Would you volunteer to pay more — much more — for gas?

It’s pretty clear that our next president, whoever he might be, isn’t going to do squat about global warming. The oil pipers in Washington DC are going to continue to call their profit-driven, business-as-usual tune of climate change denial.

Hey, so we have a few more forest fires, higher acid levels in our rising oceans and record-breaking heat waves. Mere anomalies, friends. Keep on truckin’!

So here’s an idea for 2012 and beyond to make sure there are more beyonds...beyond beyond....

I just checked on-line and the pump price of a gallon of gas in Europe is now roughly $10. Yes, a fill-up of 12 gallons costs the Sweds, the French, the Italians and other continentals a cool $120.

The European overage is about $6.50/gallon from what we pay. In other words, they pay $78 more each time they fill up.

For a long time New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and others have advocated a tax that would force us to pay closer to what our European friends pay.

Good luck with that (see above).

But what if those of us not in media-inspired disconnect about global warming and unprecedented “natural disasters” VOLUNTARILY paid the difference between Europe’s price and ours every time we gassed up?

We’d do it on a special “Green” credit card that would do the computation and redirect the difference to....

To whom? The government? I don’t think so. Somehow the money would simply finance more tax subsidies for Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and agribusiness, more money for drone attacks and more bail-outs for banks “too big to fail” etc.

No, because the Green Credit Card is a voluntary program, we donors get to decide who gets the money. One idea is a blue-ribbon consortium of organizations working on “The Great Planetary Turning” that will save this blue-green pebble in space from being turned into a black cinder.

For now, be patient. We can get to the details of who gets the money later. Your homework is to think about how the consortium should be governed and whether it should be (could be) a tax-exempt non-profit. (Maybe government could help by making the tax exemptions especially attractive, just as long as Washington keeps its mitts — and Mitt — off deciding how our donations are spent.)

Sitting on the back porch with my wife this evening, I dragged out my little calculator and we ran our own numbers. We aren’t particularly big drivers and one of us (me) drives a hybrid. We estimated that together we manage to burn through about 500 gallons of gas a year. That’s probably a conservative estimate, but let’s work with it.

If we use the European benchmark of $10 a gallon (if they can do it so can we), the two of us would voluntarily contribute roughly $3250 a year (500 gallons X $10 = $5000 minus $1750  for the gas itself). That’s $3250 from two Americans contributing to the cause of saving the planet for us and future generations. (Did I mention that we’re slated to be grandparents for the first time next month? A sobering reality...a grandchild entering a world of record heat waves and melting ice caps.)

So is the contribution worth it?

Is it worth it if it’s a tax deduction? Is it worth it if it encourages us to buy more fuel efficient vehicles or use mass transit? Is it worth it if the money helps build high-speed rail, more electric buses and trolleys, more solar generators?

Is it worth it if it catches on and contributes mightily to saving the planet for our grandchild and millions of other grandchildren?

I think so.

What do you think? Would you volunteer?

Addendum: A variation might be to offer cards in different "editions." One might phase in increases in your donation. You pay $5 a total of gallon this year (that might be an "orange" credit card), $6 next (pale orange...on the way to a "cooler" color) etc. Another version starts you at the $10 a gallon maximum but then "rewards" you as you meet goals in lowering your gas consumption. Of course if you go 100 percent electric, you pay nothing to anyone. At which point we might consider the source of your electricity. But that's another story...

HERE's a link to an even more modest approach by fellow Quakers in Berkeley. Every dime helps.

To comment click on the “comments” link at the bottom of this post. Type your comment in the box and choose one of the options for “comment as” (type your name — leave URL blank unless you have a website). Click “publish” or, if you like “preview” first.

Bring back $4-per-gallon gas!

Back in May, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote about and endorsed a plan for placing a mandated floor under gasoline prices.

At the time, the price of gasoline was approaching $4 a gallon.

Despite the drain on our wallets, much of the news was actually good. Demand for small fuel-efficient cars was rising, gas guzzlers weren’t selling, people were driving and polluting less, and many were finally taking mass transit. We were adopting some good habits. Moreover, the demand for imported oil dropped, making us less dependent on Middle Eastern oil fiefdoms.

And our carbon footprint got smaller.

Under the plan floated by Friedman and proposed by energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., the government would never allow the pump price of gas to fall below $4 a gallon. If the market price did fall below that level, Washington “would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.”

Verleger’s proposal would use the extra money to help the less well-off by reducing their payroll taxes. It sounds overly generous to me, but anyone earning under $80,000 year would get the tax cut.

The economist proposed another option: use the money to buy back gas guzzlers and send them to the crushers.

That was then and this is now. The price of gas is now less than $2.50 a gallon. I paid $2.29 a gallon at the local Chevron on Saturday.

If the Verleger plan were in place, the tax revenues would be rolling in and we would be making the much needed changes in habits we were making in the spring.

The other change since the spring is that the economy is tanking, and the automobile industry is on the ropes. The Big Three, too long wedded to a gas-guzzler strategy, are about to go down for the count, taking thousands of jobs with them.

