I don’t quite get it. In most of the rest of the world, gas prices are $8 per gallon or higher, and we’re whining about $3.75? Really, I’m with Jasohhh. The only way to get Americans to conserve is through pricing information. And it worked amazingly quickly.
While I sympathize with poor people and rural people, I still don’t think we should subsidize their unwise choices. People who lived in rural areas used to be much more self-sufficient. I guess they had to be. As cheap oil has brought the world closer together, they’ve gotten used to cheaply travelling long distances to stores and for other reasons. They didn’t protest, and got used to it.
I see no reason to feel any more sorry for rural folk than for suburban folk. It’s not like any of this hasn’t been obvious for more than 40 years. At least I grew up being taught about the coming energy crisis. Then again, I may have grown up in the most liberal town in the US. We’re nuts! Thinking about the future as if it might come true.
As a liberal, I believe in helping folks out of poverty. I don’t believe in helping them do destructive things like overconsume energy, though. But in a way, I too take a perverse pleasure in seeing people suffer at the pump. Everyone could have gotten the message decades ago, and done something about it. Instead we all continued to elect business-as-usual Presidents, and here we are. They made their beds. Now they can lie in them. If they want to do something constructive, I’m all for working together on that.