Not to mention that like half of our population is entirely convinced that man made climate change is a hoax. Many of those people go out of their way to drive the cars and trucks with the worst gas mileage, and some go even further to modify their vehicles to produce even worse gas mileage, and "roll coal" to offend the people that do actually care about the environment.
We live in a country with many ignorant and selfish individuals.
It's more like a third to a quarter of our population, but since they're overrepresented politically due to concessions made to the slave states, it feels like they're half.
The average US driver drives twice as much in a year as the average EU driver, so they are at least paying for gas more often on average, so it comes up more I guess?
Our alternative transportation options are shitty. The vcar and oil industries have been suppressing public transportation development for a century-plus.
They pollute the most because we export our pollution to them. Everything you own is made in China because they have much lax labor and environmental regulations.
If we can stop large corporations from moving manufacturing overseas, we can maintain a much tighter control on pollution worldwide.