7 Reasons Why Rising Gas Prices Are Just Fine

GAS CRISIS? WHAT GAS CRISIS?

7 Reasons Why Rising Gas Prices Are Just Fine

There are lots of reasons why one might protest the rising cost of gas, including how it affects truck drivers, its impact on the cost of food, and the disproportionate burden it places on the working class. However, not everything is negative about the rising prices (particularly non-diesel prices). Here are seven for the road:

1. Suddenly, large SUVs are so yesterday

Some people really need these vehicles, but most don't. What used to be a symbol of the rugged outdoors and the pioneering spirit is now one of wretched excess and the intellectually challenged. Resale values have dropped like flies on a hot August night, and CNN now talks about SUVs joining the endangered species list.

2. Finally, a serious migration toward smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles

The rising gas prices are doing what decades of CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards have failed to do: Reduce this country's dependence on fossil fuels. 10-year old Geo Metros and the like are now more popular than ever.

3. Smaller cars means more room on the freeways during rush-hour traffic

The math speaks for itself. If the thousands of vehicles stuck in rush-hour traffic are one-third shorter in overall length, it frees up a whole lot of room. Even with the same number of vehicles, bumper-to-bumper traffic congestion is significantly lessened.

4. Higher prices means more people choosing not to drive

The Los Angeles Times has already reported fewer cars on the road as a result of the high price of gasoline. More people are electing alternative forms of transportation, such as carpooling, public transportation, biking, and walking.

5. Higher gas prices reduces obesity

Taking alternative means of transportation, such as public transportation, biking, and walking, means you'll be getting more exercise. If you think this is absurd, consider Paris and New York City, where the residents rely heavily on public transportation (the subways). Parisians and New Yorkers do an awful lot of walking to and from the subways. As a result, you just don't see many obese people walking the streets in those cities.

6. Have you seen what gas costs in Europe?

According to the Energy Information Administration, the average price of a gallon of gas in Europe ranges from $8 to $9 a gallon. This has impacted European car owners to the point where diesel-powered cars now outsell gasoline-powered cars. Europe has been moving towards a majority diesel fleet since the European Commission encouraged lower taxes on diesel fuel to encourage its spread at the pump, reports Platts, the energy division of the McGraw-Hill Companies.

7. When it comes to climatic warming, low gas prices are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

Simply making cars more fuel efficient encourages people to drive more. One of the arguments against higher CAFE standards has been that making cars more fuel efficient will encourage owners to drive even more, thus negating any benefit it may have toward reducing our dependence on oil or reducing global warming.

In short, not all is doom and gloom about the rising price of gas. Sustainable solutions may be all the rage for now, but nothing has made us take a second look at our dependence on oil quite like the power of the pocketbook. In the end, it may be the biggest motivating factor for going green.



LA Car.com - The Cars and Culture of Southern California Magazine & Directory - BACK SEAT DRIVING - MAY 2008

 

Here's a list from MarketWatch:

Commentary: Eight reasons higher prices will do us a world of good

By Chris Pummer
Last update: 7:30 p.m. EDT May 28, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- For one of the nastiest substances on earth, crude oil has an amazing grip on the globe. We all know the stuff's poison, yet we're as dependent on it as our air and water supplies -- which, of course, is what oil is poisoning.

Shouldn't we be technologically advanced enough here in the 21st Century to quit siphoning off the pus of the Earth? Regardless whether you believe global warming is threatening the planet's future, you must admit crude is passé.

Americans should be celebrating rather than shuddering over the arrival of $4-a-gallon gasoline. We lived on cheap gas too long, failed to innovate and now face the consequences of competing for a finite resource amid fast-expanding global demand.
A further price rise as in Europe to $8 a gallon -- or $200 and more to fill a large SUV's tank -- would be a catalyst for economic, political and social change of profound national and global impact. We could face an economic squeeze, but it would be the pain before the gain.
The U.S. economy absorbed a tripling in gas prices in the last six years without falling into recession, at least through March. Ravenous demand from China and India could see prices further double in the next few years -- and jumpstart the overdue process of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels.
Consider the world of good that would come of pricing crude oil and gasoline at levels that would strain our finances as much as they're straining international relations and the planet's long-term health:

1. RIP for the internal-combustion engine

They may contain computer chips, but the power source for today's cars is little different than that which drove the first Model T 100 years ago. That we're still harnessed to this antiquated technology is testament to Big Oil's influence in Washington and success in squelching advances in fuel efficiency and alternative energy.

