July 23, 2007 10:56 AM

Is This the Answer?

Raymond J. Learsy made an interesting proposition today. In response to the mounting threat of oil dependency when the world's supply of oil is steadily diminishing, Learsy proposes an idea that, while controversial, could actually work: Gas Rationing.
According to Learsy, gas rationing and the accompanying decline in gasoline consumption could:

* Collapse the price of oil
* Reduce our CO2 emissions in a truly significant and meaningful way
* Free us from our dependence on duplicitous foreign suppliers
* Realign the balance between suppliers of oil and its consumers (us)
* Greatly enhance our national security
* Result in the rebirth and an enormous stimulus to our automobile sector, through the steeply enhanced demand for flex fuel, plug in vehicles. We have some 230 million cars on the road of which only six million have a flex fuel capability.
* Result in a boom to our farm belt whereby the billions we are sending to malign foreign regimes would now stay at home
* Create an immediate boom and new jobs as our economy is forced to focus on clean renewable energy sources be it biomass, wind, geothermal, solar power along with a wave of new and imaginative technological and agricultural innovations.
* The economic benefits of gearing up and developing a national distribution system permitting access to biofuel and plug in facilities throughout the land. We have 160,000 filling stations and only 1002 with ethanol/biofuel capability
* Renewed interest and needed massive investment in our mass transportation system, especially our passenger rail service such as Amtrak
* Not least, revesting us as a nation with a level of moral authority in that we, the world's most gluttonous oil consumer, will have assumed the mantle of conservation leadership.