$4 a Gallon? Keep It Coming!

High prices are finally forcing Americans to fuel-efficient cars: Friedman
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted May 28, 2008 5:05 AM CDT
$4 a Gallon? Keep It Coming!
An enticement for a free year of gasoline with the purchase of a vehicle hangs over a row of unsold 2008 Explorers at a Ford dealership in Denver on Sunday, April 27, 2008.    (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

The ideal presidential candidate wouldn’t pledge to cut gas prices—but would promise instead never to let them fall below $4 a gallon, writes Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times. The high prices are finally forcing America to use fuel-efficient cars—and that’s crucial for the environment, and frees us from foreign oil dependence, Friedman notes.

The new cost of gasoline "is really starting to impact driving behavior and buying behavior in way that $3-a-gallon gas did not,” Friedman writes. Would any candidate have the nerve to back high gas prices? Unlikely, yes, but “every decade we look back and say, ‘If only we had done the right thing then,'" Freidman notes. (More gas prices stories.)

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