Submitted by Carney, Dec 28, 2007 15:30

Frum rightly complains about oil funding our enemies and rivals, including the jihadi and their promoters (Saudi Arabia and Iran), Venezuela, and Russia. But his solution, a carbon tax, misses the mark.

A carbon tax is meant to convince Americans and businesses to abandon oil-based fuels, such as gasoline, in favor of alternatives, by raising the price of gas over its current competitors, such as ethanol or methanol.

The problem is, the OPEC cartel already hikes oil prices far above the market level by state fiats ordering socialized oil companies to reduce production. The price of oil was $20 a barrel as recently as 2002. Now it's $100 a barrel. Despite all the hype about hybrids, they are still less than 1% of the US auto fleet. Flex fuel cars that can run on gasoline or alcohol are about 3%.

If the profound shock of quintupling the oil price in five years won't do the trick, how will any carbon tax accomplish it?

What we need is the solution proposed by former NASA engineer Robert Zubrin in his book "Energy Victory". He advocates a mandate that all new cars sold in the US be flex fuel vehicles. Rather than dual-engined hybrids (heavier, redundant, inefficient, and thousands of dollars more expensive), or impractical fantasies such as hydrogen/fuel cells cars, FFVs can be any car you see on the road, just with a little badge perhaps in the back. In three years, there will be 50 million FFVs on the road, and sufficient market demand for alcohol fuel (methanol's market price is 80 cents a gallon) to persuade gas stations to provide an alcohol pump.

The result will be hundreds of billions every year steered to peaceful farmers, not only in the US (whose farm industry would have all the demand it could handle) but also in the Africa and elsewhere in the Third World, providing needed and helpful development via market forces, and AWAY from the jihad promoters and anti-American mischief makers.

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