Relevant quotes here:
"Out of 155 countries surveyed, U.S. gas prices were the 45th cheapest...
As of late March, U.S. gas prices averaged $3.45 a gallon. That compares to over $8 a gallon across much of Europe, $12.03 in Aruba and $18.42 in Sierra Leone."
"But those cheap gas prices - which Americans have gotten used to - mean they feel price spikes like the ones we're experiencing now more acutely than citizens from other nations which have had historically more expensive fuel.
Cheap gas prices have also lulled Americans into a cycle of buying bigger cars and bigger houses further away from their work - leaving them more exposed to rising prices, some experts say.""Revenues from Europe's high gas taxes are used to fund a variety of things. One thing they have built is better public transportation"
"Europe's stronger social safety net, including cheaper health care and higher education, is paid for partly through gas taxes"
"Oil use in the United Kingdom has basically stayed flat from 1980 to now, while in France it's dropped 17%, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration.
In the U.S., meanwhile, oil use is up 21% over the same period, although the country has added more people and seen its economy grow slightly faster."
1 comment:
first i want to tell you, i love your blog, and is very well done, also love its purpose.
Second, actually the kind of urban development in America, conditioned by the intensive use of fossil fuels, is causing more harm than good, mostly because american suburbs were thought as centre of individualism, as result in several large metro areas, public transport is highly under developed, and the population very unwilling to use it, mostly because culturally they grew up with private transport, ang going public means a huge shock.
Europe is a much smaller in terms of mass, and properties more expensive, the result is that smaller spaces and more compact cities, denser and more traffic helps to propel the acceptance and use of public transport, but also Eurpore were promoting trains since they developed, and was the first mass transport and widely used.
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