Why We Should Celebrate $8 Per Gallon Gas

1. biltmore
   May 30th, 2008 at 1:38 am

   “Far too many Americans live beyond their means”

   Isn’t that the truth. There’s so many people out there that are living on credit and loans in 5 bedroom houses with 2 SUVs and a boat all on a $50,000 combined salary … it’s just ridiculous.

2. Chris
   May 30th, 2008 at 2:24 am

   He makes good points, but sadly, his idealized world will make a lot of working people in this country hurt pretty badly for some time before it is realized.

3. Tiago
   May 30th, 2008 at 2:39 am

   i live in a European poor country and the gas here is more than $8 so.. poor americans they earn more and pay less for they gas, =( help those cry babies, LIVE WITH THAT!

4. SenorMysterioso
   May 30th, 2008 at 3:22 am

   

   Alex, Neatorama is a bit of an escape from the everyday doom and gloom for me so these gas price posts are starting to get me down.

   More Cats! Hehe

5. S-r-ex
   May 30th, 2008 at 3:43 am

   hehe! You’re stil whining, at 4 USD per gallon, we were thriving. nowdays, we in Norway paying about 13NOK per liter, or about $9.60 per gallon, see for yourself: http://www.xe.com/ucc/

   And I guess the gas prices is a reason why I can see at least seven different electric cars around where I live, not counting the two my dad has…

6. juliasam
   May 30th, 2008 at 3:58 am

   i think he express good point.. but practically all of the reasons are not considered as possible… but all the information were nice.. i have learned more information from this.

7. ECA
   May 30th, 2008 at 4:11 am

   I will say 1 thing..
   in ALL the other nations, where the prices are HIGHER then the USA…50-70% of that PRICE is TAX. NOT inflated commodity PRICES.

8. Emily M
   May 30th, 2008 at 4:41 am

   …No.

   One huge flaw is…public transit is STILL expensive. I drive an several hours a week for various reasons (job and relationship) and public transit would not help.

   I could take the train but…that is getting more and more expensive by the day. (25 bucks both ways from Sac to Berkeley if not more)

   Also, there is still no great solution to that whole no combustion engine thing so…$8 gas not so great right now, especially for a poor college student T_T

   fuck it all I’m getting a scooter.

9. HollywoodBob
   May 30th, 2008 at 5:32 am

   To the Europeans talking smack: How far do you commute to work?

   The average for Americans is 16 miles, for Europeans it’s 10Km That means we have to drive about 3 times the distance you do. Plus European cars get better mileage than US cars. It may cost you more to fill up, but we’re doing it far more often than you are.

   These articles about how the price of oil is going to spur changes to the cars and society are such BS. The truth is unless forced to build alternative fuel/fuel efficient cars, the auto makers aren’t going to. And American’s won’t buy a small sedan or compact hatchback, unless those are all that are offered. Plus, how many people can honestly go out and buy a new car to combat fuel costs?

10. Pol x
    May 30th, 2008 at 5:40 am

    there is nothing wrong with the Internal combustion engine, nor with cars.

    There is however a LOT wrong with what passes for engineering in the US.

    Your cars are amazingly heavy , with laughable fuel efficiency.

    In Europe we’ve had the samall 1 to 2 litre engines in the hatch back for decades. These are not particularly advanced cars at all. but they do leave US cars for dead.

    It only hurts so much at the pump because the US mind set is wrong. You don’t need so much petrol, if you weren’t driving a 4 to 5 litre car on crappy automatic gearing pulling several tons of metal about you’d have that money in your pocket not shooting out of the exhaust pipe.

    Carbon Fibre bodies small super efficient engines and the US life style need not be too badly effected.

    Hell Europeans shouldn’t be too smug either, we havce to get our collective fingers out and fix or own problems.

    But if the US adopted 30 year old European style cars they’d save themselves a lot of finacial woes as well as whipping the Sheiks arses, and effectively bankrupting those who fund terrorism.

    But could you imagine if the US leap frogged the rest of the world and implemented Algae Bio Fuels as well as carbon fibre, double glazing and all the sundry other ideas that the Rocky MOuntain Institute has been recommending all these years?

    Tax cars based on fuel efficiency would seem most of the old style vehicles off the road in 10 years, also big tax breaks for the highest efficincy rated vehicles and it’d be boom time in US industry.

    That is of course if there were any companies in the US who realised that firing your workers and gettig the job done in Mexico for a fraction of the cost doesn’t so much reduce your overheads as reduce your market.

    Who can afford to buy the car when the car manuifacturer has laid off the customers?

