CBS News reports that California is considering effectively penalizing people for driving fuel efficient cars.

College student Jayson Just commutes an odometer-spinning 2,000 miles a month. As CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, his monthly gas bill once topped his car payment.

“I was paying about $500 a month,” says Just.

So Just bought a fuel efficient hybrid and said goodbye to his gas-guzzling BMW.

And what kind of mileage does he get?

“The EPA estimate is 60 in the city, 51 on the highway,” says Just.

And that saves him almost $300 a month in gas. It’s great for Just but bad for the roads he’s driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.

And from this story:

About 25 per cent of price paid by consumers for gas goes to the government which uses it for development and maintenance of highways. And fuel efficient cars would reduce the revenue which would make them good for drivers but bad for the roads, CBS television network reported.

Experts estimated that such cars could give up to 96 km in the city and about 80 km on highways. The rising price of gas could lead to more consumers selecting fuel efficient vehicles which would cut down the revenue, it said.

The method being considered is every time a car is filled up, the tax would be charged. CBS said a computer in the gas station would communicate with the odometer of the car to determine how much the person filling the gas owes as tax on the basis of miles he had driven since the last filling.

I was going to make some sarcastic comment about waiting for the regulation on cow emissions, but then I noticed this:

Researchers sleuthing for the source of smog-forming emissions from dairy cows may have been looking at the wrong end of the animal.

Moreover, California’s 1.5 million cows may have been taking too much of the blame for the state’s air pollution.

These are the preliminary findings presented by a UC Davis scientist recently at a symposium in Fresno hosted by the California Air Resources Board.

If the new study is adopted by the air quality regulators, it could give a break to the state’s $4.6 billion dairy industry.

By incorporating the new study, fewer dairy farms would likely fall under new state and regional guidelines that are being drafted to bring the state’s agriculture into compliance with the Federal Clean Air Act.

It may also lead to dairy producers changing what they feed their cows to reduce the amount of smog-causing volatile organic compounds that the animals emit from belching.