Changing our lifestyle will change gas prices

Frank Musaraca, Henderson

Sunday, May 18, 2008 | 2:06 a.m.

Readers have done much complaining about the gas prices. We should begin to seriously face the real problems and really try to solve them. After years of warnings, the oil industry has failed to build much-needed refineries in the United States, while those heavily invested in them are allowed to pocket billions of our dollars in net profit, year after year, while suppressing workable solutions to the problem.

Many say we are only “catching up” to the market price, because pump prices in France, England and Norway are more than $8. Baloney! Gas sells for 16 cents a gallon in Venezuela.

We can also blame the greedy U.S. automakers for shoving the gas-guzzling monster vehicles down the public’s gullible throats. The blame also goes to us, the gullible public that thinks it’s “cool” to own and drive a monster truck at 80 mph — lining the pockets of the oil and auto industry moguls and investors while complaining about the price of gas.

The answer is in supply and demand. And the answer is in how much we really care about lowering the demand. More people with more cars, wanting to get there faster, is the problem. Vehicles with gasoline engines will use significantly less gas if they go 55 mph instead of 75 mph. Significantly more gas is used when accelerating than at any other time while driving.

We also should mandate that traffic signals on all thoroughfares be synchronized. It isn’t the stop-and-idle that sucks gas, it’s the start-up-again acceleration. But the ultimate answer to the gas price problem is that we demand that the auto industry give up holding hands with the petroleum industry, and mass produce electric cars again.