The House is working on a five-year highway reauthorization bill that would authorize $580 billion ahead of the current law expiration on September 30.
Which sounds reasonable until you think about what costs we refuse to externalize (road repair) and which costs we happily externalize (pollution).
It’s an interesting discussion I’ve had with coworkers recently where there’s a strong sentiment with some people that renewable energy needs to stand on its own, but the same argument could be made for fossil fuels and needing to account for environmental damage in pricing. Subsidizing renewable energy (tax credits, avoiding gasoline tax, etc) is an indirect way to compensate for the externalized costs of fossil fuels, which wouldn’t be palatable or popular if done directly.
Money needs to come from somewhere for roads, but it’s very hard to decouple infrastructure funding concerns from environmental concerns since no one is willing to tackle the problem head on with something like a carbon tax.
Burning fossil fuels kills more than 250,000 people a year in the US. What is the value of a human life? Tax that shit before penalizing the non polluters.
Which sounds reasonable until you think about what costs we refuse to externalize (road repair) and which costs we happily externalize (pollution).
The fact is that road maintenance is funded in part by a gas tax and we’re increasingly adding vehicles to the road that do not pay gas tax. The road maintenance is still there and I’m sure EV drivers will want it to be done as well. Go over to a /c/bicycles forum and ask them how willing they are to subsidize any road maintenance and you’ll figure out quickly why we do something akin to a “use tax” on roads using gasoline as a proxy.
Pay for your fucking pollution first and then maybe we’ll consider it.
Also, fuck off about bicycles. We’re saving you road maintenance costs by not being in a car! If everyone paid their fair share proportional to the amount of damage they do (which scales by the fourth power of vehicle weight) and cyclists were charged 1¢, car drivers would owe tens of thousands of dollars.
Your comment is entirely entitled, ignorant bullshit.
Which sounds reasonable until you think about what costs we refuse to externalize (road repair) and which costs we happily externalize (pollution).
It’s an interesting discussion I’ve had with coworkers recently where there’s a strong sentiment with some people that renewable energy needs to stand on its own, but the same argument could be made for fossil fuels and needing to account for environmental damage in pricing. Subsidizing renewable energy (tax credits, avoiding gasoline tax, etc) is an indirect way to compensate for the externalized costs of fossil fuels, which wouldn’t be palatable or popular if done directly.
Money needs to come from somewhere for roads, but it’s very hard to decouple infrastructure funding concerns from environmental concerns since no one is willing to tackle the problem head on with something like a carbon tax.
Burning fossil fuels kills more than 250,000 people a year in the US. What is the value of a human life? Tax that shit before penalizing the non polluters.
The fact is that road maintenance is funded in part by a gas tax and we’re increasingly adding vehicles to the road that do not pay gas tax. The road maintenance is still there and I’m sure EV drivers will want it to be done as well. Go over to a /c/bicycles forum and ask them how willing they are to subsidize any road maintenance and you’ll figure out quickly why we do something akin to a “use tax” on roads using gasoline as a proxy.
Pay for your fucking pollution first and then maybe we’ll consider it.
Also, fuck off about bicycles. We’re saving you road maintenance costs by not being in a car! If everyone paid their fair share proportional to the amount of damage they do (which scales by the fourth power of vehicle weight) and cyclists were charged 1¢, car drivers would owe tens of thousands of dollars.
Your comment is entirely entitled, ignorant bullshit.