Yeah. Last time I was in Europe the local gas tax was more than the entire price of gas in the USA. Our low gas tax is, in effect, a subsidy, because we (as a society) choose to ignore the externalized costs of burning gasoline.

Gas is currently 2CHF per liter (about $8 per gallon) in Zurich, in case you haven't been out of the USA lately.

You could call it externalizing the costs of burning gasoline, or you could call it internalizing the profit of burning gasoline. The rest of the world burning gasoline results in cheap credit for the US.

http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci12-9/ci1...

The result of burning all that fossil fuel will indeed by internalized in the end, but when it comes around I doubt you'll call it a profit.

Canada's petroleum taxes are only "heavy" compared to the US. They're actually really thin compared to other G8 countries.

The country of Europe

And in the US we are starting to tax cars that use less gasoline than average. Not exactly in sync with the problem.

Yes, because the gas tax is not used only to discourage consumption, but to fund road construction and repair.[1]

The simple consequence of getting used to the idea of a tax revenue stream (because current and future spending depends on it), only to have that revenue stream be threatened (because of non-gas guzzling vehicles), leads to the blunt reaction of "hey, let's just tax them more".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund