The Yurpeens

Robert Kuttner writes about Europeans and climate change:

A EUROPEAN UNION divided on everything from farm subsidies to immigration, and reluctant to confront the United States over a war that most Europeans considered a disaster from the start, has found new unity and self-confidence on the issue of global climate change. [...]

This is a continent where people willingly pay taxes that price motor fuels at over $6 a gallon; where toll roads are kept expensive but rail tickets are dirt cheap; and where national governments have already set targets for reducing carbon emissions.

The visitor to Europe notices that farmland comes right up to the edge of cities. This is no accidental residue of medieval walled towns, but the deliberate consequence of public planning to promote dense, energy-efficient living patterns and to reduce sprawl. European cities vie with one another to achieve the greenest lifestyles.

Certainly one can find antipathy towards high tax rates and the sense of a crowded lifstyle there as well as here, and when Europeans travel to the US they want to soak in such experiences as staying at roadside motels and shopping at strip malls because they think it's cool, But once they get home, the sense of societal altruism that involves a moderate degree of sacrifice kicks right back in. Sacrifice without giving up much quality of life, of course.

There are likely many factors that play into the population's willingness to accept higher energy costs compared to the US population's apparent unwillingness, but I'm thinking at least some of it stems from coming out of WW2 where, though everyone had to suffer shortages of one kind or another, those were relatively short-lived in the US.