Valley Firms Push California Oil Tax

isabotage3 writes, "Still smarting from California's recent enactment of emissions caps, the oil industry is confronting another assault in the Golden State — this one bankrolled in part by Silicon Valley tycoons pushing to fund conservation and alternative-energy initiatives with a tax on oil output. Slightly more than half the money raised by the Prop 87 tax would be earmarked to help cut gasoline and diesel use. Another 27 percent would be put toward alternative-energy research at California universities. The remainder would be used to help start-ups, retrain energy workers in new fields, and for administration." Oil companies claim the backers of Prop 87, some of them venture capitalists, would profit from state money flowing into the alternative-energy projects they are funding.

Comments

Trendy

[celardore]

It's cool to be green. Being 'enviromentally friendly' is currently some of the best marketing you can have. Take for instance, Richard Bransons latest pledge.

I'm not opposed to this sort of corporate behaviour myself.

Re:Trendy

[Quadraginta]

Yes, I think the Black Death does offer food for thought. As I recall (it's been a while since medieval history class), the period just before the Black Death was one of economic stagnation, low wages, land scarcity and population pressure. The aftermath of the plague was a steep rise in the cost of labor, with consequent spread of prosperity at the bottom of the economic pyramid, a loosening of feudal constraints on trade and migration (since it was harder to hold a serf when he could make very good wages by skipping off to town), and an economic renaissance (called the 'High Middle Ages') that arguably helped bring about the Renaissance itself that shortly followed.

But the problem with this comparison is that death by plague is essentially a Malthusian crisis; it's a giant act of natural selection. It's bound to improve the species, by selectively taking those who are less healthy, less clever and capable, or who are making poor use of their resources. There's nothing wrong (as far as the species, not individuals, are concerned) with a Malthusian crisis.

What we've got in the present, however, is a different thing. As you said yourself, it looks like it's the most capable of us who are no longer breeding. It's almost an inversion of natural selection, something that would not make the species more healthy and successful, but which could lead to quite the opposite. Not good.

Of course, in the ineluctable calculus of Mother Nature, "capable" is as capable does. We may consider highly educated, morally-refined, sensitive individuals as the most capable members of our species, but if they fail to breed, then by Mother Nature's standards they are not -- they are simply an evolutionary dead-end which will be replaced by other branches of our species. The giant brontosaurs probably considered the biggest of them to be the most "capable" dinosaurs around, too. But they were wrong. It was the little guys with wings that made it.

That's why I myself (only partly in jest) favor stabilizing population by introducing a predator. Something large and agile, with fearsome claws and teeth, almost as bright as human beings, with good eyesight, smell and hearing. Let it roam the Earth, catching and eating people who fail to blend in discreetfully with their natural surroundings, who argue noisily with their neighbors or fail to dispose neatly of their garbage, or who, because of being on the cell phone, fail to pay enough attention while driving to spot the primitive deadfall traps (with crude but sharp stakes at the bottom) that the animals dig in the highways. Since the animals would be clever enough to stake out restaraunts or malls, we can imagine that the average level of human fitness would dramatically improve. No obesity pandemic when people must routinely sprint across open spaces, one eye cocked worriedly for that tell-tale rustling in the trees that presages fulfilling your destiny by becoming a tasty meal...

same old song and dance

[avi33]

It reminds of that manuscript recently dug up from the 14th century.

If there's one thing we don't need, it's the King and his "men of science" dictating their values to the marketplace. It's businesses like mine that are leading this nation to prosperity. If I have to refrain from tossing my pissbucket out the front steps, and deliver it all the way to the cesspool, it will cost me money, and I may have to lay off some peasants as a result. Besides, it hasn't been proven that these so-called bacteria even exist, and if they do, maybe they don't cause the black death. Maybe they will make our teeth straight and white forever. I say we should wait and see.

Sometimes government-mandated values work for the greater good.

Bring it on!

[Travoltus]

We're the world's 6th largest economy. If we tank, they tank. Demand plummets because California's out of the equation. Oil prices fall, and their stock falls.

Plus, we get to pursue alternative energy a lot faster. California will be bruised but we'll come out of it even better off than Brazil.

Then the rest of the world will follow our example, and the oil companies will get bent over like a cocktail waitress wandering into the NFL post game locker room.

Re:Taxes on oil companies end up being paid by peo

[kindbud]

Tax a business, their costs increase, they pass that charge onto their customers.

The authors of this bill know that, and have included language in it that attempts to prohibit passing on the costs to the customers. Whether it will work or not, I have no idea, but your objection misses an important feature of the bill.

Re:No on Prop 87?

[Shag]

I'm a consumer in Hawaii, which had a cap on (wholesale) gas prices. The cap was determined each week based on some spot prices on the mainland. When the cap was in effect, our gas was consistently a certain amount above the average of those spot prices.

So the oil companies said, "you know, if your gas price cap weren't there, your prices wouldn't be linked to the mainland prices and you'd probably pay less.

And enough fools believed them that the cap was done away with.

Shortly thereafter, mainland prices dropped something like 40 cents a gallon.

Ours didn't budge.

The moral? Don't believe an oil company that claims to be showing you a way to give it less money.

I think our prices have now, after several weeks or months, dropped about 20 cents. Some places on the mainland, gas is under $2 a gallon again; here, the cheap stuff is $3.40.