It is time to think outside the box. We need to make conservation economically rewarding and gas guzzing economically painful. As I see it, only when we establish a pricing structure for fuel, where the more you use, the more per gallon you pay, will we create enviromentally friendly sustainable mobility.

I voted for Prop 87 but was afraid that people who spend money on gasoline would vote against it (I bike, walk and take public transpo).

The economists and tax analysts are right. All “new taxes” are not new, they simply trade an existing tax base for a new one = zero sum.

In this case the trade was an excise tax on oil, CA county property taxes and state income taxes FOR lowering the tax credits on alternative projects like solar, new tax revenues from new but unknown to the public alternative energy for profit businesses.

Since the voter cannot see the “new tax reveneues” it’s very hard to realize the zero-sum. With that said, the only way to win would be to market an 800 pound gorrila that’s paying those new taxes. For example, the largest solar plant in California’s tax returns shown as proof to the taxpayers.

With a teacher showing how the solar plant’s taxes were used to buy books in the classroom or something…

In a zero-sum game, you have to show and measure the other side of the tax equation for voters to understand the tradeoff…

It was sad to see how easy Big Oil beat this down with an 800 pound TAX PAYING gorrilla when the other side didn’t mention a penny of taxes paid for firefighters and school teachers from CA solar companies already paying taxes for example…

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_296194424.html

And links to news stories at the Prop 87 website.

On his way back to our car, as he greeted people, he stopped to talk with me and Calcars Tech Lead Ron Gremban. He was especially interested in how much
more a PHEV would cost. (I told him that in production quantities, auto-makers could charge $3-5,000 more than today’s hybrids, and that conversions were over $10,000.) And he wanted to know what was available. I gave him a “dongle” and explained that it was the car’s infrastructure.

Photos at:
http://www.calcars.org/photos-people.html

From the back seat of the car, he thanked me for the ride and gave a “thumbs
up” while holding our packet of background material. Most of it is available
at:
http://www.calcars.org/downloads.html

As with Bill Clinton a week ago, we’ll follow up as well as we can! We hope Gore’s experience will lead to him highlighting PHEVs. In his Sept 18 speech at NYU Law School, addressing the questions he gets as people increasingly ask what they can do, he included PHEVs in his roundup of “particularly promising” global warming solutions.

Focusing on electrification of transportation is a great way to slow the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. It’s the one we can do quickest, from increasingly renewable sources, with the lowest efficiency losses. Since it also happens to be distributed, redundant, secure, domestic and low-cost, we think it will makes sense as the primary fuel for transportation, with renewable liquid fuels providing range extension until batteries improve further. That’s why experts like NASA’s James Hansen, CalTech’s Nate Lewis, Earth Policy Institute’s Lester Brown, UC Berkeley’s Daniel Kammen, the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions’ Joe Romm and the National Commission on Energy Policy all see PHEVs as a leading short-and long-term solution. (See more endorsements.)