I got all the way through this story this morning on the threatened trucking strike without a real idea of what, exactly, the truckers want - besides lower prices for diesel fuel.

At one point there’s a suggestion that Gov. Rendell ought to elminate Pennsylvania’s diesel fuel tax of 38.1 cents per gallon; and indeed, in this piece we see the organizer of today’s rally in Harrisburg demanding that all state taxes and federal taxes be removed from fuel. That won’t fly, obviously, as that money is used to pay for highway and other infrastructure needs.

You can obviously understand why the truckers feel pinched and want the state or feds to do something about it. But the underlying statement here seems to be that both the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the federal government should be pursuing the lowest possible fuel prices as a matter of policy.

Is that a desirable goal? Should the overriding goal of government be to keep prices at the pump down? There’s an obvious economic incentive for that, but it also requires other things. For one, it requires a crackdown on the enormous profits of the oil industry - something I’m sure most motorists and truckers would support, though increased regulation is hardly the conservative answer to the problem.

But what of the environmental consequences to a policy that, first and foremost, promotes cheap fuel? What of the national security consequences, in terms of our continued dependence upon foreign oil, and the need then to continue intervening in the area of the world where that oil exists in abundance?

To the extent that high gas prices force innovation and conservation, they are or can be seen as a good thing. If the United States needs to get off the Mideast oil teat, high prices are about the only thing that’s going to force that change. But it will be a disruptive change, no doubt; it may well result in the consolidation of the trucking industry, as the bigger companies have the wherewithal to respond to changing market conditions that the little guys simply can’t handle.

That’s a rather bloodless way for someone not in the trucking industry to put it, of course. I’m just wondering whether a policy with a goal of cheap fuel ultimately draws more blood than it saves.