It's hard to go anywhere these days without having to listen to people rant about soaring gas prices. The guilty parties in these conversations are generally OPEC, the big oil companies and the tax man. Whether OPEC or the oil companies are guilty is an open question. For starters, people cut back on fuel consumption. This is a positive thing for all of us, because burning oil leads to air, noise, water and soil pollution.
Fuel taxes provide incentives for people to burn fuel in more efficient ways.
Several countries in Europe actually call them 'carbon' taxes, since carbon is a major pollutant. It should be no surprise, then, that European cars are far superior to North American cars in fuel efficiency, and this includes cars produced by the same companies. But it's a delicate balancing act. An effective government will try to avoid introducing taxes that discourage spending on positive activities or goods. A fuel tax, by comparison, is a good tax for a government to impose because it crowds out bad taxes such as income tax or other consumption taxes.