Oh brother, here it comes, another complete air-head wanting to implement unrealistic laws and taxes that would end life as we know it and hurl the world into economic chaos and starvation. Baloney. I've never heard stories of hordes of blacksmiths and horse traders dying by the millions when the automobile took over their territory. Sure it eliminated the need for a bunch of highly skilled people, but it created the need for as many more. Loosen up folks, the difference between people and animals is their adaptability. Take that away from us and we all die. Yeah, it means some of us are going to have to change jobs and learn some new stuff, (so, join the crowd that already has to do that on a regular basis anyway), and yeah, its going to cost, but only money, not lives, or happiness or create hunger and destitution. Besides, I happen to believe it will pay as much money to some groups as it costs others. This is America, you are free to switch groups all you want. We are going to have to do it sooner or later anyway, and the sooner the easier it will be on all of us. It will be fun, interesting and exciting, let's do it people.

Do what? Abandon our way of life and return to Tepees and hunting and gathering ? No. We can have life as we know it now and, as technology improves, life more abundant than we can even dream today, without being energy hogs. I don't think it's necessary to run around in a two-gallon-a-minute motorboat just to help spur the economy. Surely as smart as we are we can create a vital economy that is energy efficient.

Fossil fuels are bad for a couple of reasons. They are polluting the air with stuff that makes more of us than we realize ill when we breathe it into our lungs, it goes even higher than that, it may be aggravating our ozone layer problem, contributing to the greenhouse effect, and it comes back to earth in the form of acid rain to disrupt the ecosystem. But of even more immediate importance, is stability. Remember the zeroth priority ? A deficit economy and a turbulent global political situation is a greater threat to us today than the environmental one. We need to start weaning ourselves off of Arabian oil. No offense intended toward anyone, but the Muslims of the middle east have cultural disorders, possibly of genetic origin, they need to overcome before we depend upon them for "the life blood of our economy", as one of our illustrious legislators called oil. Specifically, this tit-for-tat bickering they have done with each other as well as the Jews for at least 3000 years is going to have to stop, because now that we are all pumping gobs of oil money into their coffers, they are beginning to bicker with nuclear and chemical weapons, and plant bombs on passenger planes around the world. If they want to keep plummeting each other with rocks and clubs as they did for so many centuries that's their business, but when they begin to threaten the entire planet with their nonsense, it's time the rest of us did something about it. Anyone who understands the middle eastern psychic at all realizes that the stupidest thing imaginable is to try to curtail their violent activity with force. Not to mention sell them weapons and then try to curtail them by force. Their reason for living for thousands of years has been to go about looking for someone to get even with for some reason or another. Frankly, I think the best way to bring them into the civilized world is to give them more respect and less money, and abandon them to tourists and do-gooders for another couple of centuries, (the same goes for the Yugoslavs, and any other country or group with obsessive compulsive retribution needs). Possibly some strong charismatic religious leader might manage to lead them into the real world and a better attitude toward life in general.

We need a more suitable fuel than fossil fuels to fire our power plants and automobiles. Both wind and solar powered electricity generation are technologically feasible today, but not economically so. There are also many alternatives to the gasoline powered automobile that are also feasible but not economically so. We can make it so, with a gradually increasing tax on fossil fuels designed to ignite a transition from fossil fuels to something more suitable. I don't think we should count nuclear power out either. There's simply too great a potential there to abandon out of hand. I'm not necessarily a proponent of nuclear power as it is now practiced, but I'm not a proponent of the anti-nukes either. Both have too great a tendency toward too much inflammatory hype and head burying in the sand, one about the safety, and the other about the danger. Great strides have been made recently in making nuclear plants failsafe, and I ran into a fellow named Dr. Horowitz at the Argonne National Laboratories a couple of years ago who has devised a method of salvaging rare metals from nuclear plant waste leaving only two percent of the original waste radioactive. I intend to find out why his processes haven't been put into production.  (2011 update:  Have heard rumors that his conversion methods consume too much energy?  Don't know for sure.)

