With a few of the recent fires to the north of SF we've also had the charming situation in the South Bay of ocean breezes blowing the smoke from the fires over us... it was blowing down the cost offshore of SF, and then inland.
SF != SF Bay Area
In fact we're in that kind of scenario right this minute.
By making the tax small and gradual, everybody can PLAN around the fact that gas is going up instead of the dislocation from when gasoline prices whipsaw.
The problem is that we have zero political will to do this. People will attack the gas tax instead of attacking the lack of transportation options.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/jpube-v...
as for the tax being regressive, we could provide a tax credit for low-income/low-wealth folks. even better if we could figure out a way to calculate (differential) tax on-the-fly at the pump.
LA has started rolling out blueLA, electric cars rentable by the minute, in low-income neighborhoods. it's not a complete solution, but it helps.
For only automobiles, possibly.
But a slow and consistent increase in petroleum price incentivizes the trucking industry as well.
And, as the article points out, the trucking industry is responsible for huge pollution hotspots near the ports.
Before you think that's isn't possible, it's not uncommon for a semi to have a range of 2000 miles.[1]
1 - https://www.quora.com/What’s-the-average-range-for-a-diesel-...
A tax on gas doesn't solve the surrounding geography.
Emissions in LA have plummeted since the 1970s, but while air quality has improved in that time, it has not improved as fast as the drop in emissions would predict based on other cities. That's because of the surrounding geography - air pollution gets trapped there and doesn't clear out as easily.
And already the highest priced in the US
The problem here is that we implicitly (and sometimes not so implicitly) subsidize the infrastructure for cars and the moment you try to start making that subsidy explicit everybody loses their minds.
The primary issue, as people have pointed out, is that gasoline taxes tend to have a regressive effect and hit the poorest the worst. To make matters even more complicated, the poorest also tend to have the oldest cars that pollute the worst--so letting them completely off the hook isn't really a valid solution, either.