The beauty of the excise tax on economic merchandise for which the demand is, if not inflexible, militant, is that we are dealing with a form of regressive taxation. Yes, when the gas price rises there is a decline in the use of the car, but it is a reluctant decline. An increase in the cost of gas by 100 percent does not cause a 100 percent decline in the use of automobiles. Cigarettes are analogous: Increase the price of cigarettes by 4 percent and you get a 1 percent reduction in the use of them. Gas, especially in America where the tax is, compared to Europe's, a measly 22 percent, is a Way of Life. And a deprivation of gas is on the order of a deprivation of something guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The American people are fiercely resistant in the matter.
There is a palliative at hand. We have 600 million barrels of oil in our strategic reserve, topped up for use in case of national emergency. We could ease that oil out at least until the winter fuel crisis abates. But the strategic problem isn't solved. We are not about to invade Saudi Arabia, and we have before faced unsuccessfully the problem of oil oligopoly. The new wisecrack at our expense, from an anonymous OPEC representative, is that the OPEC people will worry about oligopoly after the United States has solved the Microsoft problem.
We are left looking in the face, one more time, of alternative energy sources, specifically nuclear power. The quarrels go on, though not much public attention is given to them. China says its Qinshan project is on line and in two or three years will be making 6.6 million kilowatts of power from the four new plants. Russia is contemplating a huge program over 30 years, and intends to offer its nuclear-plant construction skills to India and Iran. Taiwan is debating whether to go further in nuclear power. Japan plans to proceed with nuclear energy.
Only 6 percent of the world's energy now comes from nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy advocates are advancing what is a form of counter-environmentalist advocacy. The critics of nuclear power have rested their case substantially on the toxicity of accidents of the kind associated with Chernobyl. The pro-nuclear people now stress that the global-warming agents are absent from nuclear power. It is fossil fuels that increase radiation. But that still leaves the problem of accidental leaks and of the disposal of nuclear waste.
Surely this is one for the presidential candidates to explore? Let's hear Mr. Bush talk about the strategic limitations of oil, and Mr. Gore talk about the strategic importance of nuclear energy.