Whether you're left, right, Republican or Democrat, and whether you drive a car or a bicycle, the cost of gasoline in America affects you.
The cost of gasoline affects your neighbors and your community. It makes it harder for people you know and work with to pay for food and transportation. It makes anything derived from petroleum -- and that list is longer than you may realize -- more expensive. None of that is good for the economy -- and none of that is good for American families.
But let's be clear: we aren't facing a gas crunch. On the contrary, Exxon Mobil, BP and the rest of their ilk are still getting as much oil out of the ground today as they were six months ago.
What we're facing today is a "futures" problem. Instead of facing a gas shortage, the markets see Libya, and the unrest in the Middle East, and then costs escalate. Players in the gasoline market are looking at long-term signals and betting on a shortage of gasoline in the future.
With this is mind, I think President Obama should embark on a two-pronged approach. First, he must address and ease the immediate escalation of gas prices to ensure our economy doesn't slip into a double-dip recession. Second, he must craft and implement a long-term strategy that will kick our oil addition once and for all.
For the short-term fix, Obama needs to send signals that tell the market that he's moving on solutions to both our present woes and our future calamities. To send these signals -- which will put the brakes on rising prices at the pump -- the president could:
The assumption that pain at the gas pump will force Americans to change their behavior has some historical merit. But I can't in good conscience tell anyone that it makes sense to do nothing about rising gas prices. Indeed, I don't think anyone can credibly tell the president to simply ignore the politics of this problem. We absolutely want to mitigate climate change. But shocking our economy into a double-dip recession isn't the path any president should take.
As for a long-term strategy, President Obama already gets that. He knows this is really about a lack of choice in the marketplace. Until we do a better job of giving American consumers real choices -- real alternatives to cars that rely on gasoline -- it's not fair to saddle them with cost of this crisis.
We are a nation built upon the gas-powered automobile. When cars came in, we threw out streetcars and left most public transit options for densely populated urban centers to figure out. This has left us horribly dependent on our cars and the gasoline that powers them. Our demand for both is as inelastic as ever: as gas prices rise, we grit our teeth and pay them. Otherwise, we couldn't get to work, couldn't get our kids to school, couldn't buy groceries or visit a sick relative at the hospital. We are largely a nation of consumers with two transportation choices: to drive, or not to live.
We fix this with choice. Until we have a million electric vehicles on the road, supported by an interstate network of charging stations, or until we've scaled down the cost of hydrogen and biodiesel-fueled vehicles and connected American cities with high-speed rail, the average American's pool of transportation choices won't grow. This is why my organization is hard at work in Arizona and across the nation to promote EV technology and foster understanding of its benefits to consumers. This is also why it's so important that our leaders are thinking big and taking action on this issue. Apart from very real concerns about global warming and environmental degradation, there are very present concerns of poverty and survival, and these concerns are inseparable from how much it costs American families to get from point A to point B.
The solution for today's crisis is two-fold: send a series of signals that tell the markets that the future will be OK. And work aggressively to secure that future for all of us.
Brian Keane is the President of SmartPower, a non-profit marketing organization funded by private foundations to help build the clean energy marketplace by helping the American public become smarter about their energy use.
Follow Brian Keane on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SmartPower_org
Domestic oil and gas exploration creates jobs, thousands of American jobs. Those job holders will pay LOTS of taxes, purchase goods, homes, autos (new, more efficient), etc, further stimulating the economy.
Lower energy prices will reduce transportation costs, extending the consumers buying power.
Lower energy costs will reduce food costs, extending the consumers buying power.
Increased domestic production will reduce our dependancy on foreign sources. It will keep more money here in the U.S. It will make us less vulnerable to the whims of OPEC and other oil exporters.
Continue with wind, solar, conservation, etc. They alone will not solve our energy and economic issues for years. Get to drilling. Get the economy and the country strong again.
1. How many cars have more than one person in them.
2. How many people post to Craig's List for ride sharing.
Neither of first two statistics has increased significantly. (And yes, I do know something about sampling theory and running stats).
So. What is my conclusion? People in this part of Oregon do not care to change their behavior in a way that would decrease gas usage. Or at least the prices are not yet high enough for them to do so. ( I am aware many of them changed years ago, and, like me, ride a bike whenever possible; just saying the recent gas "crisis" seems to have had little effect). It would be interesting to see similar stats from other parts of the country.
I have heard (not measured directly) that ridership of my town's FREE buses has increased about 5%, a very small step in the right direction.
If you ride-share you are trapped in an unforgiving schedule which does not allow for unplanned overtime work or emergencies involving children. Unless you live in a major urban center, mass transit is almost useless because work, social and shopping centers are spread out over the entire community. Bike? Maybe, on the exceedingly few days it isn't raining, freezing, boiling and/or you don't need to look nice at the end of the ride.
Don't even get me started on why herding our citizens like cattle into small urban pens will never catch on. Let's just say I will never live anywhere there is not room for my grandchildren to play and my Goldens to run privately in my own large back yard behind a five foot fence.
We need to drill here and now--and use every other resource we have at the same time: Coal, natural gas, solar, wind, biofuel, hydrogen etc. More importantly we need to develop a cheap battery capable of storing enough electricity to power a vehicle costing around $15,000 for at least 250 miles.
Look no matter how much we drill we can not lower world wide oil prices! The large national oil companies of nations that include but not limited to Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran along with the demand of oil from fast developing nations like China and India determine the price we pay for gasoline. This energy choice is only going to continue increasing in price. We may have some lows but the upward trend is unstoppable.
There is a way around this dilemma! Natural gas it's domestic we don't have enough ports to liquify it for export and it's cheap.
I drive a used CNG (compressed natural gas) Honda and have a fill station for my house. It cost me about $0.88/gallon of gasoline equivalent and at 35 miles per gallon that brings my price down to operate to $0.025/mile! The range is just over 200 miles.
A hybrid in CA cost $0.08/mile and even an electric car would cost $0.05/mile in California because of the high price of electricity!
My money is no longer going to support the large national oil companies of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.
I'm helping reduce our nation deficit, helping employ Americans here, helping to strengthen the dollar, reducing pollution, and saving money!
How many WINS is that?
But Southern California EV owners can get tiered electric rates, which should bring electricity costs down around 2 to 3 cents per mile:
http://www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/PEV/rate-charging-options.htm
Many cities have such rates (I can get 7 cents/KWH here in MI.)
Competition needs to come from another direction that OPEC has no control over. This could be demand for EVs or CNG cars. If EVs begin to take real market share from gasoline, then - and only then - would you see pressure on the oil companies to cut into their record profits to give you lower gasoline prices, in order to hang on to market share.
This day is coming.