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It should cost more. Cheap gas is killing the planet. Cheap gas is the reason American carmakers don't even make sedans anymore and why SUVs keep getting more popular and bigger.
Public transit ridership has never been higher in the last 30 years than during the recession when gas prices were higher. Also it was the only thing that briefly slowed the meteoric rise of the SUV.
Unironically lower living standards is how we fight climate change. No cars, no meat, no kids, no electronics, no plastics, no paper. Most of the world is doing fine without it.
Getting rid of your car shouldn't even reduce your living standard, except possibly for those with mobility challenges.
The hard part is creating the dense urban environment to make this true.
Article I saw said gas hikes are due to a shortage of tanker drivers. No explanation as to why there is a shortage of drivers :thinky-felix:
back in 2008, during the GFC, fuel prices at the pump reached $4 in LCOL areas. people were freaking out. I remember used luxury SUVs being all over craigslist for crazy cheap prices. suddenly everybody, not just the greens, wanted a little teeny car. and everybody was trying to figure out how to have a reduced commute, joining carpools, learning about bus schedules. the social economists talked about "demand destruction", a phenomenon where prices go so high, people make structural changes to avoid purchasing the good/service meaning that even if prices come down, some of the demand will not come back.
I read in 2009 that if gas prices included all the external costs of environmental rehabilitation, including carbon capture/offsets for the entire lifecycle, well to wheel, it would be like $12/gallon. some chud kid in the class said, "but our economy wouldn't survive that!" and I started laughing like a supervillain.
a lot of other countries put taxes on fuel consumption to build out transportation infrastructure. not america. we are racing to the red light to guarantee the hardest possible transition to decarbonize our economy.
and, of course, not even 4 years later, gas prices went back down and giant SUVs were back on the roads, hauling assholes around. not as many as the early 2000s, but enough to be angry.
invade the world for oil
still can't keep up with demand
I was about to go with a blanket get fucked, yankees but gas is that expensive where I live too. Thank god my city has decent public transit
damn feels like everybody who thinks thats too high should advocate for alternatives cause that shit ain#t sustainable
There is no alternative, private transportation was a mistake and the future will be public transportation that will not include rural and suburban areas.
Because the price of gas is kept artificially low and externalities are pushed onto the working class.
You don't want cheaper gas, you want an end to driving. Find like-minded people to live with/around so that when the time comes, you can flip our reactionary infrastructure on its ass.
Don't worry the market will respond by creating an efficient and convenient mass transit system any day now
"Poor people live far from jobs and have to drive" is not a justifying rationale for keeping the cost of car ownership low. There is no justification for that. It is, however, a justifying rationale for changing how we structure our cities and our lives.
This is a chicken and egg problem that the oil and automative industries are more than happy to leave unsolved.
You can't actually compete with cars until you make them more expensive. It's literally impossible because there's just subsidies after subsidies piled onto the entire concept at every possible opportunity. Until you start making it more expensive somewhere, be it either time-wise or money-wise, the public transport will always fail to compete.
Just getting people in public transport doesn't work, you have to get people out of cars.
Same problem. Why would we need public transport, everybody drives, it's a waste of taxes.
yeah turns out when you don't stake your entire economy on oil and automotive companies and their brainwashed chuds you can actually do these things
“Because we need occupational license reform!” - conservatives today, and libs in ~2 years
