7 Comments

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  nandakandamanda at 02:05 PM JST - 29th May

  But Austrian Finance Minister Wilhelm Molterer gave the idea short shrift. “What will you do when prices fall again? Reintroduce the tax? I’d like to hear the political discussions then,” said Molterer.

  I don't see a problem here. Sure, reintroduce them to keep a basic level of revenue.

  Is that the reason that the UK government is afraid to reduce these blatantly unfair fuel duties? They're scared the public won't let them raise them again? Er....

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  Zaphod at 06:16 PM JST - 29th May

  The oil shock was long in coming, the Western world should have long ago started preparing for it. Instead, we keep pretending cheap oil will be there foreever, and brown-nosing the Saudis will keep it flowing.

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  Madverts at 06:17 PM JST - 29th May

  Hey Gordon - the UK government has been stuffing itself with over 80% tax on fuel for 15 years. It's not the people's fault that the Government finds itself addicted to the tax...

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  Soochi at 09:26 PM JST - 29th May

  Now sit back and watch the politicians start pushing their own Nuclear Fuel agenda. They must think we are proper muppets!

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  Jahdog at 03:52 PM JST - 3rd June

  2005: W suggested that our nation's "problem" with high gasoline prices was caused by the lack of a national energy policy, and tried to blame it all on Bill Clinton. "That's exactly what I've been saying to the American people--10 years ago if we'd had an energy strategy, we would be able to diversify away from foreign dependence. And--but we haven't done that. And now we find ourselves in the fix we're in." As is so often the case, Bush was lying.

  Consider President Jimmy Carter's April 18, 1977 speech. "With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us." Carter bluntly pointed out that: "The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation." He called the new energy policy he was proposing, "[T]he 'moral equivalent of war', except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy."

  When Carter had become president three months earlier, the nation was still recovering from the "oil shock" of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, and scientists were realizing our nation was just then hitting the point of domestic peak oil production predicted more than a decade earlier by scientist M. King Hubbert. (The rest of the world is hitting the Hubbert Peak right now.) As Carter noted in his speech, "The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained." Hubbert had predicted that the peak of oil production for the USA would come in the 1970s, and it did, hitting us with a shock. Hubbert said we must begin to conserve. Carter agreed.

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  Jahdog at 04:00 PM JST - 3rd June

  2001: oilmen with personal interest in the tens of billions in profits to be reaped from the oil fields of the Middle East become Pres and VP. US blood and treasure is squandered in a "generational conflict, while oil prices and terrorism increase, with no end in sight.

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  Jahdog at 04:12 PM JST - 3rd June

  1977: "Now we have a choice," Carter said. "But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs."

  Failure to act in the 1970s and 1980s would inevitably lead to a time when the only way to maintain our lifestyle would be to rape our planet and seize control of oil-rich nations in the Middle East. If we didn't begin to develop alternatives like solar power, and dramatically reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, then, Carter said, even our cherished personal freedoms would be at risk. If we continued to simply follow past policies that enriched the oil industry and the Saudis, instead of becoming energy independent, Carter said, "we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions."

  Carter's speech drew a strong reaction from the Saudis and the oil industry. Think tanks soon emerged - many whose names are today familiar - to suggest there was really no energy problem, and they led the charge to establish a permanent right-wing media in the US. Within two years, Salem bin Laden's sole US representative, James Bath, would funnel cash into the failing business of the son of the CIA's former director, George H. W. Bush. With that money, George Bush Jr. was able to keep afloat his Arbusto Oil Company. And he would be in the pocket of the bin Laden and Saudi interests for the rest of his life.

  Carter said, "I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000." But then came the Iran/Contra October Surprise, when the Reagan/Bush campaign allegedly promised the oil-rich mullahs of Iran that they'd sell them missiles and other weapons if only they'd keep our hostages until after the 1980 Carter/Reagan presidential election campaign was over. The result was that Carter steadily dropped in popularity as the hostage crisis dragged out, and lost the election. The hostages were released the very minute that Reagan put his hand on the Bible to take his oath of office. The hostages freed, the Reagan/Bush administration quickly began illegally delivering missiles to Iran.

  And Ronald Reagan's first official acts of office included removing Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the roof of the White House, and reversing most of Carter's conservation and alternative energy policies.

  Instead of taking a strong stand to make America energy independent, Bush kisses a Saudi crown prince, then holds hands with him as they walk into Bush's hobby ranch in Texas. Our young men and women are daily dying in Iraq - a country with the world's second largest store of underground oil. And we live in fear that another 15 Saudis may hijack more planes to fly into our nation's capitol or into nuclear power plants.

  Meanwhile, Bush brings us an energy bill that includes eight billion dollars in welfare payments to the oil business, just as the nation's oil companies report the highest profits in the entire history of the industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0503-22.htm

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