an aggressive movement to Phev's, with the fuel for them being something renewable, domestic, and clean. No new taxes.

In the short term, drill at home, upgrade to clean nuclear energy (and greatly increase capacity!), and reduce current gas consumption by mandating a Fcd in every new car, encourage carpooling, and cracking down on speeders.

Really you could just say "if they really wanted to they could" with anything with the government. Yeah they could pull away the nimh patent from chevron and we could all have EV's in a year. Yep, they could legalize drugs and the crime rate would drop dramatically in a year, and the prison population growth rate would drop dramatically as well. They could also pull us out of wars and make everyone love us again too. And they could stop inflation and make our money worth something again as well.

Anyways, it's great that the USA is still number one, cause if we weren't we would be like Britain, worrying about the pollution we create, but realizing it's probably pointless because a country much larger is polluting way more.

I like all the answers.

Develop a transporter system :P

Develop a transporter system :P

Beam me up Scottie!

Develop a transporter system :P


Wonka Vision!

Simply eliminate about $650 billion of subsidies and you'll eliminate emissions rather quickly:

1st) eliminate the massive subsidies for oil drilling etc. (about $250 billion per year)

2nd) eliminate the massive subsidies for road construction and maintenance which are paid out of general revenue (yup, roads aren't paid for entirely by fuel taxes) (about $200 billion per year)

3rd) eliminate the massive subsidies for ex-urban and rural sprawl - these are more difficult to calculate. They are typically tax breaks which favour ex-urban development.

4th) Add a 'Security Tax' on gasoline to account for the portion of the defense budget which goes to protect and secure our oil imports (say, 1/3 of the DoD budget or $150 Billion)


There is very little visibility among most people exactly how much their cars are subsidized. Any economic good that is subsidized this much is bound to be over consumed.

People should be able to drive whatever they want, where ever they want - but don't expect me to subsidize it with my taxes.

Colorado's front range urban corridor (Colorado Springs through Denver to Fort Collins) has air quality problems due to geography (temperature inversions trap pollutants against the foothills). Because of that, all new roads here (FtC) are built with bike lanes, and there are "No Idling" signs at railroad crossings (stoplights in general could use the same signs).

As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. $4.00 gas is getting more of them thirsty, though!

Vooch, I like your post, especially the 4th point and your last statement. Drive whatever, wherever you want -- but pay the full cost, don't hide it in income tax or the national debt.

BTW, lower emissions vehicles have helped a lot. The Denver metro area has grown a lot, but has much better air quality than it used to.

thanks for the compliment

Simply eliminate about $650 billion of subsidies and you'll eliminate emissions rather quickly:

1st) eliminate the massive subsidies for oil drilling etc. (about $250 billion per year)

2nd) eliminate the massive subsidies for road construction and maintenance which are paid out of general revenue (yup, roads aren't paid for entirely by fuel taxes) (about $200 billion per year)

3rd) eliminate the massive subsidies for ex-urban and rural sprawl - these are more difficult to calculate. They are typically tax breaks which favour ex-urban development.

4th) Add a 'Security Tax' on gasoline to account for the portion of the defense budget which goes to protect and secure our oil imports (say, 1/3 of the DoD budget or $150 Billion)


There is very little visibility among most people exactly how much their cars are subsidized. Any economic good that is subsidized this much is bound to be over consumed.

People should be able to drive whatever they want, where ever they want - but don't expect me to subsidize it with my taxes.


Great points Vooch, but its an uphill (and we hypermilers hate uphill:)) battle to get these things done. Those that want the large cars and SUVs (like most politicians!) will not vote to eliminate these subsidies. And any new taxes are the death knell for a career politician, even if the net result saves money. The folks that think this way are very much in the minority. But I'd love to see it come to pass.

Next time someone yammers on about "I can drive a FSP if I want to" - inform him how much his FSP habits are subsisized by the rest of us - tell him he's effectively on welfare

couple flaws imo....

1) Why offer a tax subsidy if public transportation is inherently more cost effective?
2) Public transportation is already majority public financed...so should the public finance (as some would argue a write-off is) to "bribe" (more or less) people to ride?

One could argue that the tax write-offs would benefit some moderately wealthy-to-wealthy individuals more and thus motivating them to ride; however since it's these individuals who pay the lions share of taxes, they are simply paying themselves...and is this group so large that their participation would amount to a hill of beans?

It also drives up the cost in taxes, unfairly, on people whom public transportation is unfeasible. Again, their tax dollars would go toward covering the revenue lost in the paying for the write-offs, but have no opportunities to recoup them because either their work doesn't allow, or rural location makes public transportation untenable.

Like Vooch, I favor removal of many if not most subsidizes...as he states, subsidized goods tend to be overconsumed...which can also lead to loss of normal market price controls (ex: We increasingly subsidize college tuition via increased grants and scholarships, low-rate college loans, etc...and which direction has the cost of college gone in the last 2 decades? Which of course had led to even more avenues to hide the true cost of college). However, I will state that unlike Vooch, I'm fine with good portions of the funds for road construction coming from general funds...simply because road construction/maintenance benefits even those who don't utilize gasoline in their personal transportation (things like their goods and services making it to market, use of sidewalks, bicycles, providing conduits for Armed forces/gov't services to move/mobilize, on and on and on...although I would concede that the case could be made that the cost is still being paid of much of those thigns by those who use don't use gas because it's still reflected in the cost of the final goods/service they purchase)

I'm not a fan of using taxes or write-offs to control behaviors...it's counter to the idea of "freedom."

Subsidies are very hard to pin down. It is well known the public transportation is heavily subsidized. But who gets the bigger subsidy is very hard to pin down.

But I will give one simple example. My boss gets a metro subsidy form our employer. That subsidy has paid the full cost of his commute for the last nine months. Occasionally he does drives, then the commute costs him something. So both he and I through taxes and like subsidize both the roads and the public transportation system. But since some of that money comes back to him as a direct subsidy he is effectively paying a smaller net subsidy for transportation than I am.

Is this the norm. Heck if I know and I don't think anyone else really knows either.

Thanks for your insight comments - indeed the topic is a bit more complex and subtle than my 'headline' numbers in my original post.

The critical points are still valid -

1) that oil consumption in the US is heavily subsidized through a host of gubbern'mit programs ( mainly for oil production and drilling) and outright grants (mainly for highway construction and maintenance ) plus land use policies that favour sprawl over cities.

2) These subsidies are not trivial and run in the hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars

3) Any good that is as heavily subsidised as our cars and gasoline will be over consumed.

4) On the other hand, Public Transport subsidies are a miniscule percentage, perhaps 1/1,100th of what cars, oil, and sprawl receive.