Gas Tax Opportunity
The current oil market has created an ideal opportunity to raise the gas tax and better support the Highway Trust Fund, according to the editorial board of the Washington Post. In a recent op-ed, it writes that revenue could be used to fill the fund, which will “run dry again in May.”
In a previous letter to the editor, RFF’s Joel Darmstadter writes that the current gas tax has “ceased to make any meaningful contribution to sound economic and environmental policy” due to its inability to keep up with inflation. RFF’s Margaret Walls also considers the limits of a gas tax in a Wall Street Journal blog post, noting that an inflation-adjusted tax will still only generate “about half as much” in annual revenues due to tighter corporate average fuel economy standards.
Climate Science Consensus
In a letter to the editor published in the Washington Post, Nobel Laureate Mario Molina addresses recent comments by prominent figures that “cast doubt on man-made climate change” by referencing previous climate shifts that were unrelated to human actions. Molina writes that “while the planet may have experienced natural periods of warming in the past, what is happening now is not natural.”
At an event hosted by RFF and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Molina noted that scientists have reached the kind of consensus on climate change that “is not common in science,” but media coverage—and therefore public perception—“certainly does not represent [this] consensus.” Video of the event can be found here.
