Unlikely. Higher prices is the only thing that will make most people try to conserve. Now the taxes don't have to be "crushing". They should be reasonable, but there will always be some whining regardless of how small the tax is. An economic downturn is a poor excuse to do nothing. With that kind of thinking we'll always follow the tried-and-failed reactionary/short-sighted approach - panic, get outraged and call for more drilling when oil prices are high, then when they drop we just get comfortable and move on to other things until oil prices rise up again. We really need to put a real price on carbon, not just based on economic supply and demand but also based on environmental damage & national security concerns. That will create a more stable market for alternatives which is exactly what's been lacking.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL