Well shit man, I have no problem admitting that we are the biggest polluters. I try to take a pro-active approach and ride my bike to work, take public transportation often and drive at max 1x per week. I hate seeing the Red signs signalling poor air quality day and that you shouldn’t mow your grass until after 6, fill up your car after 6, etc. We do have a problem, and I recognize that, but so do other countries.
On another thread, you said a 4000cc engine takes up more gas than a 1200cc engine. No shit. The reason the europeans have smaller engines is because gas is ridiculously expensive over there. People have to have small cars and small engines to be able to afford any gas at all. Hence the good gas mileage they get. If we were to raise our gas prices that high, you would see many smaller cars on the market with decreased emissions. This would wreck the economy through various mechanisms, specifically giving excess amounts of money to specific companies, i.e. the gas companies. Since they are major lobbiers in the house, this would never happen.
Gas is expensive in Europe by choice. We all buy it on the world market at the same price per barrel. Most of the increase in price above what we pay is taxes they chose to levy on themselves.
I’m not sure we want to do something similar. Changing the CAFE standards and increasing the classes of vehicles it covers would be a good move though. I can’t see that happening any time soon unless by some really strange fluke Ralph Nader becomes President.
Guys guys, you aren’t doing your research on this.
Gas prices in most of europe are high due to taxes. Those taxes have been in place pretty much since ww2 for most of those countries.
It has nothing to do with emissions, they cared little about emissions back then.
It has everything to do with how govt typically works, meaning that once you allow govt a money stream, they are rarely going to “turn” it off.
Which is what happened in that case.
During ww2 oil and its refined products were in shortage in euroland, so to discourage regular joes from using it they taxed it severly. Post ww2 euroland was cleaning up the mess, and most govts still couldn’t afford to relinquish that revenue, so they didn’t eliminate it. That set the precedence, and allowed them to continue racheting up that tax to increase their revenue without resorting to other more obvious increases, such as income or sales tax.
Happens in america also, just not as severly.
Now, on the topic of cars in euroland being more fuel efficient, that really isn’t true either. Our bmw m3 is the same rating as theirs. The only reason their cars appear more efficient is due to the apples vs orange comparisons, ie comparing a 1.6 liter car with a manual vs a 3 liter car with auto.
Anyway, this whole point is merely semantics. Saying america is the grossest of all polluters is like picking a needle out of the haystack of statistics. Most “greenhouse gasses” are naturally occurring, and in far greater volume than autos create. Termites, rice paddies and cows are responsible for far more greenhouse gasses than cars. And cutting down forests has a negative effect on them, in that there is less natural filtering with less trees.
Now let’s think about that one for a minute. America probably has as many or more trees now than they had when anglos first wandered onto the land. Can we say the same about europe? (meaning same time span, not going back 3000 years).