The problem with bio fuels is that although they can help, we need more than we grow for them to completely replace oil and coal.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004...rs-not-people/

Of course there is not one solution to problems caused by fossil fuels. There are a mixture of things that could help eg bio-fuels, wind power, wave power, (possibly nuclear) and sadly energy conservation. If we all used a bit less it could help stop pollution and the need to damage places like Alaska.

I think those who trust the big petrochemicals to look after the enviroment really should read more dilbert cartoons !

Of course you are aware that without "forest,animals,plants,insects,worms,fungus,bacteria, and their habitat", there will be no al_periodical either?

simple and straight to the point,i love that.
but i think it is not easy to drives this simple common sense into somebody's mind

i havent read the much of this thread yet so ignore me if this has already been pointed out

IMHO, ONLY 4.3 thats huge compered with cars in the UK and you consider 4.3 to be small try getting something smaller from europe. i mean you can pay £££ even a litre of fuel in the UK let alone a gallon!!! if you where driving that around in the UK you wouldnt have a lot of mony left plus you probably would get done for high emmisions. I would say the average family car in the uk is a 1.8, so 4.3 compared with 1.8 is huge! how much fuel do you people need????

as usual , i wonder how did the american policy maker at the top of all americans didact that roughly how much of the world's natural resources should go to the first world and second world(furthur splitting within them) and how much of the left-over world's natural resources should be best left to the Third World ? While many or most of the Third Worlds are the producers who are "importing back" thier own resources.

Surely, it is not good for Americans to have cars that use more fuel than neccessary ?
After all even if gasoline is cheap, it still costs money.

There is more to a gallon of gas than the price of the fuel. I hear complaints from Europeans all the time how gas is so high and the US has gas so cheap. How much of that is taxes? And taxes are fault of who?

Blinker, it's mostly that the US subsidizes Big Oil to a larger degree than does the EU.

http://www.walksacramento.org/gas.html

Actually most of the down-side that article claims has been refuted by main-stream research here in the US.

But you also have to accept the fact that Europe and larger cities have very good mass transit, so raising the taxes or gas prices is a good thing, it limits those to owning one and to use mass transit.
Where I live, it sucks and rather more open, further apart, so your forced to have a car unless you live downtown. If I lived in New York or San Francisco, I wouldn't even bother with owning a car and ride the bus or subway, etc, everywhere. I hate seeing big SUV's with stay-at-home mom's who don't necessarily need a big gas guzzler to tote themselves or kids around town, its pointless and wasteful to me. Oh well..

That's the one thing I wish the United States had more of though, better mass transit systems nationwide cause I'd certainly use it.

So did you even read that article?
Total BS My state taxes fuel at $.25/Gallon which is almost double the current sales tax. Then it goes on and adds costs like fire and police and puts some number out there for cost of air quality and cost of urban sprawl. I guess they forgot to add up the cost of pulling numbers out of the air or we would really have something here.

Sorry I'm laughing got to love these numbers:That's a nice little article if you're into fiction...

25c state tax - Would you guys please have a word with our chancellor, Gordon Brown - we are up to about 80% (over a $ per litre, not gallon!) tax on petrol so far and he increments it as and when he pleases.

You got it cheap in the States for sure.

And I wish public transport was covered by this but it's not - most of the money goes on "social" schemes to keep the PC and Eurocrats brigade happy.

Yes, the article does take things a little too far IMHO also, but consider the range it gives. $5 to $15 / gal! Even if you disagree
with some of the claims, and only want to take the most conservative estimate, we're still paying $3 or $4 / gal in our taxes!!!!

Why is this important? Because to level the playing field, bio-fuels would need to be equally subsidized ( comparatively, they're only lightly subsidized ). If even by the most conservative estimate then, if E85 or Bio-D were as subsidized as gasoline, then the US Federal and State
governments would be paying me $2.00 to $3.00 per gallon to just drive around town.

Case in point: SEPTA which by fair the the crappiest Public Transportation authority ever to grace the face of a major city.

And why would the Bio-fuel make a difference? Most of the costs they indicateDoesn't have anything to do with the fuel itself. The article has no basis in fact. The subsidies it claims are some politicians way of saying you are not paying enough taxes. If we paid an extra 11.7 Billion in taxes do you think it would do anything for aesthetic degradation of cultural sites?
I can make up some numbers if you like for example amount of time spent driving to work instead of walking $12 trillion, Emergancy services response time truck vs horse and buggy $89 Million dollars, Time spent at home instead of still walking to the store - Priceless.