Good news is no news? OK then, let's argue

As an “Anonymous” reader laments in a comment on my previous post (“Cheap beer, with a Boilermaker chaser”) about new transportation energy technology, most people would much rather argue about something that’s wrong than discuss something that’s positive. You can see it in the number of comments we receive on blog posts and message board topics: A controversy, preferably about crime or partisan politics (yes, they’re often one and the same), generates much more response than any of those “good news” items that readers often claim they’re looking for. This is nothing new. “If it bleeds, it leads” has long been an axiom in the news business.

So if it’s controversy you’re looking for on the energy-tech front, here it is:

The only way any of these “magic bullet” technologies will get a chance to become economically viable and solve our energy/environmental needs is if we make a serious effort to discourage the use of gasoline. In a market economy, this means making it – or allowing it to become – more expensive. That’s why a campaign by 17 Democratic governors, including Ohio’s Ted Strickland, to get the federal government to lower gas taxes is not only pandering to spoiled consumers, it’s wrong-headed in terms of energy policy. Cleveland Foundation energy expert Richard Stuebi, quoted in the AP story, argues instead that the gas tax should increase by 50 cents a gallon a year for five years, then a dollar a year after that. A little drastic, perhaps, but the right idea.

I’ve gotten some quizzical looks from colleagues in the past for insisting that gas prices have been too low – and that government has kept them artificially so. Stuebi calculates that a pure free-market price for gas, without all the long-standing federal breaks and subsidies, would be nearly $10 a gallon. But more taxes? That’s usually anathema to conservatives. Still, one as prominent as syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer has argued that government should set a minimum price for gas (in 2005, he suggested $3 a gallon), and that every penny that the price drops below that point should be collected in extra taxes. “It is the simplest way to induce conservation. People will alter their buying habits,” he wrote.

If we’re serious about living in an environmentally friendly energy future, we can’t expect government to simply create, inconvenience-free to us, what would essentially be a new economy. It can’t do that. We have to bite the bullet – the magic bullet.