IMPOSE IMMEDIATE 20% excess profits tax on oil companies
retroactive to 2005, producing $20-30 billion. Take this money and distribute this money to GM, Ford, Chrysler after a 6 month contest to create an electric car that gets 150 miles a charge, 0-50 in 8 seconds, batteries with 5 year lifespan. Maybe 20% of it would need to be seed money to bring them back to health (and some to independent inventors who have brilliant patents), with winner to get $10-15 bil and $5-7 bil to runner-up with proviso that it only be used to make an electric car. Within 2 years we could have functional electric vehicles to replace the combustion cars that suck up half of the oil and generate half the pollution (including more potent greenhouse gases- Nitrogen Oxides). Recharging them from centrally produced electricity is maybe 5 times more efficient (because large generators are more efficient and easier to control pollution from), and the 40 cents recharging cost would be irresistible to consumers hammered by $4-5 a gallon oil prices.
This would vastly help the greenhouse effect by cutting the carbon dioxide cars make, but also the nitrogen oxides that cars generate that are several times more potent greenhouse gases. It would resuscitate the last great historic US industry and allow us to export cars to the world, which really cares about greenhouse gases.
I suggested something similar to Al Gore in 1998, but Impeachment nixed any possibility of that. Though this may have to wait for a Dem majority or Administration, I think public rage at the oilcos gouging will allow Dems to force Repubs to get on board, and seize the moral and political high ground.
Michael Hammerschlag http://HAMMERNEWS.com
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