I've read quite a few diaries today about how if you don't support a tax on mileage, you're somehow not environmentally friendly, not green, not doing your bit.
I beg to differ.
In the years before I left the UK for these shores, the government over there was discussing a similar kind of tax. They were almost drooling over the new European satellite system, Galileo, which is the up to date version of the GPS system that's now over 30 years old.
The government was waiting fro Galileo to come online, so that they could impose a tax on mileage, by making it mandatory for Galileo-compatible two way satellite transceivers to be fitted in every vehicle. These transceivers would report the mileage each vehicle did, and the registered owner of the vehicle would be billed accordingly.
This, the government took great pains to say, was a "green" tax. It was to discourage people from driving whenever they didn't have to. The problem was - it isn't true.
You see, a mileage tax doesn't do what we need to do to save the environment. Instead of putting the onus on car manufacturers to make cleaner fuels or research fuel cells, it puts the burden on the drivers of vehicles. What the tax quite deliberately doesn't take into account is those who for one reason or another need their vehicles; mainly businesses, and particularly couriers and haulage companies. These people are going to have to try and find the money, and inevitably some of them won't be able to and will go under. Meanwhile, the automobile industry can squirm out from its responsibilities in terms of making less polluting vehicles because they push the view that it's the drivers fault, not theirs.
I don't have a car. I have a bicycle and I use public transport extensively. But even if I was a car driver, I would still disagree with the principle of a mileage tax purely because all you are doing is levying a new tax on already overstretched people. A green tax needs to hit where it will do the most good - on the production of vehicles that continue to pollute, with tax breaks on automobile companies that come up with new and less polluting methods of running cars, vans and lorries.
When GM and other automobile companies approached the government for a bail out, I feel Obama missed a great opportunity. I feel any money lent to them should have been subject to them using a percentage set by the government of that bail out money, on R&D for cleaner fuel alternatives. They've fought it so far, but then was no better time to force them to give in. Did you know, for instance, that Herr Rudolf Diesel never designed his diesel fuel system to be petroleum based? It was changed from vegetable oil base to petroleum base after his death, when those who held the patent felt that it was a more efficient, inexhaustible alternative.
It's time we told the automobile industry as a whole that environment friendly issues are at the forefront of where they should be placing the bulk of their research and development budget. A mileage tax is not the answer. It won't work in the UK (assuming the government over there does bring it in when Galileo goes live in 2014) and it certainly won't work here.