The Vehicle Miles Tax: The Unintended Consequences of Paying as You Drive

America Will Eventually Run Out of Non-Renewable Energy Sources: The fact that we will run out of non-renewable energy sources means that we must start acting soon, but we must be careful how we act – we need to be mindful of the unintended consequences that might flow from our well-intentioned attempts at regulating energy consumption. We need to be mindful of the economic consequences of our decisions as well as the environmental consequences.Positive Steps the Government is Taking to Solve the Energy Problem: For example, there exists the possibility of using unconventional oils that require extraction from shale deposits and tar sands like the ones that can be found in Alberta, Canada – home of the third largest crude oil reserve in the world. However, using unconventional oils is very harmful to the planet. The extraction of unconventional oils is more harmful to the environment than conventional oils because of the extra infrastructure needed for the extraction process. There are other beneficial alternatives to using unconventional oils, and there are agencies and programs in place to support the use of renewable energy sources in order to sustain our energy needs. The following section will discuss some of the available options to solving our energy problem.Finding Renewable Sources of Energy: A problem that occurs with using renewable sources of energy is the fact that their use tends to be difficult to implement in the marketplace; it is difficult to make the use of renewable sources of energy worth the cost of implementation. However, there are some renewable energy sources that are plentiful, cost-effective, and widely used in the market today. Some of these renewable energy sources are: hydrogen, woody biomass combustion, geothermal energy, landfill gas, crystalline silicon photovoltaic, solar water heating, onshore wind, and bioethanol from sugars and starch. Along with these readily available and highly used sources of renewable energy are other renewable energy sources that America is technologically prepared to use, but because world markets are only just starting to develop, their use has been minimal thus far. These sources of renewable energy, for which markets are still developing, include: municipal solid waste-to-energy programs, anaerobic digestion, biodiesel, co-firing of biomass, concentrating solar dishes and troughs, solar-assisted air conditioning, mini and micro hydro power, and offshore wind. There are still other methods of renewable energy use that are beneficial to the planet, but are only being used in small-scale commercial operations. Some of these include: tidal range and currents, wave power, biomass gasification, pyrolysis, bioethanol from ligno-cellulose, and solar thermal towers. Further renewable sources of energy such as organic and inorganic nanotechnology solar cells, artificial photosynthesis, biological hydrogen production involving biomass, algae and bacteria, biorefineries, ocean thermal and saline gradients, ocean currents, biomethane and animal fats, are all still in the research stage, but may become feasible and marketable sources of renewable energy in the future. The point is that there are many options available – many alternatives to using unconventional oils, which are very harmful to the planet, and that the planet will not be destroyed beyond repair if we do not stop using fossil fuels now. We do not have an energy crisis, we have an energy problem. We do not need to legislate the use of gasoline and other fossil fuels out of existence in order to save the environment and wean ourselves off non-renewable resources. We do need, however, to continue developing the use of renewable energy sources. Rewarding Electric Vehicle Purchasers: To get away from our dependence on non-renewable energy sources, the use of renewable energy sources should be rewarded rather than punishing the use of non-renewable sources. Positive reinforcement should be favored over negative reinforcement. Because of the current nature of the automobile, gasoline is a highly used fossil fuel that is being depleted and damaging the environment due to the amounts of carbon released during combustion. In order to correct the damage being done to the environment, we should be rewarding people who use modes of transportation that do not use gasoline. We should reward people for buying electric vehicles instead of gasoline-powered ones.