Word: gas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...August 1, all those cozy feelings came under a cloud after Najib's government sent out over 3,700 police personnel to employ their batons, tear gas and chemical-laced water cannons to disperse an estimated 20,000 people who had marched in the capital to demand the repeal of the longstanding Internal Security Act (ISA) security law that is often used against political opponents. Over 500 people were arrested - the biggest mass arrest since the city's race riots in 1969 - and over 50 people have been charged with taking part in an illegal assembly, a crime punishable with...
...while cash for clunkers has helped out the U.S. auto industry and the environment - two entities that have clearly seen better days - it shouldn't obscure the need for addressing the real green cost of driving: gas prices. It's not the car or truck that adds greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere - it's burning gasoline. There's no denying that it's beneficial for Americans to climb out of their clunkers and into more efficient cars, but what happens if drivers take advantage of the lowered cost of their fuel bill by driving more? The environmental benefits...
...called the efficiency paradox: as we get more efficient at using energy - through less wasteful cars and appliances - the overall cost of energy goes down, but we respond by using more of it. In the case of cars, that means driving more. Ultimately our gas bill stays the same, but we spend more time on the road and pump the same amount of greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere. The earth isn't any better off. (See pictures of new ways to boost energy efficiency...
...address the emissions problem directly, we need to look at fuel, not Fords: institute carbon taxes that raise the price of gas. We already know that higher gas prices discourage driving and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions - total vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. declined 3.6% in 2008 compared with the previous year, thanks largely to the sky-high price of gas for much of 2008. (The recession didn't help, but sharp declines in driving began well before the bottom dropped out of the economy.) As gas prices have fallen in 2009, however, driving has begun to tick back...
Americans already pay considerably less than the Europeans and Japanese for gas - it's one of the reasons we've been able to subsidize a wasteful SUV lifestyle for so long. A smart tax would stabilize the price of gas at a high enough level to discourage driving - and it would generate revenue that could be used for a number of green programs, including cash for clunkers. Certainly, efficiency is an important goal - a new report from McKinsey & Co. found that the U.S. economy could save $1.2 trillion through 2020 by investing $520 billion in various efficiency investments - and encouraging...