[sustran] "The answer is: raise the price of gasoline and give all the money back, "

[Eric Britton]

Lee Schipper on this day at least, as the Duke famously said, "can to a
thing cause he do got that swing". Bravo Lee. On the button. Thank you Lee.
Eric Britton





Obama Energy Pick Backs Higher Gas Tax


December 15, 2008 4:54 PM
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2008/12/obama-energy-pi.html 

ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: Barack Obama's pick for Department of
Energy secretary
<http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/12/a-nobel-prize-w.html
backs higher gasoline taxes, a position which puts him at odds with the
president-elect.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the
levels in Europe," Steven Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, told the Wall Street Journal in September
<http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB122904040307499791.html .

Chu said he favors gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to
nudge consumers into buying cars that are more fuel efficient and homes
which are closer to work. Chu spoke with The Wall Street Journal in
September but the newspaper did not publish the gas tax comments until
last week, shortly after the Nobel-prize winning physicist had been
identified as Obama's nominee for Energy secretary.

Chu is not alone among energy experts in thinking that higher gasoline
taxes could tamp down demand and spur development in alternative
energies.

Raising the federal gasoline tax, however, has been dismissed by Obama.

The president-elect acknowledges that gas prices have come down since
the summer when they reached $4 per gallon. He worries, however, that
the overall economic downturn makes American families ill-equipped to
shoulder higher prices.

"Putting additional burdens on American families right now, I think, is
a mistake," Obama told NBC's "Meet the Press"
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28097635/  in an interview which aired on
Dec. 7.

Lee Schipper, a project scientist with the Global Metropolitan Studies
program at U.C. Berkeley, hailed Obama's nomination of Chu as Energy
Secretary and praised his colleague's support for higher gasoline taxes.

"I can imagine in the hearings Chu facing problems because he dares say,
'higher prices,'" said Schipper. "But I think there is no solution that
does not involve higher prices."

Schipper, who shared a lab at Berkeley with Chu from 1972-74, estimates
that the average cost of gasoline in Europe at present is somewhere
between $7-9 per gallon.

Schipper thinks Obama's concerns about not placing additional burdens on
America's families can be addressed by agreeing to rebate all -- or
close to all -- of the money raised by higher fuel taxes.

"The answer is: raise the price of gasoline and give all the money
back," said Schipper.






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