i honestly hope nobody's gonna take what i say here as some kind of an insult, but i need to get it off my chest, it's just that i read this this thread without knowing whether to laugh or cry. dear god, you guys are SO blind!!!
even while new orleans is still flooded, you can't see the connection between gasoline exploitation and the hazardous environmental state of the planet; are you aware that the US is consuming a quarter of the entire global production of oil? don't you think it's a little absurd? thousands of american soldiers are fighting and dying year after year, war after war, just to secure the flow of cheap oil, later to be consumed by wasteful oversized cars. villain oil barons are becoming presidents and cultural icons, while nobody even bothers to stop for a minute, and ask whether this is all necessary, or is it just the selfish needs of a selected few, which over the years became an entire nation's irresponsible fetish.
at my nearest gas station a gallon of gas costs me more than 5 us$, and i think it's fair and decent. just like cigarettes - if you wanna use it so badly, okay, but do know that if you so vigorously insist on polluting and harming everyone around you, you should also expect to be heavily taxed (or in other words- get fined), coz after all, your nasty habits costs your country billions, and someone eventually oughta pay for this.
you could say i come from a pint-sized, densely populated rich country, where distances are not a real problem; it may be the case, but let me tell you i wasn't too shocked to see the almost exact same prices a month ago in India, which is a vast country, with a ridiculous income rate. so what do people do there? easy, they use their legs, bikes, scooters, smaller cars, and public transportation that's developed by their government despite its relative poverty. they silently pay the rising prices, caused mostly by wars they had nothing to do with.
it appears to me that most of you guys don't come even close to realizing the true price (economic, political and environmental) of your exaggerated (not to use the term "vulgar") thirst for endless cheap pollution. maybe you just need to pay the same price range as in anywhere else in order to understand that unhealthy, harmful dependency actually costs something.
