Meeting the carbon dioxide reductions called for in President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2010 EPA budget means a national “carbon dioxide tax” that would send the price per gallon of gasoline skyrocketing to $7.00 a gallon, The New York Times reports Wednesday.

“To reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector 14 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, the cost of driving must simply increase according to a forthcoming report by researchers at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,” the Times reports.

Their findings will be published in the Spring 2010 edition of the university’s Belfer Center newsletter.

“In their study, the researchers devised several combinations of steps that United States policymakers might take in trying to address the heat-trapping emissions by the nation’s transportation sector, which consumes 70 percent of the oil used in the United States,” the Times reported.

“Most of their models assumed an economy-wide carbon dioxide tax starting at $30 a ton in 2010 and escalating to $60 a ton in 2030.”

WTP members steadfastly oppose a national carbon dioxide tax intended to inflict economic pain on families and consumers.  Not only is the science behind so-called “man-made global warming” unproven, and in an increasing number of cases admittedly phony, many of the activists pushing “cap and tax” and its near-identical twin, the carbon tax, have admitted their goal is not environmental protection, but the downsizing of the United States’ economy, which they consider too large, too prosperous and too capitalist.