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Your e-mails: Fighting high gas pricesCNN.com readers respond to presidential proposals
 A man fills up at a Glendale, California, gas station on Tuesday. RELATED
YOUR STORIES
(CNN) -- As gasoline prices surpass $3 a gallon nationwide, CNN.com asked readers what they thought of President Bush's proposals to tackle the problem, including halting deposits to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and an investigation into whether price gouging has occurred. Here is a sampling of responses, some of which have been edited: The president's plan will have little to no effect on gas prices. Something the government can do is raise vehicle fuel efficiency. The government sets the mpg it allows vehicle manufacturers. Why can't all vehicles get at least 30 mpg on the highway? Also, change highway speeds back down to 55 mph, just like in the '70s. Vehicles are made to optimize fuel mileage at 55 mph, not 70 mph and higher. But, Americans won't allow that to happen because we're in a hurry all the time. When was the last time you tried to drive 55 mph on the freeway? Sure, President Bush's proposal will slow gas prices (short-term), but the consumer will not see the cost of fuel decrease because the cost of oil will outpace the savings. Consumers are already being treated fairly. The oil companies have to make up for the higher cost per barrel, and like any corporate American company they pass the costs to the consumer. Sure, it costs the same to process the oil into fuel, but they still need to make up the margin difference that they are paying for oil in the first place. So the consumer will see zero benefit from halting deposits into the reserve. I doubt that the president's proposals will do much to ease our gas crisis. I agree with comments that we need to be more conservative with our gas use, but I strongly disagree that we should force SUVs into the junkyard. Some people need them for work, and I use mine to transport my canoe and camping gear -- try doing that with a compact hybrid! I think the proposals are useless. What needs to be done is to make fuel-efficient vehicles or hybrids that are economically in reach of all Americans. We need the government to demand the automakers get the technology to the people. We need to be energy independent of oil. The gas prices are killing us. Forget eating out, going to the movies, shopping for summer clothes. All our "extra" income is going into our gas tank. We are driving less. We have already decided to not take our vacation out of state this summer due to the high gas prices. When is the government going to hit the gas companies for their huge profits and get our country energy independent? Don't they get it in Washington? Enough talking. Get it done! The culprit is the oil companies' greed. They have learned that they can get away with price fixing and gouging at the pumps. Yesterday, I was in Yuma, Arizona, where I purchased regular for $2.82 per gallon. An hour later I was in Holtville, California, and the price of regular was $3.50 per gallon. ... Just look at the profits that the oil companies are making and the retirements their executives get. Who needs a retirement of $400 million? My retirement is $5,000 a month including Social Security. Although I have backed up President Bush through most of his presidency, it is becoming harder and harder to do so. I think that there are some serious problems with his decision-making processes. ... He says the things that the American public want to hear, (but) all the words are essentially empty. Like my gas tank. Which is taking food from my mouth and making it increasingly hard to meet monthly bills. And yet I still have to get to work. So I have to pay, and pay, and pay. While our society suffers in the name of philanthropic endeavors to a nation that isn't cooperating and is siphoning our country dry. The terrorists may not have won yet, but they are well on their way of achieving their goal -- bringing us down. What we need is a massive gas strike. Get the word out for not just one day of boycotting, but one day a week. Get everyone to stop buying gas on a certain day, like Sundays, and to keep it going, for weeks if it takes that long. We need to do something. The only thing that will drive down the prices is to drive down the demand. Americans drive the most fuel-inefficient vehicles in the world. Something needs to be done to force gas guzzling SUVs and Hummers off the roads into the junk yards. What is going to help, I do not know. What I would like to know is, what is happening to the oil produced by our drilling rigs? What about the Alaska oil pipeline? Is our oil being sold and then bought back at a higher rate? To me, we are being ripped off. The president cannot stop the high gas price, but consumers can stop it. Here is the solution to stop price gouging: Let us all together stop buying gas from Texaco and Chevron. They will start to compete to earn our business when they don't have revenue coming in. I guarantee it will work. President Bush can do nothing, only the American people can. It is too bad that you did not follow the energy policies spelled out by a previous president, Jimmy Carter. He warned the American public decades ago that you needed to change your wasteful ways. However, instead of planning for a sustainable future, where the big three automakers would have been forced to produce much more fuel-efficient vehicles and switching from oil to other energy sources, your society decided to ignore his warning and purchase large gas-guzzling SUV's instead. In Canada, we followed your lead so we have done no better. Only in Europe, where gas prices are more than triple, do they use public transit, have small economical vehicles, and make progress to other alternative sources of power. The world is headed for economic disaster, as there is currently no viable alternative to oil. It will require the same effort as your Apollo moon program to have any hope of finding a solution. Bush's four-point plan probably won't do much. Big Oil has big lawyers, smart and crafty CEO's, and they are going to fight to try to justify the rising prices on the cost of doing business. And no one is going to be able to disprove it without a couple-year investigation. For the middle-class consumer, conservation is the best defense against higher gas prices. However, if you can afford an Expedition, Excursion, Hummer, or other monster SUV, who cares what gas prices are. How does Bush expect people who are retired, old and unemployed and with limited income to buy hybrid cars? And then in a few years to replace the batteries? We, the lower-class people, are always getting the shaft from oil companies and the government (taxes). I don't agree with George Bush about anything else, but I think he's right about supply and demand causing high fuel prices. Apparently, many of the people who have purchased SUVs and similar vehicles during the past few years were planning on the price of gasoline being set in stone. Unfortunately, it isn't. On top of that the U.S. government appears to have decided that they can irritate some of the largest oil producers in the world without any effect on the price of gasoline. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it. Halting deposits into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is yet another example of how this administration would rather sacrifice the future security of many for the profiteering a few well-connected Washington insiders. The quick psychological fix of creating the illusion that taking from our reserves is going to help, is not the solution. Placing a cap on oil profits is. The American people have sacrificed enough under this administration. (Don't) "get tough on big oil" (as if Bush would listen to that), but "get real" -- all U.S. citizens, that is. The U.S. produces more CO2 per person than any other country and twice that of the UK, Germany or France. It's quite simple. Use less and it will cost you less. And your grandchildren might even have a planet left to enjoy. We pay over $1.50 for gas -- that's per liter. An SUV is not just for Christmas, it's just plain stupid. Our leaders need to address the issue of our enormous and unnecessary use of gasoline immediately in at least two ways. We need to put teeth in measures to regulate gas mileage in our vehicles and allow tax breaks for high-mileage cars; encouraging fuel conservation in general. The oil industry needs to be held accountable for its price gouging. We currently have an unregulated monopoly with almost unlimited political power. We need to re-regulate the gas and oil industry and reinstate the windfall tax. 
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