    Any way I digress, buit my basic point remains, enironmentalism is a rich vein of potential profit for industry.

11. Pol x
    May 30th, 2008 at 5:45 am

    HollywoodBob

    If your US cars give such terrible MPG, then get a better car.

    It needn’t be new, just better.

    Hell get yurself a 70’s beetle and it’ll be like living in the future for most americans fuel wise.

12. Tiago
    May 30th, 2008 at 7:10 am

    Us cars dont get good millage because americans just dont care about that, they dont sign the kioto protocol, they dont care about their emissions.. so they dont care about their fuel consumptions… they algo buy SUV to drive the kids to school, they drive 4×4 to drive on smooth surfaces.. so its YOUR FAULT, pay the price!

13. Eekster
    May 30th, 2008 at 8:09 am

    Well, gee! I guess STD’s are good for us too. If we were all upstanding, moral ecologists this would’t have happened. The wages of sin, my friends!!!!
    The folks who like to tell others how they should live just love to rub our faces in things like this.

    Not saying they’re all wrong, just a little too gleefully moralistic.

14. SenorMysterioso
    May 30th, 2008 at 8:18 am

    My ‘06 Chevy Aveo gets great mileage - 37+ mpg on last tank mixed highway and city

    Granted, I did not buy it for the fuel efficiency but because it was the cheapest new car on the lot at the time, just over $10k

15. andrew
    May 30th, 2008 at 8:40 am

    Hollywoodbob:

    I disagree with you saying automakers wont build fuel efficient cars unless they have to. I’m curious how you would classify the Prius, Chevy Volt, and the late Honda Insight? or to a lesser extent, the Yaris, Fit, VW Rabbit, smart car (it’s being sold in the states now) or any of those other small cars. These are all fairly fuel efficient, and the Volt could be classified as alternative fuel when it comes out.

    And about Americans only buying big cars… I can’t tell you how many “over 30mpg” stickers I’ve seen at car lots recently. I get the feeling that these smaller cars are selling very well, especially in the last couple months.

16. Merrilee
    May 30th, 2008 at 9:35 am

    I have two fuel efficient cars. I don’t drive far, and the gas prices don’t really hurt me, yet. But once you have more then one kid you HAVE to get a bigger, less fuel efficient car because of US carseat regulations. In most compact cars only one car seat fits in the back seat, maybe two. But if you want three kids (or accidently end up with three kids) you’re stuck with a stupid mini-van or SUV. I have nothing wrong with the carseat regulations, I think they’re fantastic for kids, but hard on the family budget.

17. Pol x
    May 30th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    this was posted in Boing Boing, and really nicely illustrates how the US has really played a very poor hand when it comes to energy.

    http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/05/how-to-drive-oi.html

18. Thomas
    May 30th, 2008 at 11:55 am

    If we paid down our deficit, got out of Iraq, and called these oil companies on the price gouging we know they’re doing, maybe it wouldn’t cost 60 dollars to fill up my tank.

19. Alex
    May 30th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Don’t mean to get you down, SenorMysterioso! It’s just that this topic is very interesting to me (and judging by the comments) to others as well.

20. Video Game Dork
    May 30th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    Random economists say “High gas prices are good!”

    i say “F*(# YOU, economists!”

21. Toby B
    May 30th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

    @Tiago: If your going to site a protocol, you may want to spell the city’s name right. It’s the Kyoto protocol.

    By the way my car get 26mpg city, 30 hwy, so STFU.

    @HollywoodBob: I think a lot of Europeans forget how big the US is, I totally agree with you on that point.

22. phrancis
    May 30th, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    It’s all about American feelings of entitlement. Our whole urban planning and infrastructure is built around cheap gas and we feel its our birthright to be able to afford a huge house out in the burbs where land is cheap. We now can’t bike to work and we are so spread out that public transportation can’t be built, so we have to drive.

    Hell no, the average Joe Six pack isn’t gonna drive some dinky little 4 banger. We want a big cushy “safe” and powerful sedan, suv, muscle car, etc… Even though other 1st world countries get their kids around in small efficient wagons and hatch backs and go camping and such, we apparently can’t fit our fat spoiled kids and their toys in anything smaller than an Expedition. Let’s face it, cars are all about image and status and that’s all too true here… I really hope these gas prices force us to be more efficient, more pragmatic, and less spoiled!

23. John P.
    May 30th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

    Pol x,

    I have a 73 VW bug, it only gets about 25mpg. However, my MINI (2005 model) gets about 29~30. I wouldn’t exactly say the bug gets great gas mileage. At least mine doesn’t.

