Boy... I have been waiting and waiting for someone to say this in a forum where I could reply/rant. So, my question for you is...

What planet are you living on?

Because here, on Earth, in the US, there's not a single high mileage car for sale that I can fit 2 baby seats (for my 4 and 6 year old which will require them til they're EIGHT) and still have room for my 11 year old who weighs 90 pounds and shouldn't sit int he front seat and still be able to ride in the car with my husband.

In short:

1) Even if gas cost a zillion dollars a gallon,

2) and even IF there was something OTHER than gas to BUY

3) I STILL couldn't buy a car that I could fit my whole family in without slicing and dicing them like sardines. Even IF,

4) I hadn't just spent $$,$$$ on a car 3 years ago and couldn't afford to run right out and buy another.

So you say: Walk

And I say: WHERE? You must live in an urban city. There must be SOMEWHERE to WALK TO and sidewalks to walk on! Try moving out of NYC where the REST of us live in towns designed for cars where there are no stores close enough to walk to, there are no side walks, and the public transportation, if there is any at all doesn't go where you need to go and takes forever to get there... or better yet, move to the country where the freaking grocery store is EIGHT MILES AWAY.

So you say: ride a bike

And I say: You can't even ride a bike in my residential neighborhood because of the excessive, and speeding car traffic. There are no shoulders on the roadds. There are no bike paths. There are no sidewalks. It's UNSAFE. Even if I could get my 35 year old fat arse on a bicycle while making sure that my 4, 6 and 11 year old don't get CREAMED by the next car coming around my corner soing 50 in a 25 mph zone. Sure, if EVERYONE rode bikes instead of drove, it might be safe, but everyone's not going to do it, so we are left with an infrastructure DESIGNED FOR CARS and fast becoming a nation where only the rich can afford to drive, the poor must walk, and the middle class spends increasingly more on--not education, medical care, music lessons, or books--but on GAS.

So why should gas be expensive again?

So I'll be forced to make better choices than the mini-van I bought that was the TOP of the MPG rating for its year at a WHOPPING 20 mpg highway?

WHAT BETTER CHOICES!!!???

"Efficient" cars I can't fit my family in. Cities that aren't designed for anything but cars. No place to walk to. Nowhere safe to ride a bike.

I ask you again: What better choices?

A fillup now costs me TWICE what it did when I got the mini-van. And it HURTS, even though I avoid extra trips to unnecessary places... you know, the bank, the doctor, and so on. And where DOES that money GO? It doesn't go to building bike paths. It ddoesn't go to research to increase fuel efficiency. It doesn't go to designing efficient cars that might actually fit a family larger than 4.

It goes in the pockets of Dick Cheney's oil barons and oil rich countries that export terror in every drop of crude.

Explain to me again how making Exxon richer than it is already is going to get me a car I can fit my family in that gets fantastic gas mileage. These are the same idiots who DIDN'T give us family cars that get great mileage thirty years ago!

Give me something to buy, and even though I just spent $$,$$$ on a car 3 years ago, I'd buy it.

Make better choices?

The choices don't exist and until someone gives me a choice, I'd rather pay less for gas.

Dejah is completely right - I couldn't have said it better myself.

Want to know something interesting? First quarter PROFITS (NOT earnings BUT profits) for the big 5 oil companies are expected to be over 27 BILLION dollars...just for the first quarter. I heard a report today on the radio (sooo wish I could remember WHICH company it was) that one of the big oil companies profits are up 49% from this time last year.

If the money was actually being put to good use, I might be more supportive of increased gasoline costs to consumers....however, these high ticket prices are only benefiting those that are greedy.

Oh - did I mention that the CEO of Exxon just retired...yeah, Lee Raymond got a $400 million retirement package (apparently he contributed well to the $36 billion dollar profits Exxon received in 2005). Let's think about that a little.

dejah, lowering gas prices is a band-aid. and do you really want to lower gas prices for the rich? no. so, what do we do, give a tax break for the poor for commuting expense? no, that just complicates the tax code more and most people won't even get the benefits from it. maybe we could give a general tax credit to the poor, but we can't do that everytime the market cycles. sometimes times are good, and sometimes they aren't. but we can do something about it. for instance, you can go to the gym, and we as a country can get serious about regional and urban planning so that we don't have the sprawl that you are describing. we need public transportation and accessible conveniences. and the government can play a hand, as you said, by requiring better gas mileage for new cars/trucks/suvs/mini-vans.

the federal government's role should be about large-scale reform and regulation, and not about applying band-aids that satiate the public and distract them from the toughs choices that they need to be made.

we are a society that doesn't want to sacrifice and until that changes, we are screwed.

I think an additional tax on gasoline is a great idea. Somthing in the neighborhood of .50 a gallon with half going toward mass transit systems that work and half towards a "landing a man on the moon in this decade" type effort into research and development of alternative transportation like hydrogen fuel cells or whatever the next idea that gives the promise of getting away from carbon based fuels.

Correct; but think further, why do we have these vehicles that according to Congress, are the products of a 'loophole' in the law that allowed an exemption to the 'miles per gallon' for "light trucks", which is what the current ubiquitous SUV is built on----light truck bodies.

