This is a discussion area for the Voluntary Gas Tax. Feel free to make comments and suggestions, ask questions, and have fun!

The web site for the Voluntary Gas Tax is: http://www.gastax.org/

Good questions to answer for Gas Tax Participants:

The organizations currently receiving support from Gas Tax money fit into the broad categories of carbon abatement and supporting alternatives to fossil fuels. Should the VGT expand the types of organizations it supports to include organizations pursuing peace in the Middle East?

The VGT is set up to tax fuel consumption from driving cars. Do you think it would be a good idea for the VGT to have a similar voluntary tax on air travel? Would you be interested in paying such a tax?

The gas tax rate for 2002 driving is set at 50 cents/gallon. What do you think an appropriate tax rate for 2003 would be? Why?

Do you know of any appropriate 501c3 organizations the VGT should consider donating to? What do you like about the organization? If you suggest an organization, it would be great if you could give a link to a page confirming that the organization is a 501c3.

Okay, I'll take a stab at a couple of these questions.

As to the first (should we support organizations pursuing Middle East peace), in my opinion the answer is no. Peace in the Middle East is a laudable goal, and one which I encourage everyone to support in any number of ways. But I prefer that the VGT be a single-issue organization. It currently exists for one purpose: to mitigate the effects of and discourage the use of petroleum products. If we start adding other goals then we may lose the consensus of those participating and alienate some who would still support that primary goal. While I concede there's a connection between petroleum usage and Middle East unrest, I don't think the two are sufficiently linked to make them a single issue; i.e. I believe people who agree on the primary goal could still disagree on aspects of addressing Middle East peace. If this organization tries to address both with its funding, it could fracture our consensus.

As to the second question (would it be a good idea to tax air travel), in my opinion the answer is yes. It seems to me that every reason cited for why the VGT is a good idea applies equally as well to airplanes as it does to cars. For that matter, it applies to lawnmowers, leafblowers and go-carts as well.

Edited by author 03-20-2003 12:42 PM
I have to agree with John Becker on keeping the issues to the single goal of providing the focus: "to mitigate the effects of and discourage the use of petroleum products". I feel we should be focused on reducing reliance on Petroleum as a National Security issue.

Air travel Tax: I support a SEPERATE voluntary line item for this tax. Knowing the impact of air travel's fuel consumption it will be a massive impact...unfortunately I suspect one that few have the financial resources to actually pay a tax for (which begs the question, can we really afford to fly at all?). A single 747 on the first 60 seconds of take off uses more fuel than my car does in five years!

Well sure, that's a pretty dramatic description of fuel usage for a 747 which Tihmothy gives there. But I think it overstates the point. For any given journey, the usage will be amortized in two ways: over the length of the flight (it wouldn't use nearly as much at any other time as it does during takeoff), and over the number of passengers. I think when those things are taken into account, the per-person mileage is not totally unreasonable. Hmm, let's see....

According to the specs, a 747-400 goes a maximum of 7260 nautical miles (or 8354.7 statute miles), with a maximum fuel capacity of 57285 gallons. So it must be averaging at most 6.86 gallons per mile. With a typical capacity of 416 passengers, it probably averages about 300. So this gives a usage of about 43.75 person-miles/gallon. Wow, that's better than most cars when there's only one person in them!

Of course, one typically goes much further by plane than by car. For example, I just got back from Thailand and the round trip was about 15260 miles. So my personal total comes to about 349 gallons of fuel for that one trip. Phew, that's well more than my car used in the past year. Still, it's not totally absurd. And if I'm responsible for using that much, it makes sense that I should pay for it. Maybe that will help discourage such frivolity in the future. :-)

Edited by author 04-02-2003 12:34 AM
Subject: airplane fuel consumption

Hi Jon, thanks for your stats about 747-400 fuel consumption. Here's another data point, for a 747-200...

On a long flight, a 747-200 gets about .13 or .14 miles per gallon. A 747-200 has a capacity of 350 passengers. Assuming about 80% average occupancy, with 280 passengers, that works out to about 38 person-miles per gallon.

source: http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~murty...2/planetravel2.html

My understanding is that airplane fuel consumption varies a fair amount. Some planes are much more fuel-efficient than others. And planes that are full are much more fuel-efficient than planes that are half full.

And as Timothy pointed out, the take-off uses a great deal of fuel. As a result, for any given plane, the miles-per-gallon number for a long flight will be bigger than the miles-per-gallon number for a short flight.

