Feebate, Anyone?

In the old days, it would have been called the carrot and the stick approach. Offer an incentive for doing the right thing, and impose a penalty for doing the wrong thing. If you're driving a donkey cart, it's a great way to get the donkey moving forward. If you're a parent, it works well to earn your kids' cooperation.

And if you're the state of California -- and you call it a "feebate" -- it might just be the ticket for weaning car buyers off their gas-guzzlers.

The State Assembly will vote this week on a bill that would impose a one-time surcharge of up to $2,500 on each gas-guzzling car registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles, and award a registration rebate of up to $2,500 for fuel-efficient cars.

Classic carrot and stick economics. Classic market-based incentive.

The bill (AB 493) was defeated in the Assembly last year when seven Los Angeles Democrats abstained under lobbying pressure from auto dealers -- who fear declining sales of less fuel-efficient vehicles.

But the re-introduced bill could go the other way this time because of public demands for action on climate change.

"We put 1.8 million vehicles a year on the road in California," Assemblyman Ira Ruskin (D-Redwood City), the bill's author, told the Los Angeles Times. "We have to find ways to get more clean cars on the road and more dirty cars off. There's no time to waste if we're to avoid the catastrophes ahead from global warming."

That includes catastrophic impacts on the ocean.

Ruskin drafted the bill with the help of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The legislation has now been endorsed by the San Jose Mercury News in an editorial, and by the Los Angeles Times.

If you're a Californian, there's still time to weigh in with your legislator.