It’s pretty clear that Verleger had the right idea, but the new tax revenues need to be retargeted in these dire economic times.

The new Obama administration should use the money to subsidize 50 percent of the purchase price of all-electric cars. The provision would kick in in the fall of 2009, giving the auto industry time to retool.

Before the electric car subsidies kick in, the money should be used to modernize alternative forms of transportation, including metropolitan commuter rail and high-speed intercity Amtrak trains. Build sidewalks and bike lanes. Provide more incentives for transit-oriented commercial and housing development.

The resulting work would provide much needed jobs in the flagging economy. The promise of subsidized electric car purchases would force the American automobile industry to change and end its own axis of evil with the profiteering oil industry and the petro-fiefdoms in the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela.

There’d be an added benefit. The policy would indirectly cut into the flow of funds to radical Islamic terrorists who are sustained by Middle Eastern, oil-rich interests. Paying $4 a gallon at the pump, might even be seen as an act of patriotic sacrifice in a time of war.

We may be getting ahead of ourselves, but in the long term the policy might even allow us to trim defense spending and produce a peace dividend.

It all seems worth paying an extra $1.50 per gallon at the pump, at least until the emission-free cars powered by solar, tidal and wind generated electricity start rolling off the American production lines.

Then driving our new electric trucks and cars, we'd end our dependence on foreign oil, to cut off funds to terrorists, to turn back global warming and to rebuild our economy.

Sounds like a change we can believe in. What to you say, President Obama?

Eight crucial years — lost

My wife just returned from San Luis Obispo, which is halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles and a 15-minute drive to the cooling waters of the Pacific Ocean.

On Friday, the temperature hit an historic high of 113. Yesterday it cooled off to 108, a record for the date.

You can add those numbers to all the other evidence that the Great Warming is happening, folks.

The irony is that eight years ago this nation actually elected a leader, Al Gore, who was committed to using the power of the presidency to reverse our destructive course.

Instead, the Supreme Court gave us a cheerleader-in-chief for the oil industry, and worse, its Godfather, Dick Cheney of Halliburton.

We just lost eight critical years.

The result has been an oil cabal of deceit and destruction. Of cutting behind-closed-door deals with Big Oil over a secret “energy policy.” If invading Iraq and wasting thousands of lives and billions secure its oil wealth. (American Oil companies are on the verge of striking long-term, no-bid deals with the Iraqi government. And who will protect those oil fields?) Of coddling the oil-rich Saudi Royal regime (democracy anyone?). The House of Saud, an old Bush family oil ally, nurtured the fanatical Islamic fundamentalist movement that, in turn, spawned Al Qaeda and, well, you can see where this is going.

And the Christian Right, fixated on abortion and blinded by its own self-righteousness, twice helped Bush gain office, thereby endangering God’s entire creation.

In today’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman lays out the most recent chapter in this tragedy: the off-shore oil drilling ruse.

Want some good news? Back in San Luis Obispo, it is starting to cool. Today’s high was 94.

Time that "slips off the mind"

Two authors separated by nearly 50 years, conveyed very similar messages to me recently about our place in time, and the danger we pose to it.

The first was Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times earlier this week about how Barack Obama is favorably perceived in the Middle East.

Friedman related how he was talking at a “Nile-side” restaurant with two Egyptian officials about Obama’s securing the Democratic nomination.

“…one of them quoted one of his children as asking: ‘Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?’ And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, ‘no.’ It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.”

The phrase that stuck was, “The past always buries the future, not the other way around.”

Edward T. Hall writing in his classic “The Silent Language” in 1959 noted that in the Middle East “…it is pointless to make an appointment too far in advance, because the informal structure of their time system places everything beyond a week in a single category of ‘future,’ in which plans tend to ‘slip off their minds.’”

Hall’s point, when applied to Friedman’s, isn’t that the past buries the future. It’s that for Middle Easterners, there is effectively no future as we understand it. The future, Hall writes, is in the hands of Allah. It is not a human concern. That’s why any discussion of the future is punctuated by the cautionary phrase, “God willing.”

Friedman’s “the other way around” is, of course, the future’s destruction of the past. That is pretty good description of how American’s perceive history. Our fixation on the future, destroys our past.

Then I thought of the extreme opposite as posed by Hall. Just as there is no future in the Middle East, for many Americans there is no past.

It “slips off our minds,” to use Hall’s words.

So it was that 35 years after the debacle in Vietnam, George W. Bush, hardly a student of history (or seemingly much else) invaded Iraq.

So it was that Bush could dismiss 30 years of scientific research pointing to global warming. It "slipped off his mind" all to protect carbon-generating industries’ profits.

When, if ever, will Americans look to the future not simply from the vantage of the persistent and pressing present (at its worst it is instant gratification, immediate rewards, swift vengeance, instant credit, quick returns), but from the vantage of understanding and wisdom rooted in the past?

Unless we assume such a vantage, we will destroy, both the future and the past.

