Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Other technologies will be adopted when it is financially advantageous to do so.

However, my 11 year old car still runs fantastically well, and is paid for. You're going to have to work very hard to make it financially advantageous for me to junk it and buy something new for 30k.

Raising the cost of gas over the next 5-6 years will be painful, but not so much as to cause me to spend 20-30k on a new vehicle that will have its own fuel costs. The amount spent on gas over the next 5-6 years even with your ridiculous price (not cost) raises does not justify buying a new vehicle when the paid-for one works perfectly well.

That's just at an individual level. Now start thinking of small and large businesses with fleets. These tend to turn over passenger cars at 200k, which means every six or seven years, and large transport trucks at 2 million miles or so. Although the trucks aren't often sold, they're more often rebuilt.

The cost of cycling through a whole fleet also doesn't make sense, especially for the large trucking fleets.

Now think about police departments. They also turn over vehicles every six or seven years, mostly through auctions. They do not adopt new technology that is unproven. They resisted front-wheel-drive for a long time, despite the tests that are run in Michigan every year, which every PD reviews the results from.

Lastly, your attempts to manipulate the buying public are punitive and likely to fail. You contend that the price doesn't reflect the cost. When you're king of the oil companies, then you can adjust that. Until then, trying to change what you aren't in charge of through punitive taxation is part of what this country was founded to protest against.

Regarding the gas tax: If gas supplies really are the limiting factor (i.e., if we really believe the story from the car-huggers that we need to drill in ANWR, build more refineries, etc.), then the supply curve is inelastic...

You are arguing that they are leaving billions of dollars in profits on the table (out of the goodness of their hearts?) and this is ridiculous.

The inability to build new refineries (none built in over 20 years) and explore domestically due to environmental lobby money does not help.

Which is the bigger number? $11,534,676 or $665,607

I'm not arguing any such thing- in fact, exactly the opposite.

Your argument, and others who seem to think the price of gas is based solely on the same market forces as any other product, means there'd be no such thing as any 'Windfall profit' for the government to tax in the first place! (Now, keep in mind I myself don't subscibe to any belief that the oil companies are really gouging the prices so far beyond the actual costs of refining and everything else that goes into delivering a gallon of gas to the consumer that there's really any obscene profit margin beyond all fairness

One thing is for certain, whether you believe gas prices are an accurate reflection of the true cost to the oil companies, or part of a gouge to produce an undeserved profit- the oil companies won't pay any 'windfall profit tax' any more than they pay any other government imposed tax. YOU, the consumer will, AS ALWAYS. They aren't in the business of paying gas taxes, they're in the business of making enough money to have political busibodies screaming at them about 'windfall' profits.

Actually, yes you are. Your argument as you have phrased it requires that the gas companies not be trying to maximize profits. This seems ludicrous to me. Perhaps it is hyperbole to say that a company that gives up billions of dollars in potential profit is a "charity." But you have yet to give any credible explanation why oil companies would be willing to give up such billions. Good luck.

anytime there is a move to ransack the last wild places in the US, mine the kinds of places the Sierra Club puts on its calendars, and destroy protected wildlife refuges, lawsuit.

anytime there is a move to harm Gaia, lawsuit.

Which leaves at the mercy of Comrade Chavez and his OPEC buddies.

Until we have a viable replacement (solar /wind/nuclear/hydrogen) in service we are stuck with a carbon economy until then, unless you want to go medieval, and all the sanitation problems that accompany it.

Competition causes them to increase their prices and earn less money?

I thought you were asking why they wouldn't raise prices to whatever the market would bear, regardless of taxes. If you weren't, maybe you could explain what you were asking, because it wasn't clear.

Not all these solutions work for all areas, and they don't work for very long.

Solar is fine and well for areas that aren't overcast or rain prone.

Solar equipment ages badly, breaking at about the same time frame that you recover your costs from it, so just when you get done recouping the initial investment, it's time to do it all over again.

Nuclear functions everywhere and carbon functions everywhere.

You keep insisting that the government is propping up the carbon economy. You haven't delineated exactly how, or how much - just that the full cost of externalities aren't in the price we pay.

I'm personally toying with the idea of converting my ancient volkswagen beetle to electric, but I find that the cost to do so in a way that will get me good travel range and good acce