I think I physically shuttered the last time I passed a gas station earlier this week.
$3.31 per gallon … and continuing to inch its way up every year. We used to balk at gas breaking $2 / gallon, and then $3 / gallon. I fondly reminisce about the days when I first learned to drive back in the late ‘90s when I could fill my car – with premium – for less than fifteen bucks a tank! My last fill-up was nearly three times that amount, using regular gas because anything else is just too expensive, and I don’t know about you but I’m really starting to worry about what our future is going to look like if we keep following our current path…
It would be nice if we could simply blame it on inflation because even though it wouldn’t make things any easier to pay for, at least then the answer might be a little easier to swallow! I know at least ever since I started working a little over ten years ago, the prices for consumer goods have continued to rise while wages … well, not so much. Prices for milk are up, prices for electricity and heating are up, and even prices for entertainment products like trips to the theater and resort stays on vacation have skyrocketed, and yet until last year, the minimum wage went a decade without moving from the $5.15 / hour mark and most salaries did little to nothing to help adjust for cost of living increases as well. Then again, our government never has been very good with money, as most recently noted with the $450 billion spent on the war in Iraq last year and also the whopping $600 tax rebate checks that we’re due to receive next month to help “stimulate the economy” and steer us clear of a recession. Not being able to even keep the nation’s checkbook reasonably balanced, really, what do we expect?
The business side of it, however, unfortunately makes a whole lot more sense because sure, oil prices being three times what they were a decade ago seem just absolutely crazy for us consumers, but if you were to put yourself in the position of a big-time oil executive, you have a very firm understanding that what you’re selling is a non-renewable resource. When it’s gone, it’s gone, and thus it would only make sense that the less of it that remains in the ground, the higher the price would rise to compsenate for the well going dry, quite literally! Some argue that at our current rate of consumption, we’ll have sucked the Earth dry of oil in about 30 years and with SUV sales showing no signs of slowing down despite ever-rising prices at the pumps, it might very well be even sooner than that. So yeah, it really sucks for consumers because the prices will likely never dip again, but from the perspective of the oil business, they’re just milking their product for all that it’s worth because clearly a day will come when they’re going to be out of business.
Sure, it sounds evil, but is it really their fault that society has gotten so addicted to oil? And it would certainly be nice if along the way, these same companies took it upon themselves to invent the next energy solution for when the oil runs out, but they don’t have to…
I typically tend to frown on the idea of government intervention to solve any problem because ours certainly doesn’t have the best track record of sorting things like this out – especially when huge amounts of financial gain are at stake – so I really don’t think that forcing the oil companies to drop their prices down to an affordable level is the answer … not that it would ever work even if it was. Now on the other hand, if Washington were to seriously make efforts to encourage and advance research in terms of efficient energy and harnessing renewable resources to keep our society moving, that’s just crazy enough to work … but there’s really no time to lose here. Steps need to be taken now to start moving ahead – waiting until the last minute could have very devastating results that frankly our children shouldn’t have to deal with.
I watched a “dramatized documentary” the other night on The Science Channel about what life might be like when we do run out of oil, and I’ve gotta tell you that it wasn’t very pleasant. I mean, don’t get me wrong, people weren’t looting stores and running crazy in the streets just yet, but it certainly wasn’t anything like the life to which we’ve all become accustomed by a long shot. Gas was $4 or $5 per gallon and stations were limiting customers to $10 worth a piece, and near the end of the presentation many stations were running dry after people lined up down the streets to fill up. Fights broke out over who got what, and even those that still had the extra money to afford gas at $5 a gallon felt reprecussions. As a last-ditch attempt, they authorized the drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, but came up with hardly enough to make it worth drilling for. Needless to say, the American dream didn’t look as promising in the dark…
So I think, or at least I hope, it’s starting to become clear to everybody that we all need to start honestly thinking about our energy problems now and what we’re going to do both short term to get by and long term to make sure that we don’t pass down an even scarier mess to our children and grandchildren. And it’s one of those areas where it’s really easy to feel like one single person’s contribution will never really make a difference, but the $40 worth of gasoline that you bought this week had to come from somewhere, didn’t it?
There are ideas both big and small that you can adopt into your life to help make a difference, not only at the pump but at home as well – everything from improving your energy consumption at home by investing in energy efficient products to simply turning off the lights when you leave a room or adjusting your air conditioner a few degrees. Maybe it means saving up a little extra cash when it comes time to buy a new car and purchasing a hybrid instead of another gas guzzler, or maybe it even means going the extra mile and a half and installing solar energy equipment at your home so that your electricity comes from the sun instead of out of the ground! One of the benefits, oddly enough, of it being such a big problem is that there are also a ton of different solutions that can all help to make a dent in our energy consumption around the globe.
In the spirit of Earth Day (April 22nd), I’ll be taking some time in next week’s episode of Against the Grain… to walk through some of the things that I myself have done to help reduce energy consumption and overall ease our stress on the environment. Now is the time for action and as difficult as it can be to believe after looking around at how bloated and lazy our culture has become with regards to being environmentally conscious, I still have faith that we can all come together to not only ween ourselves off of oil and onto cleaner energy sources, but just generally make the world a better place that can still be enjoyed for generations to come … with or without oil. It’s not going to be easy, but someone quite intelligent once said that most things worth fighting for never are.
Go green or go home! And if you’ve got any special ideas – big or small – on how other readers of this column can help the cause, please certainly feel free to send them my way and I’ll do my best to include them in next week’s column as well. We’re all in this together…
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