Conservation of available gasoline supplies

Thomas
Yes we have. However, it makes bleed those who can least afford it.

Subsidized Public transportation is an obvious answer.

It helps the poor (at least in urban areas) and provides a basic social need. In addition it is environmentally sane.

I would like to see the cost of public transportation low enough (and gas prices high enough) that private cars are seen as a luxury. With investment in clean reliable and fast public transportation, cars can be seen as an uneccessary luxury.

The problem is that as a society, we are unwilling to make the public investment required to make transportation as attractive an alternative as it could be.

You may not believe this, but I sympathize, and this is part of what I meant when I said that this form of rationing "has its problems". But if the objective is to help poor people, I'd prefer the government to do it the straightforward way: by giving them money. There is a case for generally helping the poor so they're a little less poor. There is no case for specifically helping the poor to continue burning fuel -- even when the cause for the acute distress is expensive gasoline.

ebrown_p
You seem to forget or somehow discount that in many parts of this nation an auto is not a luxury but a necessity. There is none or very little public transportation. The high cost of gasoline will literally take bread out of the mouths of babes. Even if the government were to subsidize the building of public transport, a far fetched possibility, it would take years to achieve.
Let's face it the government or rather the power brokers in government are not the friend of the average American citizen

How would those subsidies encourage people to drive slowly? To share a ride? To take a bike and do entirely without fuel? To better insulate their houses and burn less oil for heating and air conditioning?

My point is that energy efficiency comes from a large mix of measures. (I agree that these measures will probably include inreasing the number of busses and trains.) In theory, legislatures can help bring about the optimal mix through clever subsidizing and rationing. But in practice, it requires that the legislature know what the right mix is, and that it implement it in spite of fierce lobbying from oil and car companies. High prices, by contrast, encourage everyone to look for ways of conserving energy. They instantly rewards anyone who finds a new way and makes it happen, whatever it may look like. Their effectiveness does not depend on any small group of people being geniouses or saints, or even especially decent.

As I said in my last post, the poverty aspect is difficult, and it needs a workable political solution. But on the specific problem of conserving energy, the best option for society is that the government do nothing.

Re: Conservation of available gasoline supplies



Normally I drive 60 to 65 mph on the freeway....

Last time I gassed up, just 10 gallons (I have a corolla), I decided to drive no more than 55 mph.

I got 50 extra miles off that tank of gas. That's with running the air conditioning every day.

That's about a 16% increase in mileage.

If gas is $3.00/gal, that's a savings of 48 cents a gallon

If gas is $3.50/gal, that's a savings of 56 cents a gallon

It didn't take me any longer - time wise to get anywhere, considering traffic.

everyone driving alone in a larger SUV should be shot on site, like a looter.

Oh - I have been waiting for that day to come......

Shunning should be adequate.

Now that you guys mention SUVs in the same sentence as looters, something strikes me as mystifying: On all this footage about the flood in New Orleans, you never see an SUV driving through the water, getting people out, or delivering suplies in. Isn't that strange? People keep buying these monuments of self-sufficiency, those vehicles that can function completely without roads, and which routinely cross rivers in commercials. They keep driving them through those urban environments where streets are perfectly nice, and even if your car breaks should break down the next mechanic is always nearby. And then along comes a once-in-a-generation event where you actually need an all-terrain vehicle in a city -- and none of them shows up!

Doesn't anyone find that strange? Or is this some subtle nuance of American culture that a naive German like myself cannot hope to get?

I bet the guys driving the SUVs got out of town.

...towing their boats.