The news yesterday and today was full of rising gas prices. Local news had interviews with drivers who were trying to save a few pennies per gallon. National news had average prices (just over $3.00/gallon) and projections of a rise to around $4.00 by the summer. MoveOn.org, of all places, had a letter urging supporters to pressure their congress members to do something.
"Something," whether for Moveon or for congress members, appears to be investigating the oil companies for price gouging in the hope that with enough pressure prices will come down without the need for people to use less gas. In the last round of price rises, some in Congress proposed rebates to motorists. All this, as if the problem is the price of gas, not our dependence on cheap fuel supplies.
One sympathizes with the drivers who were interviewed on television. They depend on their cars because many of them live in places where a car is the only way to get anywhere. It's true that they chose their location, but the lack of alternatives to the private car isn't really their fault. To a great extent they are stuck because our society is designed for cheap and abundant fuel and can't adapt quickly to tight supplies and high prices.
This time around there is some good news, at least in the Philadelphia area. The rising price of fuel appears to have led to a rise in the use of public transit. The change is small as yet, but it is encouraging. Some of those suburbanites—whose dependence on the car has been nearly total—have begun to find their way to the train and bus stations. This is heartening. It would be more so if our local transit agency wasn't facing an enormous deficit and proposing big cuts after the summer. And it would be even more so if the government didn't view spending on public transit as an expensive subsidy, while spending on roads is seen as an investment in the future (which it is not).
Still, at least some more people are learning that there are alternatives to driving. That is all to the good, even if the government hasn't yet figured it out.
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I'm guessing that $6 per gallon will be the real turning point, where U.S. society finally stops just trying to hold gas prices down, and starts reconstructing itself in meaningful ways.
It's a pity that it must be like this, since of course the reconstruction will be much less affordable when fuel becomes that expensive. A wise society would have done the redesign years ago.
Anyway, I don't think it will happen this summer. Maybe three to six years from now.
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