Price of Gas Around the World

sure, we might buy almost all the oil they export, but they are such a minor share compared to other sources.

Venezuela it the tenth largest oil exporter of the world, but at 2.2 million barrels/day not far behind behind #3 (Iran) with 2.8 million barrels/day. You buy almost all they sell, but it´s still only "such a minor share compared to other sources".

Mind-boggling numbers. Your thirst for oil is amazing. You import twice as much as the EU, even though
A) the EU has almost twice as much population.
B) your domestic oil production alone is more than the EU has to import.

That said, the San Francisco bay area traditionally has the most expensive gas in the nation so the $3.00 a gallon you guys are going bonkers over is on the high end of the spectrum here in the states.

Yes, I´m going bonkers! :D
I don´t own a car, but use the hostel car occasionally. Filling it up costs around 70 Euros (= 105 Dollars).

=> Only the gas for driving 500 kilometers costs more than using Vienna´s mass transit system for an entire month.

You waste so much because it´s cheap. In Europe, we don´t spend more on energy than you, even though the price per gallon (or per kWh of electricity) is much, much higher.

You know you can´t go on like that for good. The easy-to-exploit oilfields are already starting to get depleted. Countries like China and India are developing fast and raise demand. Prices will continue to go up. The reason is not speculation, at least not in the long run. When a barrel was $ 145 last year, that was speculation. On the other hand, when the speculation bubble burst, the price went down to $ 40. Without speculation, it would always have stayed at the current level around $ 70 - $80. Speculation doesn´t make a difference in the long run, because the speculators don´t consume anything. They can buy up oil and increase prices, but it has to be stored somewhere. When no more can be stored, they have to sell - all of them at the same time. That´s exactly what has sent the price from $ 145 down to $ 40.

America ignores this and doesn´t adapt to increasing prices. The longer you wait, the more damage it will eventually do to your economy. You are literally burning your wealth. Increasing prices will hit you much harder than Europe, because you have to import much more - the effect will even increase because your own reserves are running out fast. You will have to import even more.

Of course, everybody knows what has to be done. Consumtion will only decrease when the price increases - and everybody *knows* it´ll never go down to $ 1 again.

Obvious solution: raise taxes on gas (and energy in general). Start raising them slowly, so people have time to adapt, but make absolutely sure they know taxes will continue to increase until prices are (at least!) at European levels - we´re talking about $ 8 - $ 10 per gallon.
Use the tax money to build mass transit system in urban areas, install wind generators, finance insulation of buildings. It´s important people know the money isn´t spent on silly wars, but to fix the actual problem: waste of energy.

Problem: can you imagine that will actually happen, or at least some mainstream politician suggesting this? It would be the end of his career. An entire nation prefers to live in denial.

You waste so much because it´s cheap.

Well, I agree that is partially the reason. If we finally start taxing and radically reducing our rate of consumption of fossil fuel energy, that would finally be a step in the right direction. I always hoped that would happen but it's too bad that we waited until the world's oil resources have started the long decline and the now sadly apparent (even to the naysayers?) hydrocarbon (among others) based runaway global climate change that's going to affect how the entire planet supports life has begun. We are in for huge changes in the very near future.
But I have always believed that the real core reason why my country (and we're not alone, just the latest major player, look at history) has always been on this road of massive irresponsible disregard for the obvious limitations of this planet's ability to sustain this way of life, is economic.
It's been almost 40 years since the first Earth Day, we all knew there were problems then, yet we did relatively little as a whole but a pretentious collective pat on the back. I know there were and are many people who strive for change but what happened? Well, it's simple, our whole way of life is based on growth, if we don't consume then we cannot have economic growth. Without economic growth and the insatiable need for more, more, more, our societies would be radically different. If one person has something that someone else feels they must have to be happy, that is a form of power. There are so many things that we all are force fed to believe we must have to be happy. If 40 years or so ago, we had all decided to stop driving, to stop treating the planet like it's a bottomless resource and to stop treating the ecosystem like some magical being is going to show up and save us all anyway and many other wasteful unneeded things, the structure of power that still exists today would not be here.
The interested parties who maintain this power structure will never let this responsible change happen easily. They don't care about the planet and people as a whole, as long as they are the last ones in the long line to the possible eventual suffering of us all, so be it.

I'm tired, I was going to respond to some of your other remarks but it will have to wait, sorry good night/morn all

The interested parties who maintain this power structure will never let this responsible change happen easily. They don't care about the planet and people as a whole, as long as they are the last ones in the long line to the possible eventual suffering of us all, so be it.

Read this book - it´s highly fascinating.

The author goes through human history, analyzing failed civilizations, like the Maya, Khmer or the Vikings on Greenland. He shows how the reason for the collapse was always the same: depletion or destruction of natural resources.

A stunning example was the culture on Easter Island - a heavily overpopulated, tiny bit of land with thousands of miles of ocean around it. All the people there could only be fed with fish because there was not nearly enough arable land for everybody. Fishing can only be done with boats, so you need wood to build them, but there was not much forest. That alone would have been bad enough, but they used most of the thin trunks for moving their stone statues around, making them unusable for boat construction.
They must have been fully aware of that - this problem is not hard to grasp. Still, we can only wonder what the guy thought who chopped down the last tree.
When the last boats fell apart and there was no wood left to replace them, hell must have broke loose on the island. A sophisticated civilization has turned into a Mad-Max-society in a matter of a few years.

In contrast, he also shows other cultures in Polynesia who - apparently - were always aware of their limited recources. Protecting them is common sense on those islands and they managed to survive nicely.

Well, it's simple, our whole way of life is based on growth, if we don't consume then we cannot have economic growth. Without economic growth and the insatiable need for more, more, more, our societies would be radically different. If one person has something that someone else feels they must have to be happy, that is a form of power. There are so many things that we all are force fed to believe we must have to be happy. If 40 years or so ago, we had all decided to stop driving, to stop treating the planet like it's a bottomless resource and to stop treating the ecosystem like some magical being is going to show up and save us all anyway and many other wasteful unneeded things, the structure of power that still exists today would not be here.

I fully agree with this, but politics aside, the problem could even be solved without changing the ways our countries and economies are run. Read this.