INCENTIVIZING INNOVATION:

America's oil obsession may need a gas tax (Jonathan Last, 12/16/07, Philadelphia Inquirer)

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, there's reason to be worried by our oil dependency: Liberals don't like the environmental effects and conservatives don't like being held over The Pit of Recession by the OPEC cartel. Of course, that much was true eight years ago. But it is now clear to everyone in the middle that oil dependence has national-security implications, too.

On the most general level, oil is the reason America must care about the Middle East. If we didn't need oil, then America could treat the Middle East with the same sort of neglect we do Africa. (Not to say such neglect would be morally justifiable, only that it would be logistically feasible. Our neglect of Darfur and Rwanda, while reprehensible, hasn't caused us any tangible harm.)

Instead, we are invested in a troublesome, hostile region and worse, we are funding "friends" who are enemies in deed. We call Saudi Arabia a friend, but its aims pose at least as much of a long-term threat as those of Saddam's Iraq and the mullahs' (not Ahmadinejad's) Iran. The money we spend on oil flows into Saudi coffers and then off to various Wahhabi radicals. To take just one example, Saudi money feeds the Wahhabi proselytization that has turned Europe into a cultural powder keg.

The most pernicious effect of our Middle Eastern oil addiction is that it retards the region's political development, keeping it mired in despotism and instability. Oil revenues in Gulf states make taxation there largely unnecessary.

Taxes are, historically, the great motivator for democratization. If folks are made to pay taxes, they often militate for representative forms of government. That's one of the reasons most oil-rich countries don't have meaningful elected assemblies. For the Gulf OPEC states, oil has lubricated tyranny at home and radicalism abroad, making for instability, conflict and much unpleasantness.

Policy observers long have recognized our oil problem. Nearly every U.S. president since Richard Nixon has made noise about achieving oil independence; none has gotten far. But we may finally have reached a point where there's enough consensus - and concern - to build toward real action.