But in the United States, with retail gas prices continuing at historic highs -- and the prospect of an environmentalist Gore-Lieberman administration for the next four years -- the potential exists for similar economic dislocation over fossil fuel prices.

Whether U.S. public rage would simmer quietly, and then erupt as outright civil disobedience, as in Europe -- or whether it would blow off steam and become a political issue early-on -- is a matter of conjecture.

What's clear is that under Gore-Lieberman, environmentally inspired political machinations concerning U.S. energy policy -- with devastating effect on the federal gas tax -- would continue or even increase, with resulting chaos to the highway industry and disruption to the economy.
 

European unrest on high fuel taxes

In Europe at the end of summer, the highways erupted with protests against high fuel taxes and costs. In early September public actions exploded across Belgium, Germany, France and Spain.

In mid-September, oil protests continued unabated across the Continent. In Norway -- the world's second largest exporter of petroleum after Saudi Arabia -- hundreds of truckers blocked terminals in four southern cities, and two terminals and an oil refinery in the west. The Norwegian truckers launched the blockade after the government finance minister would not promise fuel tax cuts in a draft 2001 budget. Despite its riches of oil, Norway has some of the highest prices for gasoline and diesel fuel in the world.

In mid-September, France subdued protests by saying it would lower fuel taxes, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair would not do so and actually called in the military to escort fuel trucks to filling stations.

In Britain, taxes amount to 74 percent of the cost of fuel. But in the United States, it's about 36 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas, most of it dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund.

Could fuel protests explode in the United States? In March, noisy trucker caravans rolled over the highways to the nation's capital, protesting high fuel prices and demanding tax rollbacks. The furor resulted in repeated partisan attacks on the U.S. federal fuel tax, which funds road construction and maintenance from coast-to-coast.

"We don't know what's going to happen here," said Michael Shanahan, spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, as reported by Fox News. "There are fears that there will not be enough heating oil in New England this winter [and] all the refineries are running at nearly 100 percent capacity."

Gas taxes in European countries are at least double what they are in the United States and sometimes more than that, Shanahan said. European prices are, on average, more than $4 per gallon for unleaded gas.

In mid-September Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said home heating oil prices could nearly double this winter there unless more oil is supplied to the market. Schumer urged New Yorkers to fill home tanks now to avoid price spikes in winter. Schumer called for the Clinton-Gore administration to release oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to lower prices, and in a baldly political move, the reserve was to be tapped.
 

Ambiguous Clinton-Gore energy policy

Underlying this uncertainty in fuel price and availability is the ambiguous energy policy of the Clinton-Gore administration.

Clinton-Gore's enigmatic energy policy has been torn between two conflicting paradigms, the economy's elemental need for low-cost, reliable energy, and the administration's heartfelt desire to curtail fossil fuel use and satisfy its environmental constituency.

Our nation's current, prosperous economy is built on three essential elements: a hard-working population which is the most productive in the world; continuing productivity enhancements brought about by cheap computerization and automation; and low-cost, reliable, fossil-fuel energy.

Low-cost, reliable energy in the U.S. is made possible by abundant coal reserves firing low-cost electricity, and importation of recently low-cost petroleum from overseas to provide gasoline, diesel fuel and home heating fuel. In 1997 coal amounted to 57 percent of U.S. electricity generated.

But to satisfy its environmental imperatives, the Clinton-Gore administration has undertaken measures to suppress coal use. This has been done through drastically reduced particulate matter rules, restrictive regional haze guidelines, and support for ozone transport litigation which pits U.S. Midwestern and Southeastern states against Northeastern states.

By executive order, administration directives have put vast tracts of western states off-limits to coal mining, despite their proven abundant reserves. And the administration-supported Kyoto Protocol would compel legislation that would force the United States away from low-cost fossil fuels, to forestall presumed global warming.

While the administration tries to move the economy away from coal, and nuclear energy declines due to neglect, its Interior Department supports dismantling of dams, which constitute the only truly clean, renewable energy source that could generate electricity in the volume it's needed if coal were to be abandoned.

Only natural gas remains as an acceptable fossil fuel for power generation, but it is subject to wide fluctuations in price, and is only seen as a stop-gap on the road to complete power generation through unconventional renewable sources like solar and wind power.

Regarding petroleum, the administration has discouraged domestic oil production and has also placed large areas off-limits to domestic drilling. The net result is that the country no longer has an abundant domestic oil production supply with which to counter price spikes in foreign oil.