But anyway, the bottom line is that planes aren't 10 times more efficient than cars, nor are cars 10 times more efficient than planes. Roughly speaking, commercial jets and private cars consume about the same amount of gas per passenger mile. That's assuming the plane is fairly typical plane, and the car is a pretty typical car, and the plane is about 80% full, and the car has about 1 or 2 occupants.

So if I want to go from Seattle to New York, then in terms of my personal carbon dioxide emissions it doesn't matter that much whether I go by car or by plane. What really matters most is just the total distance I travel every year, rather than what conveyance I used.

I think that's an interesting factoid. Most of the people I know don't drive all that much, but they do fly a great deal. In a given year, many of my friends end up flying 10 times as far as they drive. And when you drive, you're conscious of how much gas you use, because you have to stop at gas stations and get gas. Whereas when you fly, it's easy to have no idea how much fuel you're using, or how much carbon dioxide is being produced.

Subject: airplane global warming

"According to the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), fuel burned by airplanes puts nitrogen oxide and water vapor at 30,000 feet. These two additional greenhouse gases together give as much as twice the global warming effect as the carbon dioxide released by the airplane."

source: http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0896/et0896s13.html

although a bit off topic for considering whether air travel should be added to the vgt, one should note that these two fuels (considering just the rough categories of automotive and aviation) are not 'equal' in terms of their production costs (and efficiencies, as brian/jon have pointed out). the grades are something like:

  heating - diesel - regular - jet

the cost of production, however, isn't linear.

however, i think i fall into the odd category of not (yet) being a direct consumer (until the train travel category is added)

Subject: Fuel consumption for other modes of transportation

There seem to be two distinct issues here: (1) What are the environmental consequences of a given mode of transport vs. other modes; (2) What should gastax.org offer?

All the questions of planes vs. cars notwithstanding, I think gastax.org should offer members the opportunity to be as socially responsible with their plane (or train or lawn mower, etc.) gas consumption as they are with their automotive gas consumption.

So give each member the option (with appropriate encouragement) to include other means of fossil fuel consumption -- perhaps just planes at first. The marginal increase in administrative work to make this option available is surely outweighed by the awareness that such an option will engender.

While I'm not yet fully involved in the VGT, I think the idea is a great one and I would like to see it applied to as many forms of fossil fuel consupmtion as possible. With a bit of research and simple math a table of uses and their correlated VGT charges could be worked out. This would give people a simple way of opting into the gas tax--actually calculating what they would owe--and it would also give a good perspective on comparative efficiencies and amounts for different forms. For example, if I mow my lawn with a gas mower, how much would I owe and how does that compare to driving my car? Or if I look at my gas meter at home, how much petroleum product am I using to wash my clothes, heat my house, etc? If I look at my electricity bill for all my lights and such, approximately how much fossil fuel is consumed at an industrial power generation facility (fossil fuel facility naturally) to generate that much electricity?

I think the airplane example is very illustrative of my point: in general people don't have a clear picture of how much fossil fuel they each use in many different ways. A table of uses and relevant figures would be a good use of the VGT mission to provide the information that might help people realize the real amounts they use and make specific efforts to change their habits.

I have been an enthusiastic supporter of (and been paying significant money to) VGT since its inception.

On the question of rates, my preference would be to lower it to 25 cents per gallon since a) for those like me who can't avoid driving 10-15,000 miles a year it is pretty expensive (of course, that is partly the point!) and b) maybe there would be significantly more people signing up if it were lower.

There of course is a connection between fuel consumption and the Middle East and I have been very involved in anti-war activities, so I think it is great to discuss. However, I think it complicates and diminishes the effectiveness of organizations when the mission is too broad, so I am opposed to providing VGT support to political/social organizations. How about an issues page of the VGT web site devoted to all the issues that people can think of that relate to fuel consumption?

Plane travel is very relevant but mileage reporting would be different. It could be a separate category that people could sign up for and report on.

Edited by author 04-16-2003 03:06 AM
Subject: Middle-east peace organizations

Here's a quick summary of what people have said in response to Jeffrey's question:
   "Should the VGT expand the types of organizations it supports to include organizations pursuing peace in the Middle East?"

Yes, we should expand -- nobody

No, we should stay focused on work "to mitigate the effects of and discourage the use of petroleum products" -- Jon, Timothy, Alan

Abstain, either way sounds fine -- Brian

Subject: airplane gas tax

Here's a quick summary of what people have said in response to Jeffrey's question:
   "Do you think it would be a good idea for the VGT to have a similar voluntary tax on air travel?"

Yes -- people who think it'd be fine to offer an optional airplane gas tax as a separate category -- Jon, Timothy, Marc, Ben, Alan, Brian

No, that's not a good idea -- nobody