So, the entire US driving population was ultimately steered into these SUV with no requirement for gas conservation. Instead of 50 mpg we have these log wagons with 20 mpg---for the past quarter century.

Our food costs the same as twenty years ago, even lots cheaper in the case of pork; hogs went from $30 to $8 when the mega farms spread. Farmers went bankrupt. Property values around the farms tanked.

If we had a vehicle that got 50 mpg would we be so concerned that gas is over $3.00 a gal; maybe not. But I know who would be concerned; the big mega conglomerates. Not only does cheap gas mean a profit when the container ships cross the ocean chock full of gee gaws and doo dads for the Wal Marts of America, but the cheap gas is also necessary to send these containers-on-wheels across the landscape to every corner of America.

How convenient that the mega corporations of America have a captive voice to compain about high gas prices; we working fools. They don't have to raise prices or make congress enact legislation; they have that base covered, we do it for them. By keeping the driving public confined to SUV mileage, they have a built-in protector to keep gas prices low and their costs super low. Sweet.

Congrats to Dejah for generating two of the most pompous, evasive responses I've seen around here for quite some time.

"Go to the gym?" "Marines to the gallon?" These are supposed to be intelligent responses to living-in-the-real-world concerns?

Neither alwaysdisgruntled nor Chris actually responded to what Dejah wrote, preferring condescension and sneering to rational argument. So here's something else to sneer at:

I live in an semi-urban environment in an apartment that is as close to my place of work as I could find and yet afford - and it's still about 18 miles each way. There is no public transportation that passes closer than about 7 miles from my place of work.

I have a heart condition that makes vigorous physical activity difficult and potentially dangerous. If I told my doctor that I was going to bike nearly 40 miles (or walk nearly 15) a day, his heart would give out faster than mine.

The point here is, for many of us living outside urban environments, the alternatives of mass transit and facilities within walking distance *do not exist*! Yes, there should be much more mass transit and yes we should be looking for ways to limit sprawl. (We should also be talking about public control of energy resources - as Mindelei notes, higher prices produce little beyond higher profits for Big Oil - but I suppose that's a different argument.) But what should be and what is are two very different things and acting as if the only difference between them is a matter of personal choice (a foolish presumption which Bradford Plumer apparently shares) is ignorant and singularly unhelpful.

It's always easier to reject "band-aids" and talk about "tough choices that have to be made" when it's other people who have to make them.

Some comments from Europe:

1) Gas prices will continue to go up, whether politicians like it or not. The more the politicians try to keep prices down, the more they'll eventually rise.

2) This will eventually cause Americans to change their infrastructure to make them less dependent on cars. (Many Europeans live comfortably without one).

3) In the meantime, some American house prices will fall, to reflect the added cost of living in areas that can only be served by car. Other house prices will rise. Many Americans will have a very bad time.

4) Sharply rising gas prices look like the only hope of reducing the world's output of greenhouse gases. However, world production of oil is likely to rise anyhow, especially if rising prices cause a higher total output.

5) Political action to change these trends may slow or twist some of them, but will be ineffective as long as they are not coordinated globally.

6) The United States is likely to block all attempts to allocate a greater share of the world's oil to other nations by political means. As a result, financial muscle will be the factor that decides who gets to use how much oil, and when. This will favour the USA in the short term.

7) In the long term, this means that the USA will hang on to inefficient ways of using oil longer than other countries, and end up with a (relatively) bigger problem as more and more oil ends up in markets where the marginal benefit (and therefore the real economic ability to pay) is higher.

8) The best advice? If you're looking for a long term real estate investment, look to Greenland, rather than New Orleans or Bangladesh.

:-J
Jorgen

An afterthought: Every single molecule of carbon dioxide that we're busy putting out in the atmosphere today, has actually been there before ... before organisms converted it to carbon + oxygen and let it fossilize.

Putting it back in the atmosphere won't destroy the earth. It will only turn the climatic clock back a couple of million years. No big deal for Nature. More of a problem for human beings or - to be more precise - for some human beings. Depending on where Dejah lives, she may have a lot worse in stock than just another doubling of gas prices.

And there's not a thing your present politicians can do about it.

In Europe, we have wondered for a long time why anybody wanted GWB in the White House. I mean, not the people who cast the votes. They didn't know any better. But the people who put up the money for the campaign, and who chose this unlikely character to run for them. Why?

The best theory anybody's come up with so far, is that it was somebody with an interest in making a profit on short term trading in oil futures. Any other theories?

:-J

Those who heard, "Give me cheap gas!" took the wrong message away from my rant. The message was, "Give me a real choice!" My point was, there are no real choices at present... not even for the people who want and need them.

Though this is an old posting, I want to post a follow up comment. In the 2007 model year, Toyota came out with a hybrid version of the Camry. Despite that fact that fitting 5 people in it is a bit of a squeeze, our family replaced our minivan with a Camry Hybrid in June 2006.

I used to fill up my minivan every Tuesday like clockwork. I was figuring that I would get 2 weeks out of the hybrid tank--twice the mileage--but I was wrong--VERY WRONG.

I don't get 2 weeks. I get 3.