Remember the "oil shocks" of the 1970s? They may be coming back.
In January of this year, America imported more oil than ever before - more than 9 million barrels a day - and this points to a disquieting trend.We had been growing more self-sufficient in oil during the early 1980s. But our oil imports have been increasing again, and over the last four months America has imported more than half the oil it has used.
When this fact is linked to the nation's growing concerns about air pollution and global warming, it appears likely that America is nearing a critical new junction point on its attitude toward oil and its principal byproduct, gasoline.
How much gasoline we use, and the price we pay for it, have been joined in the energy policy debate by growing concern over hazards to our environment.
Motor vehicle exhaust is known to contribute greatly to acid rain. It remains the chief culprit behind urban smog, as well as a leading contributor to the "greenhouse effect" that many scientists believe is causing the Earth's atmosphere to heat up.
Every gallon of motor fuel we burn puts into the atmosphere about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, one of the main gases involved in global warming, and Americans currently burn more than 130 billion gallons of motor fuel a year.
There is no escaping the fact that the burning of fossil fuels (chiefly coal and oil) still forms the most persistent and most serious threat to the Earth's atmosphere. Protection of the environment thus becomes the latest reason (besides prolonging energy stocks and easing U.S. dependence on oil imports) for trying still harder to reduce gasoline consumption. There are several ways this could be done.
One would be to set fuel-economy standards far stricter than those now being discussed. Sen. Tim Wirth, D-Colo., wants to try for a new-car-fleet average of 45 miles a gallon by the year 2000. Although this sounds radical, Joel Brown of the United Nations Environment Program says that the French and other engineers are working on an environmentally sound "green car" that would obtain 100 miles to a gallon. Such gains appear within reach, but whether the public is eager for such smaller and lighter cars is another question.
At some point, however, the politicians and the energy policymakers can no longer avoid dealing with the greatest single incentive to petroleum conservation that anyone can devise: a sharply increased federal excise tax on fuel purchases.
Each penny added to the present gasoline tax would bring in an additional $1 billion in annual revenue.
A whopping $1.50 tax increase per gallon would bring in $150 billion a year, at once erasing the current budget deficit, reducing our trade imbalance and dramatically cutting into U.S. gasoline use.
An alternative, in some ways preferable because it would apply more broadly, would be an oil-import tax. For each $1 per barrel, it would generate more than $3 billion a year. It would reduce our growing reliance on imports and would encourage the lagging domestic oil industry to get back to work.
America now pays far less per gallon for its gasoline than most other nations of the world. This pattern rewards inefficiency and promotes pollution. The price we pay at the pump neither encourages conservation nor accounts for all the real costs of our gluttonous fuel consumption (acid rain, air pollution and its attendant damage, providing security in the Persian Gulf and possible damage from global warming).
One way or another, directly or indirectly, and sooner or later, someone will have to face up to all the accumulated costs connected with our insatiable use of the gasoline engine. They're awkward questions.