Consider Western Europe, which already has similar global-warming measures in place. Fuel there costs more than $8 a gallon, yet even at that level usage is still rising. As a result, few European Union nations are in compliance with their emissions-reductions targets.
If $8 isn't high enough to reduce emissions there, what will it take here?
Not all that much more because people are already cutting back on driving:
As gas goes up, driving goes down
(CNN) -- At a time when gas prices are at an all-time high, Americans have curtailed their driving at a historic rate.
Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less -- that's 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT's Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it "the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history." Records have been kept since 1942.
Some Americans have turned to public transportation. Ridership increased by 2.1 percent in 2007, in part because of rising gas prices, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation in 2007, the highest level in 50 years, the group said.
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