Meantime, at the Department of Transportation, bureaucrats push environmentally acceptable modes of transportation as alternates to the conventional internal combustion-powered private vehicle, while state departments of transportation chafe at existing road project planning and environmental regulations.

In fact, Senate and House transportation committees held oversight hearings Sept. 12 and 13, respectively, for guidance on the proposed environmental streamlining of projects mandated by TEA-21, the current federal surface transportation legislation.

And in 2000, when the fuel price spikes occurred domestically, instead of re-examining its own energy policy, the administration attacked the oil industry, suggesting price collusion was taking place in "Big Oil" and threatening federal investigations. Links of the Republican presidential ticket to "Big Oil" were highlighted and questioned.
 

High fuel prices under Gore

There is no doubt that a Gore-Lieberman victory in November would continue the energy policy begun under Clinton-Gore, and maybe make it worse, due to the personal stake and convictions the vice president has in moving this nation away from fossil fuels and toward unconventional sources.

Gore already has pledged the United States to economically devastating cuts in its energy use, through the Kyoto Treaty on greenhouse gas emissions, which he personally rescued and negotiated in 1997 when it looked like the treaty was about to fail on an international scale.

The most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, produced by the combustion of fossil fuels like gasoline, coal and natural gas. Increasing quantities of greenhouse gases are alleged to be causing catastrophic global warming now and in decades to come.

With Kyoto, Gore committed the United States to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 7 percent of 1990 levels by the years 2008 to 2012, while underdeveloped countries would have to make no cuts at all. While this sounds modest, because U.S. electricity consumption has grown so much since 1990, it actually amounts to a nearly one-third reduction of our projected emissions by the deadline.

If ratified by the Senate, this ambitious target would require Americans to slash their energy use drastically. Inescapably, heavy taxes or high carbon permit prices would be imposed on fossil fuel energy use. Higher energy prices would result in sharp declines in domestic demand for the products made by energy-producing and -intensive industries.

"Higher energy prices would depress domestic output, encourage imports and reduce exports of energy-intensive manufactured products," reported the American Petroleum Institute. "Finally, sharp declines in output, along with shifts in the balance of trade to higher imports and lower exports, would result in a significant loss of jobs in energy-intensive industries and in the companies supplying those industries."

And as higher prices for low-cost energy rippled through the economy, devastation in the highway industry, and recession, or depression in the general economy would result.

President Clinton signed the Kyoto Treaty despite zero support for the treaty in the U.S. Senate, which unanimously rejected its elements 95-0 in a non binding Sense of the Senate vote earlier. But that hasn't stopped the administration from forcing its elements on the American public.
 

Back-door implementation

Knowing the Senate would never ratify the treaty, the Clinton-Gore administration has done an end-around the Senate, quietly continuing so-called "back door" implementation of the treaty's elements through the EPA and other channels.

For his part, last year Sen. Lieberman joined with the late Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) to offer S. 547, which would reward generators that switch fuels to generate emission credits in advance of the Kyoto Protocol's initial 2008-2012 compliance period, thereby providing an economic incentive to electric utilities to reduce coal use and carbon emissions.

It may be recalled that Chafee was the driving force behind mandated use of rubber in liquid asphalt, a bitterly fought element of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1987, and joined with outgoing Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) in crafting the Intermodal Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, which moved national transportation policy away from highways and toward mass transit and other modes.

Thus, in this process, Clinton-Gore energy policy becomes Gore-Lieberman policy, with the net result being higher energy prices and more uncertainty over raw generating fuels.
 

Unhappy truth for highways under Gore

The unhappy truth for the highway industry is that a Gore-Lieberman administration will mean -- and probably would want -- higher taxes and prices for gasoline.

Early in the first Clinton-Gore term, the vice president pushed a deficit-reduction tax on Btus (British thermal units) of energy. This was shot down by the Republican Congress, but European-style high gas taxes are one of the prime methods being pushed by the environmental movement to discourage car use and curtail so-called urban sprawl.

This is reflected in Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance, which argued for radical, not incremental, U.S. energy policy change to forestall presumed climate change. "It ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a twenty-five-year period," Gore wrote. "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization."

And higher taxes on fuel are the means to the end. "Higher taxes on fossil fuels ... [are] one of the logical first steps in changing our policies in a manner consistent with a more responsible approach to the environment," Gore wrote in Earth in the Balance, which was reissued this year with a new preface. Asked in 1999 whether he still supports the tome, Gore responded "There is not a single passage in that book that I disagree with, or would change."

Those with a vested interest in the highway construction and maintenance industry would be well advised to study how a change in administrations will affect their livelihoods.
 

END