The Fuel Price Follies

Everybody in the United States is in a lather about fuel prices. Airlines are scrambling: they are cutting service (for which read personnel), charging for services that once were free, and passing fuel surcharges through to customers, just to avoid losing money. Two of the three candidates for U.S. President advocated a summer Federal gas tax "holiday" which, economists universally pointed out, would not save consumers any money and might raise the price of gasoline in the long run. Automakers like Chrysler, suddenly unable to sell the SUVs and trucks that had become their staple, are now offering protection from gas price increases. Finding the best gas price has, in fact, become a cottage industry, with new Web sites springing up every day.

Little of this is surprising. Americans have lived with cheap transportation fuel for so long that life without it is inconceivable to many. Worse, we, more than any other developed country, are unprepared for fuel costs which, in the long run, will go up, not down. We fly and drive everywhere, and until recently, fuel economy (let alone the effect on the planet) was not a factor in planning and transportation decisions. Now we have few alternatives, and our failure to provide them will make the transition to a future of fuel economy and high fuel costs that much more painful.

Consumers, showing more common sense than many politicians, have begun leaving their cars at home, consolidating car trips, and using public transit, according to a recent Washington Post report. The increase in ridership in Philadelphia is somewhere between five and 10 percent—not enough to bring our fossil fuel usage down significantly, but enough to show a trend that could do this if it keeps up. The problem is that our public transportation, both here and in the rest of the country, is not ready for the increases in ridership that will (and should) come as fuel costs remain high.

Politicians and policy-makers still don't quite get it. Conservatives suggest that oil prices are experiencing a speculative bubble, and prices will go down as market forces act—all of which could be true but would not prevent higher prices as oil becomes more scarce and harder to extract. Liberals attack the oil companies for enormous profits—which they certainly have made in the past few months. The problem is that attacking the oil companies will not prevent oil from become harder to find because there is only so much oil in the ground in the first place. To adapt to a future of expensive oil, we have to stop living as if cheap fuel is a human right. This means investment in old infrastructure like railroads, and new ideas like light rail and alternative energy. Many politicians, however, still insist that building roads is an investment, while funding public transit is a subsidy.

A future with cheap oil is not on offer. Nor, unless we want the earth to become uninhabitable, is a future based on massive use of fossil fuels. Whether we can get to a future that is not based primarily on fossil energy is the central question of our age. We will not do so by giving ourselves gas tax holidays, inveighing against the oil companies, or deceiving ourselves about the nature of the problem.