Originally Posted by
invisiblehand
Reducing the number of miles driven/gasoline used is very easy but difficult in the political arena. Just make gasoline and highway use more expensive. Personally, I think that everyone else would fall into place since living far from where you work, shop, and so on would become more expensive. People would increase their demand for close-in living ... blah, blah, blah.
+1 - just
raise the damned gas tax! The federal tax is currently 18.4 cents per gallon, and hasn't been raised since 1993.
Raising it would be a "free market" solution to many problems (VMT, average fuel economy, global warming, even obesity if people started actually (gasp!) walking or riding their bikes to the grocery store). They could call it a "War on Terror Tax", or a "Freedom Tax", or a "Carbon Tax", or whatever.
Unfortunately, neither political party has the balls to propose something like this. So, we'll probably just keep subsidizing SUV's and Hummers, and sucking at the Saudi teat until it runs dry.