Given our achievement in getting a giant mainframe's computing power into a handheld device in just a few decades, we should be able to do likewise with these dirty, little rolling power plants that served us well but are overdue for the scrap heap of history.

2. Economic stimulus

Necessity being the mother of invention, $8 gas would trigger all manner of investment sure to lead to groundbreaking advances. Job creation wouldn't be limited to research labs; it would rapidly spill over into lucrative manufacturing jobs that could help restore America's industrial base and make us a world leader in a critical realm.

The most groundbreaking discoveries might still be 25 or more years off, but we won't see massive public and corporate funding of research initiatives until escalating oil costs threaten our national security and global stability -- a time that's fast approaching.

3. Wither the Middle East's clout

This region that's contributed little to modern civilization exercises inordinate sway over the world because of its one significant contribution -- crude extraction. Aside from ensuring Israel's security, the U.S. would have virtually no strategic or business interest in this volatile, desolate region were it not for oil -- and its radical element wouldn't be able to demonize us as the exploiters of its people.

In the near term, breaking our dependence on Middle Eastern oil may well require the acceptance of drilling in the Alaskan wilderness -- with the understanding that costly environmental protections could easily be built into the price of $8 gas.

4. Deflating oil potentates

On a similar note, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently gained a platform on the world stage because of their nations' sudden oil wealth. Without it, they would face the difficult task of building fair and just economies and societies on some other basis.
How far would their message resonate -- and how long would they even stay in power -- if they were unable to buy off the temporary allegiance of their people with vast oil revenues?

5. Mass-transit development

Anyone accustomed to taking mass transit to work knows the joy of a car-free commute. Yet there have been few major additions or improvements to our mass-transit systems in the last 30 years because cheap gas kept us in our cars.

Confronted with $8 gas, millions of Americans would board buses, trains, ferries and bicycles and minimize the pollution, congestion and anxiety spawned by rush-hour traffic jams. More convenient routes and scheduling would accomplish that.

6. An antidote to sprawl

The recent housing boom sparked further development of antiseptic, strip-mall communities in distant outlying areas. Making 100-mile-plus roundtrip commutes costlier will spur construction of more space-efficient housing closer to city centers, including cluster developments to accommodate the millions of baby boomers who will no longer need their big empty-nest suburban homes.

Sure, there's plenty of land left to develop across our fruited plains, but building more housing around city and town centers will enhance the sense of community lacking in cookie-cutter developments slapped up in the hinterlands.

7. Restoration of financial discipline

Far too many Americans live beyond their means and nowhere is that more apparent than with our car payments. Enabled by eager lenders, many middle-income families carry two monthly payments of $400 or more on $20,000-plus vehicles that consume upwards of $15,000 of their annual take-home pay factoring in insurance, maintenance and gas.
The sting of forking over $100 per fill-up would force all of us to look hard at how much of our precious income we blow on a transport vehicle that sits idle most of the time, and spur demand for the less-costly and more fuel-efficient small sedans and hatchbacks that Europeans have been driving for decades.

8. Easing global tensions

Unfortunately, we human beings aren't so far evolved that we won't resort to annihilating each other over energy resources. The existence of weapons of mass destruction aside, the present Iraq War could be the first of many sparked by competition for oil supplies.

Steep prices will not only chill demand in the U.S., they will more importantly slow China and India's headlong rush to make the same mistakes we did in rapidly industrializing -- like selling $2,500 Tata cars to countless millions of Indians with little concern for the environmental consequences. If we succeed in developing viable energy alternatives, they could be a key export in helping us improve our balance of trade with consumer-goods producers.

Additional considerations

Weaning ourselves off crude will hopefully be the crowning achievement that marks the progress of humankind in the 21st Century. With it may come development of oil-free products to replace the chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fertilizers and pesticides that now consume 16% of the world's crude-oil output and are likely culprits in fast-rising cancer rates.

By its very definition, oil is crude. It's time we develop more refined energy sources and that will not happen without a cost-driven shift in demand.