24. DOJ
    May 30th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    high gas prices -> buy smaller cars -> oil demand drops -> gas prices drop (you’d hope) -> you can afford that big new SUV!

    Repeat

25. samlive
    May 30th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    You know what really irked me? when the author referred to the middle east as the “region that has contributed little to modern society.”

    ever heard of something called the written language? yeah. mesopotamian in origin douche.

26. Idil
    May 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    But Tiago… Europe actually has a good transportation system.
    I live in Houston Texas and there’s no public transport whatsoever… Downtown, yes, but nowhere else! And lots of people don’t even have a reason to go downtown.
    Americans need their cars because the government does a poor job in providing transportation.

27. Drew Parker
    May 30th, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    I entirely agree with your idea of celebrating $8 gas… this type of ‘doomsday’ peak oil scenario would bring about radical social change almost instantaneously. The idiots that traded away their financial security just to please their ’sense of entitlement’ will fall like rocks. It’s ugly for society in the short run yes but I don’t think so for the long haul. No more cheap home re-fi’s, no more year auto loans on a 50k hummer, no more revolving credit card shell-games… all gone for good.

28. David B
    May 30th, 2008 at 10:49 pm

    Let’s be done with it and charge $25 a gallon, throw the country into complete chaos and when the dust clears we won’t even worry about the price of gas. What about planes, trains and trucks, not to mention electricity? Keep driving the gas prices up and we won’t have any jobs to go to or products to buy. We can’t go back to the nineteenth century. Raising gas prices may help out in the long run but in the short term it’s going to be real bad. Tell me your job doesn’t depend on petroleum products.

29. Barbwire
    May 30th, 2008 at 11:16 pm

    DOJ, that’s exactly what happened as a result of the 1970s oil embargo. Car makers couldn’t crank out those sub-compacts fast enough. Then somewhere along the line, the govmint decided that SUVs were farm vehicles, and therefore exempt from smog restrictions. We’ve had unrealistically-priced gas here in the US for way too long. Now it’s our turn. Maybe we’ll stop using 25% of the world’s resources.

30. Christophe
    May 30th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

    Europe never had big engines indeed, besides exotic cars. Even the upscale side has been limited in numbers (Rolls Royce, Facel Vega, high scale bimmers…). Nobody can argue that the US cheap gas price has created a V8 / big size car loving country. Europe and the US don;t put the same meaning in ‘familiy car’ : one is a Camry, the other a Rabbit.

    With $8 pg gas, America will see that you don’t need a SUV as a daily 2 miles commuter / Stop-and-Shop grocery runner.
    With $8 pg gas alternative fuels will be economically sustainable.

    So yes, it hurts the wallet, but I think it’s overall good : it’s going to help us in our choices.
    (I say that sadly, my favorite choice would be a big V8 20mpg Corvette)…

31. Sick
    May 31st, 2008 at 12:14 am

    My God, so much self righteousness. So much superiority, convinced that everyone else is to blame for everything. Those evil Americans, every single one of them driving their SUVs, living in the suburbs and having to drive to work. Good for every one of those evil, selfish Americans, that all the prices for food and other goods are skyrocketing and the economy collapsing because of oil costs. We all know the world would be better off without evil Americans destroying it. They all live above their means, every one of them rich beyond the dreams of the rest of the world and crying about it. Christ, can you losers stop licking your own buttholes for five minutes?

32. Tony LaRocca
    May 31st, 2008 at 12:18 am

    Ah, so now the propagandists are taking a page from the Soviet Union? “Struggle and poverty is good for you!”

33. K!P
    May 31st, 2008 at 2:02 am

    “In most compact cars only one car seat fits in the back seat, maybe two.”

    i don’t know how big your child seat are, but they SOUND HUGE! evry comnpact that fits 2 adults in the bach will fit 2 savty seats in the back imho.

34. ECA
    May 31st, 2008 at 2:26 am

    the problem in the USA is HOW business works…
    there are 2 forms..

    If you you buy LESS we raise the price, If you buy MORe we raise the price.

    AND

    Low price to get you to LIKE it, HIGH price when most people LIKE It, and LOW price after every one has it.

35. Pol x
    May 31st, 2008 at 6:52 am

    John P,

    yeah your point is well made, I was being slightly hyperbolic, but even then your 73 bug is getting 25mpg, which is easily better than US four wheekl drive suburban monster trux get.

    And that is a 35 year old using 60 year old technology.

