US gas gripes - do they make sense internationally?

What I can say is that gas prices being what they are now ($3.10 per gallon for regular), I cannot justify owning a car. I am (very) lucky that this is a choice (b/c I live in a place w/ public transit). My friends in North Carolina have no choice at all. And that's the case for most of the country.

When I last had a car (2 years ago), I was APALLED that I had to pay $2.25 for a gallon of gas. With the subsequent jumps in price, I've grown numb to horror.

The other thing is that in places like the uk tax takes p 80% of the cost of fuel and is assessed by energy content so a doubling in the underlying cost of fuel only amounts to a 20% rise. In the US where taxes are more typically in the 20% range a doubling amounts to an 80% rise.

xpost,

the Ragget cycle runs on Ragget

One day, sometime, everyone on ILX who has known me and seen my posts for years will spell my last name correctly. ;-)

i may be in your are next month.

I'm glad Americans are bitching about it, because apparently the bitching is taking the form of considering alternatives, which is something I wouldn't have given many Americans credit for doing.

Incidentally, Canadian gas prices have gone up even higher than the equivalent of $3.10US a gallon... at least $1.10CAN a litre now?

This typo could go one of two ways.

*OK, we'll go metric, but we're not going to spell it your way)

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/byprice.exclude.html

(and a longer list from March 05):

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/

Of course, a lot of wage-earners whose real wages are stagnant will find that they can't afford to drive to work anymore, and can't afford the rents closer to the city centers either, so they'll have to take lower-paying jobs close to home or move in and be rent-poor, causing a lot of genuine economic pain and disruption, maybe bankruptcies, foreclosures, that sort of thing, as gas prices continue to rise. But, um, yay environment and boo Republicans, I suppose.

There are indeed some things that Americans should be paying a lot more for. Like gasoline, or even food.

I, too, look forward to making our poor people poorer.

I know there's a certain crass demographic that will continue to buy huge cars and build huge houses just to flaunt it, even more fun now that rising fuel bills put those trophies out of reach of the merely middling-wealthy. But those things will be relics, soon.

Middle class drivers are feeling the pinch, sure, but now the car manufacturers are compelled to change, as they were in the 70's. Ford will crank out a passel of crap Focuses, to be sure, the Pinto of our day, but more hybrids are on the way, too, and when they start trickling down into the used-car lots we'll all be better off.

People became accustomed to high gas prices (and those lines!) in the 70s, and how much improvement in fuel efficiency have we really seen since then? Only after sustained high price levels will auto manufacturers get their fingers out of their ass (as opposed to just cooking MPG calculations however they can and advertising them prominently). And only after that might the US see the kinds of structural improvements that will ween it off cars.

According to this IEA fact sheet, if efficiency savings had not been made since 1973 the world would be using 50% more energy at the present time.

Okay, so I stand corrected, mostly. Although I would also like to see figures for the number of automobiles in key countries from 1973 to 2006. The rate of growth in Russia and the former Soviet Union, for example, would have skyrocketed over that period.

Whatever - I guess it's hard to argue with "This shows that the oil price shocks in the 1970s and the resulting energy policies did considerably more to control growth in energy demand and CO2 emissions than energy efficiency and climate policies implemented in the 1990s." All we need are some real energy policies (aside from tax rebates to Exxon/Mobil and Chevron).

does "driving" include trucks/semis/lorries or just passenger cars?

So because fuel average fuel efficiency in the US is so low through consumer choice big strides can be made without technological advancement.

Sorry to dumb everything down but, here you're basically just saying that the US vehicle fleet is heavy on low-MPG SUVs and we make improvements simply by people switching to Honda Accords, not to speak of Priuses.