Hang on a second, Denny. I goofed. Damnit. As of March 2005, the United States reported consumption of 320,500,000 gallons of gasoline per day. I said barrels. My math doesn't work so I have another chance to come back at Addison.

www.gravmag.com/oil.html

Unfortunately we live in society where long term planning happens infrequently and that's one of the few downsides of our form of government. We live in a world of instant gratification. In this case it's "my turn for the 5 BR house in the gated community and so what if the infrastructure is 20 years behind in supporting it. I ain't waitin'". Also, and just as unfortunate because I like the place, Atlanta is one of the biggest examples of this.

This time the price of the gaz won't stop climbing (China won't stop buying cars), so in few years, everybody will switch to another energy.
But for now gaz compagnies should dig more and they can do it, but they prefer to get all the money from countries instead of leaving it to the people. So they keep the prices increasing for their own happiness.
Yes, Gaz price is one of the drawbacks of capitalism and mondialisation.
However it's good for nature.

Mass transit will never be popular in the U.S. - and it won't be used unless they can do something about transit time. Here in Jacksonville, I can drive to work in 25-minutes. On the bus, it takes two hours and 20-minutes. In other words, in a day, I spend 3-hours and 10-minutes more on the bus than in my car. What's my time worth? A lot more than the price of gas. Plus bus fare for a week is $21.00. That's about 2/3 the cost of a week's worth of gas. Where's the savings?

Indeed, looks like your mass transit sucks a lot :))

Car pooling has its drawbacks, too. For instance, your car pooling friend might not ever be ready on time. She might borrow your car overnight and pick you up late in the morning, after her pack o'wild boys has torn the carpet loose from the floor, left crumbs all over the seat, and now it smells like cat urine.

Not that I'd know.

So many flaws in the reasoning I barely know where to begin...

The idea that a semi truck could be engineered to get an additional 10 mpg is ridiculous. As I understand it, they get about 5 mpg now. For the liberals out there, that would mean tripling their mileage. Impossible.

An additional 10 mpg for your SUV? That would mean increasing their mileage by 75%. Another impossibility. 30m vehicles x 10 gallons per day? WTF? I seriously doubt most people use more than 2 gallons a day.

Another product of our public school system, no doubt.

There is only one viable solution. In the near term we need to drill more wells and build more refineries here in the U.S. as fast as we can. In the long term we need to find another way to fuel our automobiles.

It's too late in the day to go looking for exact figures, but we've radically improved fuel efficiency since the 70's. We've also far outpaced that rate of improvement with an enormously large increase in demand. Which makes sense from an economics standpoint. If you increase efficiency, you decrease the cost of driving per mile. As price goes down, demand goes up. If Chateau La Fitte Rothschild was $2 a bottle, we'd all be drinking it. Of course it *isn't* which is why we buy something more in our price range.

So the Liberals want us to take Marta, HELL NO let the damn Liberals take Marta

WHY DID YOU REEDIT COMMENTS DENNY, THATS NOT FAIR WITH PROSPER. (see flight attendant)

Not to mention the people with weird working hours/locations, who mass transit won't take care of.

"It's too late in the day to go looking for exact figures, but we've radically improved fuel efficiency since the 70's."
Only on select vehicles, and mostly because of CAFE regulation and emission regulation forcing improvements in engine design. The 1970s engine was usually toast at 120/150.000 miles at best, while 300,000 miles is a reasonable expectation from current machines. This is a side effect of having to maintain emissions output stability for the first few years of vehicle life.
Semi-trucks are already more efficient than a motorcycle. SUVs are not optimised for efficiency, and with fuel being dirt cheap until recently this did not matter. While SUVs are wasteful, building efficient and hybrid SUVs is an option. TACOM built a hybrid HMMWV (not the ghey Tahoe-in-drag, but the heavier combat vehicle) years ago. Low fuel consumption, stealth loiter, beaucoup electrical power for accessories, etc.

In England and in France it's a bit more than 6$ a gallon.

You see, you're lucky you don't have a vampire tax hungry governement besides all this.

The day gaz will disappear, rich countries will eventually be free from those gaz racket.

Moreover guess who gets all the money ?? Yep, Arabic countries who don't love the west side of the world.

And who got enough money to buy what you know. Did you know that we keep good contact with those countries ONLY for business, even though we know they may have helped terrorists.

That's dangerous, now there are people richer than Russia who hate USA and EU and they know terrorist organisations.

For now they need us to get their money, but the day they won't have anymore gaz left ... will smell very bad.

And France sent, in the FIRST HOURS after Katrina has passed, few doctors and firemen to evaluate the need for local popultion. 400 tents, doctors and firemen are on their way, from the Antilla.
Et oui mon ami.. Merci la France! :)

"It's too late in the day to go looking for exact figures, but we've radically improved fuel efficiency since the 70's."
Yes: by copying European and japanese cars technology!
Is it american cars that looks more and more european and japanese (check the interior as an ex, the quality of materials), the engine efficiency. A chevy from the 80's ware a cubic piece of steel with marshmallow springs, a 6 liters engine with 120 HP (consuming like hell) and 100 mph maw speed while in Europe and Japan we were 10 yrs ahead... :)
And japanese hard kicked your car industry...

Jolikeur - Surprise! I agree with you. In fact I made that point in an earlier post. And if Japan makes more efficient SUVs, they'kk lick Detroit's ass again.

"Say, 30,000,000 vehicles X 10 gallons per day would save 300,000,000 gallons per day or 7,142,857 barrels per day"

Increasing mileage by 10 mpg doesn't work out to every vehicle using 10 less gallons, unless they are all commuting on heck of a long way.