the leaders actually do have some control over it. Indirectly.
We (drivers/vehicle owners) have control over it too.
See this every single day. Next time I'm taking a picture! At the school house in the morning and again at 3:00, line of a couple hundred SUV's, sitting there in the road, idling. Some of them get there in the afternoons at like 1:30 and sit there for over an hour & a half waiting for the rodents to get outta school. I went by there Thurs afternoon at 2:19pm and they were lined up already. It was cool and windy outside so I would imagine that they was all sitting there with the heaters cranked up, engine running (obviously) wasting fuel. Then once they're out, they run 2 blocks down the road, drop em off at soccer practice (or whatever), drive 4 blocks back the other way to the house, park, an hour later drive those 4 blocks back to soccer practice, sit and wait, then go to walmart, walk around and chat it up with your nextdoor neighbor for an hour in the middle of the aisles, buy $5 worth of stuff, drive back home, oh crap forgot to get milk...get back in the SUV again, drive the 0.7 mile back to walmart, get milk, back home. By now you've wasted 5 gallons (or more) of fuel in JUST those activities, not counting the work commute, or picking up the other kid from the other school and taking them to the other practice(s).
Lady down the road from me, her "car" (suburban) never sits. And it gets, what, 11 mpg tops? Next time I'm down there I'm gonna ask her how much fuel she goes through. I bet it's gotta be 2 to 3 tanks a week.
I buy one tank every 2 weeks. My little antique runs about 30mpg on average. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. Turbocharged, so gotta resist the urge to "hear it spool" else watch the gas gauge drop. On that note many modern cars are turbocharged, and while they can get great mileage and make good power, you can't have both. Meaning, if you want to save fuel, you have to keep your foot out of it. Pretend there's an egg between your foot and the gas pedal. My old 2019 Mustang had a MPG gauge or bar graph (had both) that told you what the MPG was doing instantly. It averaged 38.3 mpg in the last month I owned it. Over 40 on the highway; but had to be below 70mph and the speed limit it 75. On that note, they raised the speed limits on the freeways here recently and the reasoning was that cars and trucks (especially trucks) will use more fuel therefore fuel taxes collected would increase
Point being, if we change our driving habits the cost will level off. But it's not likely we're gonna do that because it's inconvenient. We did it in what, 2008? No reason we can't again, rather tons of reasons we AREN'T.