"Drill Baby Drill" vs. "Earth Day Concerts"

While it is fun to be extreme neither end of the spectrum will save not only the planet but also our lifestyles.

Accidents will happen. Who pays? What are the real costs? We all pay. Companies get hammered, tax payers get hammered, the environment gets hammered.

Who should pay? The companies responsible must pay. Lawyers should not get the majority of the payments. So laws must be clear and simple.

My suggestions? Easy.

Increase the national tax on gasoline. I suggest going easy so people don't notice an impact on their spending money. So I suggest we raise the gasoline tax by 6 cents per gallon a year, every year, forever.

The increase could be annually or twice a year or once every 2 months. Which ever seems most palatable to voters.

1/3 should be dedicated to future cleanups.

1/3 should subsidize alternative, "green", energy. Whatever makes sense. Free solar water heaters for the poor. Feed in tariffs for PV. Carpool lane stickers for single drivers of natural gas or pure electric powered cars. Whatever is working.

1/3 to help repay our debts.

Also get real about alternative energy. Only coal is dirtier than oil. Reduce subsidies for both no matter how much West Virginia and other coal producing states scream.

Since alternative energy is such a tiny amount of our current energy source and is growing so slowly (because it is expensive) we need a bridge fuel. That fuel is natural gas. Merely by changing incentives, spending no new money, we can shift government support away from oil and coal and towards natural gas.

NG produces less carbon dioxide per unit of energy than oil, which is better than coal in that respect. NG is local. Replacing imported oil with local NG is a HUGE benefit for the US. It could create literally millions of US jobs. It could reduce our production of greenhouse gasses. It would reduce our trade deficit. Huge!

There is a gap between a coal/oil supported economy and a "green" economy. It would take decades to replace oil with nuclear power and cost trillions. Other, safer, technologies like PV and wind would take significantly longer and cost more. So we need to start now. But we need to bridge the gap between now and the green future with natural gas.