Just following on from my lost post, I’ve just watched an interesting piece on Channel 4 news about fuel prices and green taxes.
In the piece, one of the talking heads said something like "road pricing is far fairer [than fuel duty] by pricing on distance travelled". I can’t help thinking that this way of thinking is flawed. Surely we have to drive behaviour towards more environmentally friendly fuels and vehicles rather than away from travel altogether.
If fuel and vehicles are taxed based on the CO2 they generate, it seems to me that the carrot and stick are then acting in the right direction. Especially if some of that tax is aimed at the fuel and car companies rather than the consumer – this would incentivise them towards creating cleaner fuels and cars that can use them.