Here is the deal.....we as amercians are spoiled to cheap gas. The rest of the world pays way way more than we do,and people rely on mass transit, carpooling, etc and typically buy cars that are more fuel efficient. Here in america, hardly anyone carpools or takes the mass transit system and we buy cars for the status, features, horsepower, and on and on and on, and somewhere down the line fuel efficiecy might be on the list. That is starting to change for alot of people, but until gas gets to be 5 and 6 dollars a gallon, I think most americans are going to keep doing what we do and just suck it up.. Would you realy change your lifetsyle for the price of gas, I know I wouldn't right now, but at 5 or 6 a gallon, I would certainly think twice about things and maybe plan a trip to the store instead of running to get milk and then two days later go run back to the store to get bread, beer or whatever... SO thats my thoughts, we are our own worst enemy when it comes to gas prices and at the rate biofuels are coming along it may be quite sometime before we see any real relief. I heard EPA has still not approved any E85 or flex fuel conversion kit for use in the US, there are lots on the market in other countires, but EPA is slow to approve any here. I know E10 is atarting to pop up all over the counrty, but it has not changed the price of gas at all in the areas I have seen it. SO until E85 becomes more prevelent and we stop depleting our corn supplies to produce an inefficient ethynol fuel and switch to more yielding crops like sugar cane, pond alage blooms have even become intereting and the best is an ecoli bacteria that poops hydrocrabon that can be refined to diesel or gas.... We are getting there, but we need to be prepared to suck it up for quite some time... [8D]

 

You make some good points.

I will be the first to admit, as always, I am a hypocrite. I have started driving MORE since I wrote this post, especially to work and back.

The reason being is there are noticably less people on the road now then there was before this whole gas pricing fiasco started. That means less travel times and more time I can spend at home. I enjoy driving, always have, but not in stop and go traffic. Lately the congestion has gone down considerably, so I've been driving more. More time at work means more money in my pocket, which means I can afford it. I'm starting to think more about myself. You only live once. I guess my views go up and down, but ultimately time is something you can't get back, so having more of it doing what you love is more valuable to me then the money I save by not driving.