36. Pol x
    May 31st, 2008 at 7:06 am

    Christophe

    the genesis of cars and bikes in the US and Europe stem from the roads.

    this seems odd I know but let me explain.

    The US roards are very very long and as straight as possible, the vehicles were expected to go very long distances.

    the best solution to that was big lazy low revving engines.

    Thios produced the US automotive pardighm, V8 cheverolets and Super large inline V twin bikes like the Harley and the Indian.

    Eurpean roads are well basically amazingly old, windy a wee, the distances are really not that large, you can drive through about 5 northern European COUNTRIOES before lunch.

    This gave rise to the European automotive paradigm, small high revving manual geared cars such as the Morgan the Bugatti for the fast and the Morris the Super Snipe and the Fiat 500 and 2CV for the slower types, even the bikes differ fromn the US, we have the Enfield Silver bullet, the Norton the Vincent, goign on to the danish Nimbus and the Brough Superior (the bike that killed T.E. Lawrence) which are all narrow nimble high revving sort of things, great on the corners of which Europe seemed to be made entirely of.

    To extend thiws idea, when iot came to gettign cars and bikes in Australia, which you’ll recall was a British colony, the up take of UK style cars and bikes was minimal.

    The huge distances and the straight roads made the natural choice US.

    The cars in Oz are all V8 and Big Sixes, australians have a higher Harley ownership per head of caopita than the US does.

    But the thing is that the engineerign has improved.

    The Japanese genius engineers managed to wring better power performance and economy out of cars and bikes than either the US or Europe had ever managed, and they continue to do so year in year out.

    Europe learned the lesson and we all drive if not Japanese cars then cars modelled on their principles, the US didn’t, and still persists in seeing anything not a V8 as being gay.

    Even the Aussies got over this one and happily scoot around a country the size of the US with a population the size of LOndon in Japanese Camrys and Suzuki bikes.

37. Idil
    May 31st, 2008 at 9:11 am

    Sick, please remember that Europe and its people, like every country/continent, has its own problems that may be different but just as messed up as America’s.

38. Sick
    May 31st, 2008 at 11:16 am

    Idil - that’s the point I was sarcastically trying to make.

39. Whatwhome
    May 31st, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    Hey kids, remember when the future didn’t suck? You know, like two years ago?

    I agree with SenorMysterioso. I come to neatorama for NEAT information like photos of abandoned hotels or the top 10 biggest disappearances in history.

    Gas prices are topical and newsworthy, but I don’t consider $8/gallon neat. I get enough of the sermonizing and moralizing that really doesn’t do anything for me in the here and now when I turn on the TV or go to the web for my news.

    To the staff of Neatorama: I’m not interested in gas gas prices. If I wanted to know how bad things are, I’d fill up my gas tank.

40. Tony LaRocca
    May 31st, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Yeah, I’m with “sick” on this one. I live in Queens, NYC. While I take public transportation everywhere I go (because I personally hate driving in the city) I do own a car. I look out of my window, and I can count 31 cars in view. Out of those cars, 1 could be called an SUV (a Hummer) and there are 5 minivans. The rest are all small cars.

    Wouldn’t it be fun if Americans lumped all Europeans together, took all of their economic/social problems, and blamed it on the lifestyles of all their people? Wait, that would be called intolerance or nationalism or elitism - attitudes everyone in the world are allowed to have about Americans, but Americans are considered evil if they feel the same way.

    The reason for oil prices rising is simple: the war in Iraq. America is $165 billion dollars in debt from this misadventure, so the value of the dollar worldwide has fallen. Meanwhile, a new market has opened up in China. Same supply + more demand = rising prices.

    So why are Americans so angry? (Besides the fact that more and more of our tax $ are being poured down the drain in this war with no end in sight) Well, we have are own oil reserves, but we refuse to drill them. Any attempt at building more refineries creates a NIMBY response (And bizarrely, so do wind farms.) Nuclear Power plants are feared and shunned, when they’ve been proven to be safe. While the eyes of the world are turning to ethanol as an alternative fuel supply (not to mention increasing food prices,) American farmers are STILL being paid by our government to NOT GROW CROPS. (Sorry, Bush haters, but I have to agree with him on that one.)

    So while Americans are supposed to see everyone in the world as an individual, as people just working and trying to get by, the knee-jerk reaction from the assholes of the world is that Americans are greedy, that we’re all driving gas guzzling SUVs, that we’re all driving half a mile to go to the store to buy one loaf of bread, all kids of unimaginable crap. Bullshit. Everyone I know is scared of losing their jobs. We may be making ends meet, but we’re fighting to keep it that way. I ask any of the people who spew this bs to please give me an example, from a person they’ve actually met. If they can find such a person, then look around their town, and tell me what percentage of the local population that person represents.

