I don’t think its the governments fault per se. But overall they could have done more to prevent it ie help industry invest in other technologies. I do think its silly that we help subsidize the oil companies. It is our own fault, you have people driving 80k dollar cars that get 8 miles to the gallon and like a lot of people are too lazy to accept they caused the problem themselves…and they want to be bailed out.

Government has little to do with the everyday price of gas here, however there are policies that our local and national governments have pursued which have not helped in the long term. Since 1980 motor fuel usage in the US has increased by 20%, in most other industrialized economies it has either been flat or gone down by up to 10%. These different outcomes were the result of different policies pursued in response to the last oil shock. These other industrialized economies chose to have high gas taxes, invest in public transit, not give SUVs a pass from mileage standards, encourage walking friendly development patterns, etc. The result is that the US uses twice as much motor fuel per capita, which means that rising gas prices hit the US economy much harder than other places.