Originally posted by: C'DaleRider
Originally posted by: wchou
In japan, v4 engine are numerous as gas are expensive compared to here. Americans need to learn from the japanese to solve their oil consumption problems. oil spill is disasterous, in the future we will all have to pay a price for this and that could mean the end of the world as we know it.
But to blindly compare what's going on in Japan to here in the U.S. without the appropriate background information, which you left out, is silly.
Gasoline is indeed much more expensive in Japan and the whole of Europe. This is in spite of the fact that EVERYONE pay s the SAME price for oil....Japan and Europe aren't mysteriously charged more for oil than the U.S. is.....so why does gas cost so much more in those regions of the world as compared to here?
The answer is simple.....the various governments TAX the gas much more than we do here. This is done to promote lower usage by consumers. You have to remember, while we imort around half of our oil we use for gasoline, Japan in particular imports 100% of the oil it uses for gasoline. Japan's natural resources aren't nearly as plentiful as the U.S's........fortunate for us, unfortunate for them. This fact has led to conflict in the past (after all, we, the United States, were trying to "persuade" Japan to stop its aggression against China among others in the early 1940's by essentially cutting off their supplies of natural rubber and oil.)
So the gov'ts. tax the crap out of gas which provides an incentive to buy very fuel efficient vehicles. Add to that policy the policies that various countries use to "encourage" production of fuel efficient cars......taxting the crap out of engines over certain sizes, like Italy does with engines over 1 liter in size, and Japan does the same, but allows a larger engine before the taxing starts, you have car manufacturers that must produce small engined and high mileage vehicles because of consumer demand and government influence.....something we have none of here. Heck, the U.S. government can rarely get the damned CAFE standards raised a gallon-per-mile for the fleet without holy hell being raised by the auto industry. Imagine the outcry form consumers and industry if the government suddenly putting into place a major engine-size tax.
We are lucky in this country. We are blessed with abundant natural resources, space, and the like. Imagine our population crammed into the state of NY or Texas......like Japan is.
Now, you want to help our country with its pollution and fuel problems? Encourage a few things......
First, it's been shown that over 80% of exhaust pollution comes from less than 10% of the vehicles on the road.....the old cars that are still out there chugging around. this comes from California's CARB research over several decades......and this fact still hasn't changed. So instead of constantly putting stricter and more expensive controls on new cars, which aren't the major pollution problem any longer, get the old cars that are the problem off the road. It's been said that it'd be cheaper in the long run, in fuel economy and pollution, to just give everyone who drives an old clunker a new efficient car and trash the old beater. In teh long run, the initial cost of replacing the crappy cars would be outweighed by the decrease in both pollution output at the tailpipe and the increase in fuel economy.
Also, why not investigate converting our power generating plants that use oil and natural gas over to coal? I know coal can be dirty, but current technology is there to scrub the output form coal-burning plants to be as clean as any other fossil-fuel burning plant. As we in this country are blessed with enough coal to satisfy our needs for centuries, this would seem to be a logical tact. Yet, no one will just do it. Getting our energy porduction out of burning oil would, it seems, dramatically reduce our need for importing some oil.
Also, investigate rebuilding our rail infrastructure. It would seem that a train hauling 200 trailers across the country would be infinitely more efficient than 200 diesel-engined semis hauling those same individual trailers. But the trucking industry hates that idea.
Oh well, we're fated to what our leaders will do.....and that seems to be precious little these days, outside of our government providing the major oil companies government tax breaks and subsidies to continue the same behavior instead of truly addressing the root problems.