Protestors upset about high fuel prices don't understand the way the world works. Taxes on petroleum products are most unlikely to come down, no matter how forcefully people complain.
Part of the reason is that no government -- even one that occasionally pretends it would like to make itself smaller -- wants to forgo such a handy means of financing its own activities.
However, the really serious stumbling block lies elsewhere, with the moral guardians of our society -- the greens, the Australian Democrats, and the posturing factions of the Labor Party. Despite their pleasure at the Howard Government's discomfort over the rise in fuel prices, these worthies think that petroleum products are still far too cheap.
This is because petrol, like alcohol and tobacco, is a wicked substance. Inexpensive petrol and the automobiles it powers play an essential part in our contemporary way of life, allowing the masses to enjoy an otherwise unattainable degree of individual autonomy and prosperity.
This distresses our cultural elites, who don't like sharing public amenities with people whose attitudes and tastes they despise, and who would prefer a more controlled society which reflected their own values. But our democratic and egalitarian culture precludes them from voicing such sentiments too loudly.
So they confine themselves to fretting about the environmental damage that supposedly results from all this wealth and freedom, even though the worst environmental calamities are invariably caused by societies that are authoritarian, collectivist and poor.
While our cultural elites can't ban the private consumption of petrol, they are good at ensuring that people feel guilty about using it, thereby justifying punitive levels of taxation and other charges. If you are unhappy about the present price of petrol, just wait a few years until some future left-leaning government attempts to meet the 1997 Kyoto Protocol targets for reducing carbon emissions.
Indeed, from the perspective of our moral guardians, in some ways petrol is even more iniquitous than alcohol and tobacco. While all three are a source of massive profits for the hated global corporations, alcohol and tobacco have one saving grace. Their production and distribution do not necessarily depend on large-scale industrial enterprises -- they can be easily produced by local cottage industries. But refining petroleum is not the sort of thing you can do in your own back yard.
So organisations such as Greenpeace labour mightily to prevent the development of new oilfields. They have achieved some success with the Stuart shale oil project near Gladstone, as their opposition has helped to put on hold the next stage of the development. Greenpeace is now placing advertisements in the financial press, warning investors that they face great risks if they put their money into similar projects.
Even the multinational companies which manufacture petroleum products seem to feel uncomfortable about their activities, and wish they could be making something else. Two months ago, after swallowing up a number of its fellow evildoers such as Amoco and Castrol, the company formerly known as British Petroleum announced its transformation.
Proclaiming itself 'the world's leading producer of solar power', BP stated that henceforth its initials would stand for "beyond petroleum". Yet the amount that solar power currently contributes to BP's earnings -- and is likely to contribute in the foreseeable future -- is very small. To appreciate the full significance of this change, ask yourself whether Fosters or Castlemaine Perkins are ever likely to adopt "beyond alcohol" as a marketing slogan.
Of course, those who foster petroleum guilt claim that unless we curb our use of oil and other carbon-based fuels, the earth's climate will experience a catastrophic increase in temperature over the next century. A new global industry has been built around the enhanced greenhouse effect, as environmentalists, bureaucrats, scientists and others seek to cash in on public fears about global warming.
However, the scientific justifications for linking increasing levels of carbon emissions with global warming are not as sound as environmentalists would have us believe. The earth has long experienced a considerable degree of natural climate variability. There is strong evidence, for instance, that around 1,000 years ago, long before the large scale use of fossil fuel, much of the earth was somewhat warmer than it is at present.
And the American NASA scientist Dr James Hansen, who in 1988 played a crucial role in instigating the current greenhouse panic -- which supplanted 1970s fears about a coming "Ice Age" -- has recently had a significant change of heart. While he still believes that carbon dioxide emissions and global warming are linked, he also concedes that too much emphasis has been placed on cutting fossil fuel consumption.
Hansen notes that other gases such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons are major causes of the 0.5 degree centigrade warming that has occurred over the past century, and that it would be less economically damaging to concentrate on reducing atmospheric concentrations of these substances.
This upset many greens, who find the prospect of serious economic damage to industrial capitalist societies a most appealing notion, especially if it helps bring about the social transformation they desire. Indeed, as Patrick Moore, a now disillusioned co-founder of Greenpeace suggests, this is what makes radical environmentalism so attractive for them.
So instead of blockading oil refineries or attacking John Howard, truckies and other people who appreciate the great benefits of reasonably priced, petroleum-driven private transport should target their real adversaries -- Greenpeace and all the other vested interests of the greenhouse panic industry.
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