    And by the way - if someone DOES own an SUV - SO WHAT? If they can afford it, and they want to pay $150 a fill-up, well, that’s their own right. How it makes them “greedy” or “selfish” is beyond me.

41. Terry
    May 31st, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Make adjustments to your lifestyle and deal with it. Consume less and consume wisely. Energy has been to cheap for to long. $8 plus a gallon is good for the environment, it will slow consumption down.

42. ECA
    June 1st, 2008 at 2:01 am

    The MAIN problem is the Government…
    TAXES should be on the cars, but the Gov dont tax Cars or GAS fully.
    Every other nation TAXES them to the HILT..

    IF they dont sell the SELLERS drop the prices..so the prices will maintain.

43. Pol x
    June 1st, 2008 at 5:12 am

    Tony LaRocca

    for you to say that if someone can afford a thing then they should be allowed to do it displays AMAZING lack of comprehension.

    I can afford to build and run a nuclear car that spills depleted uranium around your neighbourhood, and so can all of my friensds with enought money to do the same.

    Are you quite so relaxed about that?

    Also YOU look out of YOUR window and YOU see only one SUV in YOUR street, so YOU say that there are only one person drives an SUV.

    see this is taking the PARTICULAR and extrapolating it to the geneeral.

    It is the argument of a child.

    Also the price of oil is not effected by the war in Iraq.

    You’ll find that prioduction is the same as it was , a little highher if truth be told, Iraq was not allowed to seell oil under Saddam, only trade a little for essentials like medicine. So they were off the international market since 92. The demand has remained the same more or less in line with prjected figures, since gulf war 2 began.

    So if you apply the theory, much beloved of US free marketeers, SUPPLY AND DEMAND, if the supply and the demand are unchanged then where did the price hike come from?

    Senior execs at Aramco (google it) have been interviewed saying It is down to market speculation and a consumer concern.

    We are all prepared for a price hike so one ciomes.

    As he said, it a bad time to be buying oil, but it’s a great time to be selling it.

    Now the other point is that the US population uses a HUGEKLY disproportionate amount of the worlds resources, and wagging your finger at Europe and calling them “Elitist” euro-weenies and all the usual stuff is NOT actually and answer.

    Europe has it’s problems and are trying to fix them.

    the US refused to sign the Kyoto Prptocols, the US government stuck it’s fingers in it’s ears went La LA La refusing to believe in Climate change.

    You have to unsderstand this is the equivelant of all the nations in the world all in ahot tub, the US takes a piss but insists that it’s only pissing in it’s part of the hot tub.

44. gibson8or
    June 1st, 2008 at 4:29 pm

    Though I hate it when I see people driving Hummers and Escalades, there is actually another reason that there are few very small cars in the US. The government has very strict guidelines on car safety, and a lot of those tiny European and Japanese car models don’t have enough of a crumple zone to pass the guidelines. Though I would love to have a very energy-efficient car, I also don’t want to die instantly when some SUV hits me going 75mph on the highway. Also, people seem to forget that fuel cells, solar panels, etc. take up a huge amount of energy to make. It is generally more environmentally friendly to keep driving an older or used car than to discard it for a brand new more “energy-efficient” model. I’m not saying that I don’t think we need to change, but there is a lot of background to this issue that people aren’t aware of.

45. Leo
    June 4th, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    Just ride a bike or take transit for in-town trips, and get a scooter for longer commutes, or maybe save the car for long trips.

    I live car-free, and when I quit, gas was around $2/gallon, and I thought it was getting excessive then.. then I realized, with a good driving record, that I was still essentially subsidizing the cost of my insurance and driving for the lack of responsibility every one else seems to show on the road- thus, I took it upon myself to power myself where I need to go, and trade in a ridiculous, wasteful, unnecessary expense in a car for a slightly higher rent payment, to live closer to where I work and play, or at least closer to transit for that.

    that’s really the best option, honestly, particularly for people without large families.

46. Katt
    June 5th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    I’m getting so pissed off at all the “just ride a bike” comments. Did it ever occur to you that not everybody has a job that will allow them to do that? I’m a freelance musician who plays a large instrument that I couldn’t get onto a bike to save my life. Public transportation is not an option for me either, or I’d do that in a heartbeat. I have to travel all over Southern California, and gas prices are killing me. Please stop with all the “sell your car” crap.

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