I got a great email the other day from a reader in the oil biz locally who had some really interesting suggestions for how we can ease the pain of our current oil crunch.

He does support more drilling, both coastal and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (I'm not with him on that) but beyond that, his conservation ideas were very intriguing.

Got any conservation ideas of your own?

Here's his short list for what we could do if we SERIOUSLY wanted to curtail our oil use:

1.     Give State and Federal tax credits for individuals that use public transportation.  I don’t care where they are going the users get tax credits.  Helps our failing public transportation systems and gets people out of vehicles.

2.     Take all school buses off the streets if there is a close or duplicate public transit system working in the cities.  In California it is estimated that at least 10% of all diesel burned in the state is in school buses.  90% of the school bus systems parallel public transportation systems.

3.     Can’t get Big Auto to build cars that are high gas mileage?  Pick a weight limit of say 2,000 lbs for all passenger vehicles (cars, SUV’s, vans, and trucks) any vehicle sold over that weight pays a penalty of BIG BUCK$ per pound over.  If you buy one that is under the limit you get BIG BUCK$ per pound back.  I do mean BIG BUCK$ like $10 per pound.  Do the same for gas mileage at about 30 MPG only add in motorcycles.  Make this one at $5,000 per MPG.  The government only gets an 8% handling fee for the service of handling the money. (Happens to be the PUC government set rate for electricity and gas.  Also Exxon’s profit last year.)  We could do this by individual States or Nationally.  You want to drive the big ugly Hummer it’s now OK.  You want to drive the supper fast gas guzzling Viper it’s OK.  All you got to do is PAY.  Shouldn’t have any guilt about that.

4.     Require all vehicles or engines to be tuned and smoged every year.  Establish spot road checks that can impound vehicles that are not certified as checked and smoged.  I really do mean all: big trucks, boats, airplanes, cars, SUVs, scooters, any thing with a damn motor.  AND yes all vehicles must go through spot check if one is established.  So all government vehicles get the same crappy & shabby treatment, only I would add that government drivers of these vehicles should get a special fine for knowingly driving a polluting vehicle.

5.     Pass a 60 mph speed limit and enforce it. Bust the police if they don’t enforce it.  And make the fine BIG or impound the vehicle.