Eight dollars. That’s about the average price of a gallon of gas in Europe. More than double our current prices. I’ve heard this before and now it feels pertinent to talk about when comparing to our current situation. But it seems like Europeans, for the most part, are fine with what they pay (unlike most Americans). It doesn’t cost more to produce gas in Europe than in the US. The reason for the markup is a result of government levied taxes, funding various initiatives such as health care and public transportation. Studies show that taxation has been the primary cause for reduced oil consumption. While US consumption has grown about 21% in the last decade, our European counterparts have seen stagnant or reduced consumption.
As much as I don’t like government intervention with certain policies, I feel this is a pressing matter that needs to be addressed. There are two options to choose from: we can either start passing legislation that increases fuel economy or we can increase the taxes that we pay on gas. Either way, some action is needed to curb our growing hunger for oil so we can fund public transportation projects or invest in alternative energies.
Graphical Representation of Worldwide Fuel Economy
2 responses so far ↓
1 James // May 5, 2008 at 1:09 pm
One thing we could do domestically would be to ACTUALLY tap into our current oil reserves to reduce our dependency on foreign oil while we were on a sustainable fuel source.
Note I said SUSTAINABLE and not RENEWABLE. The BS political line for a RENEWABLE fuel source is a plug for corn based ethanol support which will do more harm globally than good.
Sustainable fuels would be sources such as Hydrogen Fuel Cells etc. that are abundant and clean as anything you could imagine.
Legislating MPG rules will drive out domestic auto manufacturing by running their already thinly stretched R&D accounts into the red due to already lagging sales of CURRENT cars. Hiking gas taxes will just bankrupt the American public and kill auto sales in this country due to a complete lack of a will to drive or buy a new car.
BTW, I want to add your blog to my links section but I’m at a loss to which category to group your blog in. Would you say you fit Right Leaning, Neutral or Left Leaning more.
2 cshenoy // May 5, 2008 at 2:59 pm
James, thanks for the feedback. I agree with your sentiments on sustainable energy sources. One of which is solar energy. It has received a lot of support recently but not so much from the government. The corn-based ethanol subsidies obviously has become more and more apparent as a failure in policy and should be repealed to focus more on other places. I haven’t fully researched into tapping our domestic oil reserves and thus wan’t to refrain from commenting. I’ll look into it more.
As for the links section, I’d say I’m more of a left-leaning individual but I do have my libertarian moments.
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