by Barry Dennis

Created on: January 19, 2009

First, let's understand that most of the world's pollution is caused by the utilization of fossil fuels; for transportation, power generation, and chemical production. And Carbon Dioxide production is enhanced by over 6 Billion people, and the meat animals used to provide food, said animals also producing Methane, another potential warming pollutant.
Then, let's recognize that the supply of such fuels are finite; that additions to reserves of these products may have paused years ago and many believe we have reached or have passed the tipping point wherein new discoveries and production are higher each year.

How then, to persuade energy "consumers," which in this case includes business and government, to properly value the energy product, which in view of steadily decreasing supplies, must be relegated to the "highest value usage?"
In my opinion, and in the opinion of energy economists, a straightforward "energy tax" on the different types of energy, with the proceeds directed at only alternative energy projects which, with technological support can stand on their own economically, or with minimal use of subsidies from an energy tax. Nuclear, wind, solar, water all fill this definition.
Well-designed mass transit, underground primarily, could easily help reduce the need for the types of road building projects that benefit a class of consumers-drivers, both commercial and personal, at the expense of others.

The fossil fuel tax must be high enough to generate the funds necessary to complete ten percent of the infrastructure each year, so that at the end of ten/fifteen years there is a working, viable "neutral consumption compared to base year 2009" Program, and potentially substantially lowered consumption of fossil energy at the same time in the U.S. And, world wide if other major industrialized nations adopt a similar approach. It is helpful to point out that per capita energy consumption is highest in the U.S. and lower almost everywhere else, primarily because other countries instituted energy taxes, primarily on transportation fuels, some years ago, effectively reducing transportation consumption substantially, as well as supporting and subsidizing alternative power generation sources.
France, for instance, generates almost eighty percent of it's power generation from nuclear power plants, Japan, Korea, Germany, and others have already recognized the rationality of this approach and are taking more steps every day to increase alternative energy inputs in their

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