What is missed in the article is the incestuous relationship between the automobile industry and the oil industry in this country. The American oil industry is the main force lobbying for lower mileage (for obvious reasons). A good book to read to get an understanding of this is: Internal Combustion by Edwin Black.

Consider that the Western EU and Japan have cars that meet or almost meet the CAFÉ standards. The biggest reason for this is they are not oil producing nations so they do not have a powerful, national oil lobby opposing high gas mileage.

The oil industry in this country will not allow the large production of such things as electric cars (see: Death of the Electric Car) or high mileage gas driven vehicles. That is not until the industry is in its death throes, which unfortunately may be our death throes as well. Greed was defined as a deadly sin because people are too ignorant and defensive to know such a thing themselves. It is defined that way because it destroys others, not just the perpetrator

You better be prepared to unwind the clock about a hundred years if gasoline costs $10/gal. Because the simple act of making it too painful to bear will not really solve anything. Unless you believe that making pot illegal solves the pot problem too. Making a NEED regressively expensive will not temper the use of that NEED but for the poorest people. And I really don't see my city not hiring cops because they can't afford fuel for the cars. I do see the cops going on ticket writing and 'law enforcement' rampages to pay for it though. Meanwhile my Dentist barely notices the price of gas. His CLK 55 Benz gets 14mpg or less and so what?

20% of the oil in this country is used in the production and processing and transport of food. You might also want to dial back on all plastic and most pharmaceuticals. And forget about paving the streets. And tires on the cars on those streets.

I've suggested innumerable times the use of scooters and rickshaws for urban/suburban use. Turns out Americans hate that. I know if gas goes to $7/gal I'll get another 150cc urban scooter and keep the cars parked unless absolutely necessary. And I don't commute either. Lucky for me.

Turns out when you make toll roads to change the way people drive there are always people who are perfectly willing to pay any toll if it will save them time as they tool along one in a vehicle.

on if Toyota got that horsepower by allowing the engine to burn more fuel or by using more of the available energy in the same amount of fuel. Yes, modern engines may have larger valves and are typically larger in displacement than the engines they have replaced. But the biggest difference in the last 15 years has been computerized engine management systems that hold the combustion process right on the edge of premature detonation at all times and constantly optimizing the air/fuel ratio, extracting more BTU from the fuel and making the engine much more efficient.

One of the biggest roadblocks to fuel efficiency is constantly tightening emissions regulations. Modern cars are incredibly clean - you'd run out of gas before successfully asphyxiating yourself with your new Camry. The point of diminishing returns has long since past as far as making new cars cleaner is concerned, and modern cars actually remove some pollutants from the atmosphere. But the goverment is still focusing on private car emmisions almost exclusively when the low hanging fruit is factories, powerplants, and large trucks and busses.

Alowing industry to clean up those areas (at greatly reduced cost) would allow for the use of lighter weight materials without sacrificing safety, which would have a huge impact on fuel efficiency. The 1984 Volkswagen GTI I used to own weighed 1600 pounds. A new GTI weighs roughly twice that. So now the same gallon of gas has to move what amounts to 2 cars instead of 1 - not very efficient, but the fuel efficiency hasn't changed proportionally because of inreased combustion efficiency. A brand new GTI that weighed only 2500 pounds would likely get over 35MPG city, if VW was allowed to build it.

Last, the most effective and efficient method for reducing greenhouse gasses and increasing fleet fuel economy would be to simply offer every American $10,000 for any car built before 1997, and then recycle those cars to build new ones. More cost effective than anything we are doing now or have planned for the future, more effective in terms of overall results, great for our struggling car industry and its workers and our economy.

realname, I don't hate my world. I *love* my world. That's why I'd love to see us limit the use of fossil-fuels. Don't you get it at all? Don't you see what's happening here? Look around and try to SEE what's going on.

There aren't going to be any fossil fuels to use, at least, not at any kind of cheap price, in the next decade or two. That's not even arguable.

Better to delay that bad day by conserving now. And the only way we could possibly keep the rest of the developing world from using the fuel we conserve, is by taking a leadership role and shaming the rest of the world into doing what we're willing to do: tax fossil-fuels so steeply that we're all forced to find more efficient ways to get from point A to point B.

The issue of horse-power is one I'd thought of before. It is absolutely insane that we've taken ICE refinements and turned them into increased horse-power, instead of increased fuel efficiency. We could all drive refined, comfortable cars that have 40 horse-power engines, like the old VW bug and bus did (but far more refined, now) and be perfectly fine, getting from point A to point B in plenty of time, in total comfort.

I know around Los Angeles, where I live, no-one has much use for all the horsepower most of the time anyway. And I imagine that is increasingly true in most urban centers.

What's happened is that car companies figured out long ago that to sell more cars, they appeal to our lizard-brains by making cars bigger, higher, and faster. It's purely a way to sell cars, it has nothing to do with quality-of-life, this has everything to do with giving drivers a constant low-level flood of brain-chemicals that makes them feel good. Can we really afford that now?

The whole situation is insane, and when you say the ridiculous things you do, realname, it doesn't help.