high gas prices are good?
by Ari Holtz
Published: April 28, 2008
Two dollars was rough. Two and a half was painful. Three dollars seemed ridiculous. And now, as America creeps towards four-dollars-per-gallon gas, oblivion seems near. There have been reports of people drilling into others’ gas tanks to steal fuel. Cable news channels, purveyors of national hysteria, are telling of folks pulling their kids out of school to move closer to their jobs, biking 100 miles round trip to work, and actually riding horses to their places of employment. Times seem desperate.
More generally, current economic realities are brutal and exacting for most Americans. Tens of thousands have lost their homes. Grocery prices are rising at frightening rates. Reasonable loans are increasingly difficult to obtain. Selling one’s house is a Herculean task; staying calm while witnessing the depreciation of the value of one’s home takes great mental and emotional fortitude. This is no boom time.
Gas prices are the most noticeable sign of this financial malaise. People drive around and see those taunting price signs on every corner. It’s terrorizing and serves as a daily reminder of all the other economic strains, as if reminders in this regard are needed.
But, might it be possible, could it be possible, that the rising gas prices are a good thing?
It’s been no great secret for many years that large-scale oil consumption is problematic. Our reliance on oil causes us to be over-involved in the tumultuous Middle East. It leads us to make unsavory alliances with dictatorial regimes such as the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. It leads us to fight wars. It pumps money into nations that end up, directly or indirectly, supporting Islamist institutions that our War on Terror is all about defeating. Our need for oil is quite plainly a national security risk.
Our use of oil is also an environmental problem. There is wide agreement as to the connection of carbon fuels and climate change. There is also consensus that climate change is a threat to our planet and our way of life. The argument rests not in whether it is dangerous or not but, rather, how dangerous.
Oil is also a pragmatic problem. There is a finite and decreasing amount of it, while demand continues to increase due to the rise of India, China and other developing nations. Eventually, there will be no more oil. And, as we approach that point, it will only get more and more expensive.
Clearly, we as a nation need to move on. To paraphrase our president, we need to break our addiction to oil. Someday, sometime, we have to change our lifestyles, our fuel sources or some combination of both. Our reliance on oil to fuel our economy and our daily lives is simply untenable and has been for longer than we’d like to admit. But, as we’ve seen, this nation will not, perhaps cannot, make the necessary changes out of foresight, prudence or wisdom.
We need to be forced to change. There has simply been too much inertia, too much complacency with how we have built our lives around modalities – automobiles that move us around, trucks that transport our food and goods, planes that get us from one side of our large country to the other – that all require oil. It is hard, impossible, to simply move away from all of that without great pressure.
Now, that pressure is here. And it will only increase. And it’s horrible and awful and painful. People’s will suffer as we adjust and adapt. Grouped with all of the other financial difficulties, we will have to endure as best we can through the trying times. But, those hard times need to happen. They are the only thing that can produce change. And that change is the only thing that can prevent pain even greater than we are feeling now.
The wars for oil will only get bloodier. The foreign policy messes will only get more convoluted and self-defeating. The environmental consequences of climate change will only grow more catastrophic. We do not want that future. It is far worse than one where we power our lives via something other than oil.
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(6)
April 29th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Bro,
Global Warming is a fact. My SUV causing global warming is still undecided. Sure, lot’s of scientist and movie stars have bought Priuses and have asked me to take public transportation but the Green movement has become a religion and no one likes it when their religion is criticized.
Also, the fact the Bush wants us to convert corn into gasoline is an enormous concern for me. His administration has single handedly made ethonal the substitute of choice for those looking for a way to power their rides. Now I know nothing about ethonal, corn or gasonline. But I do not that the ethonal boom is government sponsered. Therefor I have to ask myself, if ethonal is really the best substitute why wasn’t it used in mass prior to the government’s big push? Sounds fishy. Or corny.
May 4th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Are high gas prices good?
No.
I’ve heard this argument before, and it always overlooks its fatal flaw: alternate fuel is still not available and likely won’t be for the foreseeable future.
As far back as I can remember, there has been a great new fuel system in development that would be all over the streets within the next five years. Five years later, there’s another one. When I hear about some of these prototypes, my jaw drops with envy, but when it comes to actually getting them on the market, they’re nowhere to be found.
The pressure has been on for the past 40 years, but until there are new resources are made available, nothing will change. We’ll continue to suffer. I’ll continue to have to choose between gas and food, being unable to afford both. And prices will continue to sky-rocket.