And the present, for humanity, will no longer exist.

Politics dictates quick solar action here

In the current issue of The Hillsdale News, I reported that Portland school district officials and local leaders don't feel a rush to install a large photo-voltaic array of solar panels in order to supply electricity to Rieke Elementary School.

The site that the school district officials and solar consultants have in mind is on the highly visible slope just above Bertha Court (see above rendering). But some folks wonder whether that’s the best site for the industrial-looking 200 foot-by-50 foot array.

They are saying, let’s slow down and consider other sites and possibly more attractive panels.

Earlier I had reported that the installation had to be completed before the end of the year because lucrative federal tax incentives expire then. But those conferring around the table at the school district office last Wednesday were certain the feds and Congress would extend the tax incentive program for wind and solar power. There would be time for careful siting deliberation.

The incentives have started a boom in alternative energy projects, which have zero carbon emissions in a world of warming hurt.

What politician in his or her right mind wouldn’t continue the tax incentive program?

Quite a few, starting with Congress and Bush administration energy officials, according to Thomas Friedman’s column in today’s New York Times. The government is stuck in the same short-term, quick-fix mind set demonstrated by presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton, writes Friedman.

Both candidates are advocating a federal gas tax vacation this summer, which will only contribute to the carbon spewing.

Enough with the Band-Aids already. As Friedman reminds us, we have a global problem on our hands.

In Hillsdale, intransigence in Washington, D.C. means forging ahead here. Like it or not, we need to move on the solar project under tight, politically dictated time constraints.

The result may not be pretty aesthetically, but by promising to provide 60 percent of Rieke’s energy without polluting the environment, this project has other, more important, attractions.

A witness at Sunset and Capitol

The same small group of protesters gathers each Friday evening at the busy corner of Sunset Boulevard and Capitol Highway. We are there to remind commuters that our country is engaged in a wasteful, tragic war, and that we visibly and fervently oppose it.

Our vigil bears witness to our opposition. It is an act of conscience.

I’m surprised that our numbers are so small, although I suppose I shouldn’t be. A family member recently asked what good I thought I was doing standing on the corner with my peace placard. (I’ve upped the ante; my sign now calls for impeachment.)

Her skepticism was obvious. I sometimes ask myself the same question. Do people think me mad, or at least mildly deranged?

Does our public, weekly reminder bother them, even though they may agree?

But then, last Sunday, out of nowhere, a friend came up to me at the Hillsdale Farmers Market and said, “I just want to tell you how much I appreciate your vigil on Fridays. It always makes me feel good to see you there. And I always honk.”

I appreciate both comments because they force me to think again about what we are doing— in Hillsdale, in this country, in Iraq and in the world.

My time on the corner with my sign always hooks me back to protests of 40 years ago. I protested then against an equally tragic war in Vietnam. The anti-war movement was raucous but focused. Through its own non-violent, political insurgency, The Movement, as we rightly called it, forced Lyndon Johnson out of office (It also gave us Richard Nixon, but that’s another story.)

Above all, ours was a youth movement.

Today, in Hillsdale, our vigil consists of a cadre who are mostly seniors and were part of that long-ago struggle for peace.

Sometimes I feel that I stand at Sunset and Capitol almost as a gray specter. Mine is a ghostly call to today’s youth to take a stand — or else suffer the consequences.

Often during our vigil, Wilson High School students wander by. Some carry skateboards. Some text message, noses to the screens. They playfully push and shove each other. They don’t pay us much attention. Occasionally one will thank us, but mostly they see right through us.

Joining us is out of the question. Not cool.

What keeps them so distant? I often think it is the absence of the military draft. In the ‘60s, we protested an unpopular, distant war that threatened to swallow us. Fear and outrage were motivators.

The Iraq War inspires neither in these frolicking students with their cell phones, skateboards and iPods. Indeed, they seem to devoid of fear and outrage, although our generation has left them an outrageously fearsome world — of war, of global warming, of massive debt, of grotesque inequality, of messianic terrorists, of an American democracy in a shambles.

Where is their fear? Where is their outrage? Are they sleepwalking through youth?

What do they learn in school? Are their courses so bound to benchmarks and testing that they’ve become divorced from the real world? Is the school culture so dominated by sports, by getting into college and by ambient coolness that there is no room for social concerns beyond who’s hooked up with whom?

Then there is their time beyond the school. In today’s New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman writes about the “Q generation”, (“Q” is for “quiet”) which may be “too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good.”

I’m not concerned about a generation being on-line. You are on-line now. I may be. I’m concerned about the part of technology that turns time into games and sucks kids away from a world that desperately needs attention, their attention — their serious, immediate attention.

All of this is why I stand at Sunset and Capitol on Friday evenings. My reason obviously isn’t apparent to those driving and walking by. If my message is “awake up!” it isn’t getting through. My vigil isn’t working.

But I’ll return, if only to spend 30 minutes thinking about how to make it work, or to inspire an occasional honk, and perhaps change a mind.