Link: Zakaria: A Way Out of Our Oil Addiction
Fareed Zakaria interviews Amory Lovins, an efficiency genius whose message is beginning to be heard, only 30 years late. His proposal for "feebates" is interesting - I've previously been known to advocate fuel (or carbon) taxes as a mechanism for reducing CO2 emissions, but Lovins does a good job of demolishing this...
Fuel taxes are a much weaker way to affect how efficient a car you buy because they are diluted, roughly seven to one, by the other costs of owning and running the car, and then they are heavily discounted. So, for a typical buyer, looking at a year or two of fuel savings is about as unimportant as whether to buy floor mats.
Ouch...