In 2008, the Editorial Board of the Times advocatedraising the gasoline tax. In 2008and again in 2011, Thomas Friedman advocated a higher gasoline tax, writing, “America, you have built your house at the foot of a volcano. That volcano is now spewing lava from different cracks and is rumbling like it’s going to blow. Move your house!”
In March of this year, he again pointed out the benefits of an increased gasoline tax in the context of putting a crimp in Putin’s oil dependent Russia’s imperialistic ambitions. And today, in Sunday’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman again argues phasing in an approximately $1 a gasoline tax is the smart play. It would raise over a hundred billion dollars that could go toward rebuilding our transportation infrastructure, paying down the deficit, and developing green technology. His pitch is based on the promise of 2014, in which he writes,
When they write the history of the global response to climate change, 2014 could well be seen as the moment when the balance between action and denial tipped decisively toward action. That’s thanks to the convergence of four giant forces: São Paulo, Brazil, went dry; China and the United States together went green; solar panels went cheap; and Google and Apple went home.
But before I could go further, the bottom fell out of the world oil price, and the energy economist Phil Verleger wrote me, saying: “Fracking is a technological breakthrough like the introduction of the PC. Low-cost producers such as the Saudis will respond to the threat of these increased supplies by holding prices down” — hoping the price falls below the cost of fracking and knocks some of those American frackers out. In the meantime, though, he added, sustained low prices for oil and gas would “retard” efforts to sell more climate-friendly, fuel-efficient vehicles that are helped by high oil prices and slow the shift to more climate-friendly electricity generation by wind and solar that is helped by high gas prices.
If Europe imposed a similar gasoline tax increase, the developed world have taken a direct, concrete step toward addressing climate change.
If Friedman sounds like a broken record, its because this is genuinely a good idea. Obviously, the most important benefit that comes from a high gasoline tax is lower carbon emissions, a necessity if we wan to avoid a higher than 2-degree Celsius rise in average temperature. Read his article, Why 2014 is a Big Deal, for an impassioned, elegantly written explanation as to why this is a good thing.
But beyond his arguments, other reasons exist why we should reduce the tsunami of cash flowing into the Middle East. It has to do with how a dependence on high priced commodities such as coffee, diamonds, narcotics, and oil foster civil war. I address this issue further below the fold.
While not without controversy, it has been argued,
... the single biggest risk factor for the outbreak of war was a nation's economic dependence on commodities. Eagerness to profit from coffee, narcotics, diamonds and other gemstones both prompts outbreaks of violence and determines their strength over time, says the study. "Diamonds are the guerrilla's best friend," said Paul Collier, the author of the study and director of research at the Washington-based World Bank's economics department. "Civil wars are far more likely to be caused by economic opportunities than by grievance.
Collier
suggests,
To reduce the occurrence of these wars, countries should diversify their economies and visibly channel commodity income into social service programs, to undermine public support for rebels who seize the mines and farmlands.
The world community, meanwhile, can help by refusing to do business with rebel
groups." In December 2002, the New York Times listed policy implications of the Collier and Hoeffler paper in its "The Year in Ideas" section: "Throughout Africa and in
parts of Asia and Latin America, guerrillas finance their armies through the illegal
export of commodities: timber, diamonds, oil and coca. Policy makers are now trying
to encourage guerrillas to give up their fight by cutting off the money spigot. An
embargo, they believe, can put rebels out of business or drive them to the negotiating
table.
In the case of ISIS, the bulk of its money comes from oil.
ISIS controls roughly six of Syria’s 10 oil fields as well as several in Iraq.
In addition, ISIS has also received funding from wealthy donors, many in Gulf countries. If demand for oil falls, this will cut into ISIS and other terror-exporting states to buy munitions, pay its militias, develop nuclear bombs and dirty bombs, and generally wreak havoc throughout the region.
I want to make clear. I am not arguing the "money" is the problem or that we should keep the Middle East and other developing regions poor. I am arguing that when a region's economy is heavily dependent on a relatively easily controlled commodity (oil in the case of Syria and Iraq), violence and civil war are more likely to occur. The world must relinquish its dependence on carbon fuels.
Pumping more men, money, and arms into the Middle East has not worked now or in the past. And it won't work in the future. A higher gasoline tax will help the environment and it may well reduce violence in the Middle East. But also, and this is crass, I wish Congress would put the cost of a higher gasoline tax in the context of the cost of what we spend on foreign wars and what we will spend on alternatives to addressing climate change or simply doing nothing and spending increased sums as the nation's shores are flooded, it suffers drought, and increased extreme weather.
I'm saying Thomas Friedman is a smart man and he keeps desperately saying the same thing over and over, because it's important. And with the current reduced cost of gasoline, the pain of implementing such a policy would be lessened.