Every spring, regular as clockwork, the price of gas goes up and every spring, regular as clockwork, there is an outcry against price gouging. Every year, the FTC is asked to examine this and every year it finds no evidence of deliberate price gouging. The reason why is because price gouging MAKES NO SENSE.

Mike Giberson has a useful round-up of news and views about gas-price gouging here.

One other point is that any politician who wants urgent action on global warming on the one hand and complains about gas prices rising on the other is clearly suffering from schizophrenia. All popular mitigation strategies are based on the belief that rising gas prices deter gas consumption and thereby reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.