Free to Speak Truth to Power

I was ready to write another nasty column about federal Washington's one-sided approach to fuel economy and global warming when former vice president Al Gore came along and upset my plans.

Gore, a bona fide star of the Democratic Party -- the winner of an Academy Award -- was on Capitol Hill last week testifying before a joint session of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on energy and air quality and the House Science and Technology Committee's subcommittee on energy and the environment. He made similar appearances before the U.S. Senate.

I expected little from his visits. Washington loves celebrities. And the Democratic Party, which now controls Congress, loves Hollywood.

Gore, who won an Oscar for his documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth," is a Hollywood celebrity who once was the second-highest-ranking Democratic officeholder in the nation. I figured his return to Capitol Hill would be a B-rated love fest suitable for quick release on disc, perhaps as an addendum to his movie.

But it was much more than that.

Gore's testimony actually made sense, especially on the matter of fuel economy and its relationship to global warming. He was succinct. "Don't single out cars and trucks," Gore said, adding that carbon emissions from motor vehicles constitute "a slice of the problem," and not the biggest slice at that.

He went on to suggest that Congress abandon its habitual blame-shifting, responsibility-dodging approach to energy conservation. He asked his former colleagues to draft legislation that would require contributions from all Americans -- industrialists and retailers, politicians and consumers. Yikes! Gore even called for increased taxes on fuels via taxation of carbon content.

That is a more palatable way of asking for a higher gasoline tax, inasmuch as gasoline is a fossil fuel and all fossil fuels contain carbon.

That's gutsy and smart. Gore's proposal embraces the reality that energy conservation is a two-part problem involving industries and their consumers. It recognizes that trying to solve the problem by working only one side of the equation, the industrial side, is doomed to ultimate failure.

To mitigate higher fuel taxes, Gore suggested that Congress rework the U.S. tax code to reduce taxes on employment and production and to earmark a portion of the money generated by higher fuel taxes to assist lower-income groups in America's shift to a low-carbon, less-oil-dependent economy. Those intelligent proposals could help what has long been regarded as "politically impossible" -- higher fuel taxes in support of energy conservation -- become possible.

Gore's view takes heed of an economic truth, evidenced by similar taxing strategies employed in Europe and Asia. Price affects consumption. When gasoline is cheap, people use more of it, regardless of any mandated fuel-economy standards. When gasoline is expensive, they tend to use less and to place a higher value on fuel-efficient cars and trucks. That means the companies making fuel-efficient vehicles can develop and sell them profitably -- relatively free of consumer demands, influenced by cheap gasoline, for more horsepower and ever bigger and faster vehicles.

By requiring all industries to bear a part of the carbon-reduction burden, Gore's proposals also would do something else: They would rid us of the hypocrisy of non-automotive industrial leaders "going green" and ganging up on their automotive brethren, saying: "Yeah, we think you guys need to improve your fuel economy while we over here do nothing, or as little as possible."