Running on empty?
So, gas at the station outside my apartment complex hit $2.85 per gallon today.
I don't know that we'll ever see cheap gas again. This might be it, folks. Every time you drive past a gas station in Europe - be it a Total, a bp, an ELF, a Cepsa or a Texaco (of course they have Texaco in Europe. Duh.) - the prices are all in the $6 to $7/gallon range. The prices are enough to make your head spin.
But then you look around and everyone is driving around in comically small cars with names like Clio and Vectra and Pepi. These amazing little vehicles, as goofy-looking as they are, get fantastic gas mileage. You hardly ever see an SUV, and when you do, it's usually about the size of a Honda CRV. Throw in phenomenal public transportation and compact cities, and things don't look nearly as bleak as the gas prices would have you believe.
I realize I'm preaching to the choir here (and sounding like a pissy tree-hugging San Franciscan), since all of us drive compact cars. And a good portion of Americans are trying, I'll admit. But it infuriates me to see people obediently pulling their Hummers and Suburbans into gas stations and willingly paying $2.85 a gallon to fill up their tanks. I want to pull over and scream at them.
How much longer can we keep this up? The rest of the world might be stuck in pricey-gas hell, but at least they're trying to put out the fire. What will it take for Americans to change their driving habits? We've spent the last 50 years creating a culture based on sprawl and highways and macho big cars and the promise that gas would be cheap forever. Short of rebuilding our cities from the ground up, we're out of options.
So what do we do now?
posted by Jamie @ 6:12 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Well, given the current state of our infrastructure and suburbia, I think we're pretty much screwed until someone comes up with a better mode of transportation. However, the upside of that is I think we'll be more motivated to engineer such things given our dependence on petrol. The biggest problem I see is that we (read: Detroit) waited way too long to start thinking about it seriously, so we'll have to deal with really expensive transportation for a few years. But we'll manage somehow, cause we won't have a choice.
That said, I don't feel sorry for the fools (I'm lookin at *you*, mom) who pay $60-$80 3 times a week to fill up their SUV's. But I'm glad there will soon be an alternative (yeah Toyota), which is at least a start.
I have one very nice place you should visit:
www.chicagogasprices.com
The search on the left lets you find the cheapest gas in your city. Jen has already started to use it. I just wish that they could mate the search results with Google Maps to make it easier to tell which station is close by without having to map each result.
Lately, I have thought a lot about getting a more fuel-efficient car. But, I am still upside down on payments for the 6. I just can't take the notion that I will be paying for the 6 while I am also paying for a new car. Maybe the Easter Bunny will bring nice surprises for me.
I was thinking the other day that a company set up to convert a car from gas guzzling to something like water guzzling would be a great venture to start up. I wonder if there is a technology that lets you convert a regular gas engine into something else. I wish I were close to a research university that has some kind of transportation institute to study these things, or at least some agreement with a major automotive company to research automotive technology. Oh wait...
I've heard there are relatively inexpensive kits to turn diesel cars into biodiesel cars. I've read stories about people who fuel their biodiesels using waste oil from fast food restaurants, which they get for free because otherwise the restaurant has to pay to dispose of it. Convenient it ain't, but kinda cool.
Similarly, there were a bunch of stories recently about people modding their hybrid cars so they had a trunk full of batteries and you could plug them in, and they were getting like 250 mpg. I'm not sure of the details, but I really thought being able to plug in your hybrid overnight made sense, especially for commuting.
Then there's this, which is, um, interesting.
The other thing about this is that gas prices are still relatively cheap. If you adjust for the buying power of the dollar, and the purchasing power of the consumer, the 70's oil crisis still saw gas prices higher than today. Gas today would have to be somewhere in the mid $3 to get to the equivalent from the 70's (what year was that?).
The interesting thing is that economists use the rule of thumb of 3%. People start to really feel the impact of gas prices when their gas purchase passes 3% of their disposable income. What this really means is that even though we are paying more for gas, it still hasn't reached 3% of disposable income (for most people, Jen). Given the crude oil trends for the last year, we should pass 3% in the near future. Then the pressure on government will really be felt.
The other crazy thing is that these high prices are all artificial. Every time I hear about higher oil prices per barrel, the reason given is something like "fears over the security of middle east oil reserves" or "a statement made by OPEC that hints that it may do something in the future". But really the oil supply hasn't gone down, it's just people (traders) who are willing to pay more for oil because of the perception of sacarcity. If I told you that a major oil source would be disrupted the day after tomorrow, and you had the means to buy a ton of oil stocks today, you would be willing to pay more for those stocks anticipating the prices will be even higher later. The unfortunate thing is that the more bad news that come out of the Middle East, the more it looks like oil will go up, and the more people will pay for it. Oh, the vicious cycle!
P.S. I have way too much time on my hands during the day. Only two more weeks until this freedom ends.
Andrik hit on a good point. This entire oil crisis is fake.
The 1973 oil crisis was because of the OPEC embargo after we supported Israel's seizure of the Sinai peninsula. The 1979 oil crisis came on the heels of the Iranian revolution, which basically cut off our most reliable and obedient oil source. At least in both of those cases, we could point to a flawed foreign policy as the culprit for high gas prices.
This 2005 oil crisis is a result of... hmm... greedy traders driving prices up. I'd imagine they use some kind of software to do this. Therefore, by power of reasoning, this whole thing is Beanie's fault.
Post a Comment
<< Home