"Today’s financial crisis is Obama’s 9/11. The public is ready to be mobilized."

"Obama is coming in with enormous popularity. This is his best window of opportunity to impose a gas tax. And he could make it painless: offset the gas tax by lowering payroll taxes, or phase it in over two years at 10 cents a month. But if Obama, like Bush, wills the ends and not the means — wills a green economy without the price signals needed to change consumer behavior and drive innovation — he will fail."

Thomas Friedman argues for a gas tax to eliminate the lure of low prices.