by Ron McLinden
It may be painful to see gasoline at $2.50 or $3.00 per gallon, but even greater pain lies ahead if we ignore the signals.
Adjusted for inflation, today’s gas prices are still below the 1979 level, but this time they’re not likely to go down so much. In fact, as he signed the new energy bill, the President acknowledged that the bill wouldn’t do much to bring down gas prices.
No doubt there are several factors in the current high price of gasoline. Among them is growing global demand for oil, notably in China and India. That growth contributes directly to those low prices at your local big-box retailer.
Growing demand is starting to bump up against the ability of the world’s oil fields to produce: it simply might not be possible to increase the rate of production much further. Credible oil industry analysts talk about “peak oil” — the point at which total worldwide oil production will reach its highest point ever, then start to decline. Some analysts predict a peak as early as this year while others put it sometime in the next ten years.
Even if oil production does continue to increase for a time, prices will trend upward since most of the world’s “easy” oil has already been found. Future oil fields will cost more to open, and we’ll hear more about “net energy” — the amount of energy embodied in oil, minus the energy it takes to pump it out of the ground and get it to the consumer.
Looming over everything is the prospect of global warming. The potential threats inherent in global warming are enormous. Little wonder that we might prefer to deny the danger, and tragic that our government does.
The risk of our doing nothing is great. Not the least of these risks is the disdain we engender from the 140 or more nations who have already committed to reducing their greenhouse emissions.
Our response to global warming — as well as high gas prices — must be to improve energy efficiency in every single aspect of our economy. That’s a “no-regrets” response, a “win-win” strategy. Improving efficiency not only creates jobs here at home, but it also reduces our dependence on foreign oil and its attendant balance of trade and national security implications.
There are lots of steps individuals can to take in our daily lives. Drive less. Share the ride. Use transit or walk or bike. Choose nearby destinations over more distant ones. Make your next vehicle an energy efficient one. Choose to live closer to where you work next time you move. In fact, make all of your major life decisions with the likelihood of more costly energy in mind.
In the broader community outside our households, we should insist that decisions affecting how our cities and towns grow be made with an eye to holding down future energy and other “operating costs” inherent in those decisions.
The bottom line is that we must become a lot more efficient in our use of energy. Painful though it may seem, today’s higher gas prices are a strong “market signal” that we need to move our economy toward living within our means, relying more on our energy “income” and less on our inheritance of fossil fuels.
In the process of becoming more energy efficient we can also become more “resource effective.” Simply put, that means squeezing the greatest possible human benefit out of each unit of energy and other resource that we consume. Only by doing so can we assure an economy that serves the individual and collective needs that we refer to as “quality of life.” And only by doing so can we assure that our children and grandchildren can have a chance at the same.
Energy efficiency. Resource effectiveness. Considered in a broader perspective, higher gas prices are an important signpost along the road, pointing us toward a more sustainable future through an approach common to so many of the great religions of the world: stewardship.
The above is adapted from an op-ed column originally published in the August 21 edition of The Springfield News-Leader.