Harvard researchers score another point for expensive gasoline: carbon emission reduction.

And as I’ve chronicled, there are a bevy of other ways we’d benefit from higher gas prices, not the least of which would be more government revenue. A mere $1 tax on the price of gasoline would raise $400 million a day. Per day. That’s $140 billion a year. That’s more than a putty fix for our gaping deficit.

The federal gas tax is stuck at 18 cents per gallon and has been since the early 1990s. It hasn’t crept up for inflation or the sizable increase in the cost to build roads. The gas tax has become the political third rail in Washington. Nobody wants to touch it. Healthcare, as scary as it is to mess with, evokes fewer complaints than would a gas tax.

The failure to address our fuel addiction through a device as simple as a gas tax is one of the most colossal failures of our government. This is not a small issue.

Just raise it (the gas tax) already. The future–a constructive one–has to begin at some point. May as well start now.

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