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US average fuel price passes $4 a gallon for first time in four years amid Iran war
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Oh no the poor Americans, how will they survive paying slightly above a third what we pay here? Denmark and I suppose most of Europe, except the countries where it's more expensive and Americans pay less than a third.
USA is an immoral country, that has failed to tax fossil fuels since the 70's to limit the use of them.
Americans should be ashamed of themselves for the level of CO2 per capita USA is producing. Which is twice than what it is for EU and China.
I hope a lot of Americans fail payments on their gas guzzling SUV over this.
I chuckled a bit when seeing this headline. "Really? 4usd per usg? So cheap. That's what all this fuel crisis is about?"
In the US gas companies are subsidized to keep prices down. We pay in tax dollars in other ways, whether we drive or not. This impacts regular gas, but also groceries and other goods traveling across the country bigger than the entirety of Europe.
Also outside of a few cities, there's very little public transit.
Part of the reason that there's little public transport is that gas is subsidized
Not really. If gas subsidies stopped, public transit isn't going to just pop up. It would require a complete overhaul of the entire geographic placement of buildings and zoning rules.
Trillions of dollars over many years would have to be spent to make the US like the EU. Not just on infrastructure but also on businesses. There'd have to be incentives to open a grocery store in walking distance when box stores still exist. Thousands of people would be required to open a small business or manage a store.
In reality, if gas subsidies stopped the cost of everything would just increase astronomically. The US was developing when cars were becoming more popular. It's too far gone.
Yup. Doesn't matter what you do to gas, the US seems to hate public transportation. We each need our own bus to drive around. It's infuriating. I would love to take public transportation. But it simply doesn't exist in most of this country. We have to have a vehicle to get around, and I'm sick of it.
I reslly like that framing device, "we each need our own bus to drive around", going to adopt that line in my arguments against car brained people
This is misinformation. US cities were built with extensive streetcar networks, so much so that the first suburbs were called "streetcar suburbs." They were ripped out because of the misguided notion that they needed to be profitable (a double standard that only applied to rails and not roads, BTW).
They also had vibrant, dense, walkable downtowns, which were demolished circa the 1970s to "make room" for parking lots for car commuters.
Do not try to pretend that that was inevitable or irreparable, because it's not. European cities, like Amsterdam, were also demolished in the middle of the 20^th^ century, and guess what, they were rebuilt for the car too! But unlike us, the folks in the Netherlands realized their mistake and demolished and rebuilt again to put back the the infrastructure you see there today.
We can fix car dependency.
Im not saying turning them off would suddenly create a walkable paradise. But they do continue to create inertia from pushing for change.
That's completely irrelevant, yet Americans keep using that argument.
USA consist of 50 states, the distance of transport is determined by whether it's profitable, with higher gas prices, the longer transportation would increase prices on groceries from further away, and stimulate more local production.
Building more train transportation would also lower CO2, but USA is doing none of the things that could help.
In Europe Sweden has probably the longest transports in Europe, yet their CO2 is almost half (3.43) the average of EU (6.276), with USA (21.03) at more than triple the EU average!!
Europe has worked way harder than USA since the 70's to reduce unsustainable use of fossil fuels, the enormous difference now is because of half a century of failed policies of USA to do the same.
For instance on solar USA has less than EU, despite USA has way better conditions for solar than EU has.
Why are Americans keeping making excuses for the inexcusable?
USA is a shit country endangering the entire globe with their irresponsible CO2 emissions.
Its easy to not be car centric when you have proper public transportation infrastructure and multiple countries are within 30 minutes of driving to one another. Here some people drive 2 hours everyday just to get to work.
This. It's not like the individuals often have much of a choice. If you want to eat, you need a job. If you want a job, you typically need a car.
You are making an Argument from ignorance, because I know all about that.
2 of my neighbors do the same, and they switched to electric a few years back.
Here we have subscription for charging all you want for the equivalent to $99 per month. Where diesel would run up to $450+ for one and a whopping $900 for the other.
Difference is that one doesn't drive every day, while the other drives to Copenhagen every day. 1½ hours of driving each way, so that's 3 hours per day!!
If you have to travel 2 hours per day to work, you should obviously consider an economic car. And you should absolutely consider an EV.
We also live in a rural area where we 100% depend on cars, because there is next to no public transit. So why don't you just wake up? Instead of whining about how much more difficult it is for Americans to protect the environment.
We bought an EV last year on a small budget for $32000 , so we too are not impacted directly by higher gas prices.
USA is a shitty selfish country with shitty laws, that has done less than all its peers for the environment for half a century now.
It's disgusting that your ignorant post is upvoted.
Because your government hates you and doesn’t give a shit about public transportation. Americans aren’t victims of anything they didn’t cause themselves.
I forget about the meeting I was in where I decided for it to be that way.
You're right our government hates us.
We didn't cause this. We live in an oligarchy. The same way you didn't cause it if good public transportation exists where you live. Spot on with our government hating us though - goes double for anyone brown or with boobs
These were decisions made nearly a century ago, in the New Deal era. That's when the foundations for the "Suburban Experiment" were laid. That's when the FHA was founded and created its first set of guidelines for developers to get loan approval, which "redlined" traditionally-developed areas and gave extreme preference to car-centric designs, like strip malls and cul-de-sac neighborhoods.
👆why are you booing him? He's right!
There is nothing -- not "being a large country," not "being built for the car" -- that makes the US somehow inherently car-centric. We chose this by being too fucking racist and classist to accept living near or riding transit with black and poor people.
There's a reason why things like single-family zoning laws with large minimum lot sizes started popping up right after laws enforcing segregation got struck down, for example.
It is nearly tripple that of the EU. The gap is growing in both directions by the way.
I don't doubt double or triple but you have a source on that?
sure: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?country=USA%7EOWID_EU27%7ECHN