Why gas prices need to stay high.

My father designs transmission for a branch of GM. In the 90's, he was urging his supervisors to let him begin working on a hybrid gas/electric transmission. He argued that an energy crunch was coming in the near future, and we would need such technology. With gas being as cheap as it was, my dad's short-sighted supervisors did not comply with his request. Now a decade later, the crunch is upon us; finally American hybrids are being produced. The transmission that my dad recently designed is being tested in the Seattle bus system. These hybrid buses are more fuel efficient by 50%, and reduce emissions by 90%. Imagine the amount of pollution that could have been prevented by stimulating this research a decade ago? Two decades ago?

In biological evolution, organisms do not evolve with the intent of being more prepared for a potentially adverse future environment. Rather, they evolve to maximize their interactions with their current environment (or more specifically, their parent's). There are many commonalties between evolution and capitalism (why do you think capitalism works so well?); a reactive rather than proactive nature is a big one. Like evolution, a capitalist system will not change until it is forced to do so.

Nothing in this country ever gets done unless there is a financial incentive. Without expensive gas, there will not be enough alternative energy research, enough fuel saving technology research. These high gas prices can't be a temporary thing, they have to be a permanent thing to stimulate the research we need. Given that the market itself will be incapable of being proactive on its own, the government needs to step in. The policy of our government should be to keep jacking up gas prices with taxes, regardless of what the market price is. The tax money should go directly to fund this sort of research. Further, private investment in said research will increase if people know that gas will never be cheap again.

Its not just the environment that I'm worried about. Guess what - we wouldn't have had to invade Iraq if we weren't so dependent on fossil fuels. Without oil revenue, Saddam's repressive and corrupt government would have collapsed on its own years ago. We wouldn't have had to fire a shot. Who has control over the rest of the world's oil? Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia. Do we really want to have the economic well-being of our country in the hands of the leaders of those nations?

On a final depressing note, when has our government ever been proactive? Our government isn't even reactive this days.