This is what you pay at the pump in combined Federal and State tax on average for a gallon of gas.
Most of this information is from the wiki.
I believe it to be relatively accurate.
In the Netherlands, they pay $3.50 a gallon in tax, and then VAT in addition to the final price.
In Norway, [where there's a huge amount of oil and natural gas production] they pay an effective rate of $5.38/gallon in tax on gasoline. The government refers to the tax as environmental tax on fuels.
In the UK, the combined tax is $5.20.
The average tax on a gallon of gasoline in the US is 47 cents. We pay a similar [slightly higher] tax rate on diesel, on natural gas, on coal that is used to create electricity.
And now, to tie it together, the title of my diary is from this quote ..
http://www.signonsandiego.com/...
U.S. reluctant to mirror Europe's high gas taxes
Lawmakers exploring ways to cut fuel appetite
By Dean Calbreath
STAFF WRITER
May 29, 2005
When Ulf Brynjestad hears Americans complaining about the high price of gasoline, he shakes his head in wonder.
"I think, 'You live a very protected life,'" said Brynjestad, Sweden's consul general in San Diego. "Americans are used to gas being available and cheap. I don't know why that is."
The average tax rate of 47 cents a gallon is a major part of why it is so cheap.
In two previous diaries about this I have failed so far to see any rebuttal that offers up a way to spur our country away from carbon based fuels except for the Hansen plan, which makes sense except for the trading of carbon credits, which I think is a shell game.
From the same article [which is 3 years old, by the way]
In Europe and Japan, high taxes on gasoline have led to slow growth or even a reduction in gas usage over the past decade. Since 1994, for instance, oil consumption has dropped 5 percent in Japan and 7 percent in Germany and risen about 1 percent in most of the industrialized countries of Europe. By 2020, Germany's Petroleum Industry Group projects that nation's oil consumption will drop an additional 14 percent due to a shift to alternative fuels.
There are ways to ensure those at the bottom of the economic ladder are protected, that key industries like farming, trucking, rail transport are allocated fuel at a lower tax rate.
We are rapidly approaching a time when gasoline and oil for heating will becoming unavailable. Prices will increase without increasing any tax. It can plainly be shown that use of carbon based in Europe has been directly affected by those nations trying to compensate [at least partially] for the real loaded costs of using these fuels.
The European concept of understanding the environmental impact of carbon based fuels and taxing them is in line with my understanding of what progressivism is. As a progressive, I applaud these efforts to limit a technology which has been poisoning the planet for centuries.
Before we run out of carbon based fuels, their use at current rates will continue to cause permanent and damaging changes to our planet. We have already passed the tipping point with GHGs and into the beginning of a positive feedback loop which is affecting our climate worldwide.
We have already seen severe damage to our environment, by way of mercury poisoning, air pollution which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year and millions worldwide, untold numbers of birth defects, illness, hospital time, lost work and school hours. Massive devastation in the plant and animal world is a direct result of the use of carbon based fuels. And of course, the technologies used to get, and in refinement and transport of the fuels also results numbers of deaths and injuries every year.
All that, for 47 cents a gallon.
Gasoline being $15 or even $20 are extreme, but in a matter of a few years, this is what they will be paying in Europe. We will follow, even if we keep the tax rate at 47 cents a gallon.
To many Americans, it's some sort of God Given Right that we have cheap gasoline. I remember in the run up to the Iraqi war, there was an interview of the 'man on the street', IIRC it was on CNN. Asking a man at a gasoline pump what he thought about the impending war, he answered as honestly as most Americans would.
He said
"I don't care how many people have to die, as long as the price of gasoline doesn't go up"
Somewhere in time, between the price of a gallon of gasoline being $10, $15, or even $20 dollars a gallon, and more people dying there exists a course of action.
Increase the taxation on carbon based fuels, with a target to least match the European model over a period of, oh .. lets say 5 or 10 years. Part of the taxation would be used as a safety net for those who cannot afford fuel, and the remainder would be used to provide loans to help families better insulate their homes, buy alternative methods to produce the energy they use and fund R&D.
Some States are already increasing their taxes on gas and oil.
I say it's time for the Federal government to do the same.
We can no longer continue to live the way we are, be as wasteful as we are: change is necessary. Change will be disruptive, but there will be business opportunities and employment. We will adapt to the changes.
If we do not take serious action to shift away from carbon based fuels now, we are in for much worse disruption down the road.