What If...

Here's a diary entry from Jerome a Paris over at Daily Kos that I wanted to post on Monday, but it slipped through my RSS reader until I was reminded of it this evening. It imagines a scenario where, after 9/11, "the President decided, in parallel to a massive effort to track and punish Al-Qaida and its support networks, has decided to bring the effort home by addressing head on the energy situation, including a gas tax." After five years of hammering home the need to the American people to pull together and make sacrifices to conserve energy and raising the gas tax (with lower-income Americans receiving financial aid via the Earned Income Tax Credit), here's where Jerome's fantasizing takes him on the fifth anniversary of 9/11:

• The USA now have the largest wind turbine manufacturers, the best solar panel technology, and enjoys an incredible construction boom as houses are retrofitted for low-energy consumption. Promising new battery technology is coming to the market. The car manufacturing sector is enjoying an unexpected renaissance in the small car sector, depsite ferocious competition from European and Japanese manufacturers. The first light rail lines are being completed in more than 30 American cities, allowing millions to switch to convenient public transport;
  
  
• oil consumption has decreased by a whopping 32% in North America, and 14% in Europe (Europe having followed the US lead in increasing gas taxes again);
  
  
• yet, oil prices have fallen to under $10/bl, due to low demand in the Western world ;
  
  
• the budgets of a number of unsavoury regimes have dried up. Several have been toppled by popular discontent, with limited impact on world markets;
  
  
• in fact, the USA are now getting more budget income from the oil business than all the OPEC put together. Budget surpluses have allowed massive public transport, dense housing and poverty allievation programme to be launched, and paid for, with spectacular results now becoming visible.

Yes, it is a little fatastical. But it's amazing what we can do as Americans when we put our energies together toward a common goal (pun intended).