We need more aggressive measures to encourage people to build and live in energy efficient homes. From personal experience I happen to know that one can build much more efficient homes than many experts in the housing business believe possible. It's true that my wife and I live in Alabama where it never gets very hot or very cold. But if a couple of plain old helpless school teachers with zero experience can build a three bedroom house with an average energy consumption of 500 KWH per month, surely the experts could build'em anywhere in the country to beat, or at least match, that.  But one of the things that I want to avoid is to propose laws that restrict the limits of ones luxuries in life. One of my main beliefs is that energy efficiency does not necessitate hardship or a Spartan existence. So I don't propose laws to try force people to build smaller, less convenient homes, but rather to challenge their ingenuity, by offering a financial incentive to use less energy in their homes.

(2008 update:  Alas, we put in an air conditioner in 1994, or thereabouts, to reduce humidity for the sake of the wife's antiques and respiratory problems, so the monthly consumption has gone as high as 1000 KWH for a couple of months in summers.)

So, here are the energy laws:

Energy Law #1. Place a 20 cent ,(or something thereabouts), per gallon tax on gasoline beginning immediately, and plan to increase it by 20 cents a year until gasoline is no longer the primary fuel of automobiles.

Energy Law #2. There will be a federal tax on all passenger cars determined by the formula Tax = estimated current value of the auto - (estimated current value of the auto)(X)/60 mpg . Where X is the miles per gallon rating of the vehicle and 0 < X < 60 mpg. If your car gets 60 mpg or more, you pay no federal tax on it !

Energy Law #3. Place a high enough tax (I realize this is not the proper statement of a law, but I'm too ignorant to state it properly at the moment), on coal and oil powered electric companies to inspire them to switch to natural gas for now, and wind, solar and possibly nuclear power by the time the natural gas runs out.

(we may settle on different limits in different regions of the country on this next one.)

Energy Law #4. If your home uses an average of X KWH of energy per month, you will be allowed to deduct Y = 12(-.1X + 110) percent of your energy costs from your taxable income. (Note, that those who use over 1100 KWH per month will have to ADD the magnitude of Y to their taxable income, since for values of X over 1100, Y is negative. Also, the 1100 value is subject to drop over time)

There are some florescent light bulbs that are much cheaper to own and operate in the long run than incandescent bulbs in spite of the fact that they cost several times as much as an incandescent bulb to begin with. But we Americans, (yours truly included), whose short-sightedness has become our trademark, have trouble paying ten dollars for a florescent light bulb when an incandescent equivalent is only a dollar or less! This may sound like a trivial matter to you and I, but we simply cannot grasp the significance of our numbers. All of us changing to these florescent light bulbs would eliminate the need for a couple of dozen power plants, along with their accompanying cost, consumption and pollution !   But again, I'm all about freedom.  There are some situations where a florescent bulb doesn't provide the same effect as a incandescent bulb.  Instead of outlawing incandescent bulbs, we should have a pollution tax added, so if you really want one and are willing to pay the tax, then great.

Energy Law #5. Inefficient incandescent light bulbs shall have a inefficiency tax of $5.00 each.

Energy Law #6. (I don't know enough about this stuff to be precise at the moment.) Money invested in renewable energy sources, such as solar collectors, wind generators, even flashlight battery rechargers and stuff like that will receive some tax deduction.

 (2008 update:  I believe this law is now obselete.  Didn't George Jr. actually pass a law similar to this one too?  Of course, Jimmy Carter did it in the late '70's, I know that for a fact because we got a giant tax rebate for our house thanks to him!  Who killed his program?)

AUTOMOBILES

I really believe we would die rather than give up our addiction to infinite, instant transportability, in other words, the automobile. But the current automobile has to go sooner or later, and the sooner the better. We need something more efficient, preferably with a renewable source of energy, that is pollution free. The electric cars everyone is talking about these days as a solution to all our problems require 6000 pounds of batteries to be replaced every few years. I do not know just how recyclable all those chemicals and batteries are, but I suspect not enough to avoid a mountain of dead batteries in somebody's backyard. We really need some imaginative thought in this area. Maybe a tax incentive will help.

Energy Law #7. Any manufacturer of a suitable alternative (I realize this is improper wording, more refinement later) to fossil fuel powered or inefficient battery powered automobiles will be allowed to operate tax free for four years. (Note: This also disallows electric cars unless they can be proven to not use electricity generated by fossil fuel or current nuclear power plants.)

Bicycles are cheap, energy efficient, healthy, and fun. I propose federal government assistance (or tax incentive) of some kind to encourage cities and towns to build extensive systems of safe bike paths.