Not One Thing Different

Gasoline prices have peaked and they are on their way down. Enough with the unrest in North Africa, the "fear premium" is overdone. We're going to see sub-$4 gas here along Franklin Blvd. by the end of the month, methinks.

As it has been, as it is, and as it soon shall be, prices rise and fall over time and we yank our chains as they do because it's the thing to do. The thing is, gasoline is $8 a gallon in Europe and all their cars are predominately fueled by petrol. So it'll take a whole lot more than $4 gas to get us slovenly, out of shape, overweight Americans to drive anything other than big cars to get us around for every time horizon I can possibly imagine. The notion that we can tax the excessive profits of a few multinational oil companies who produce a sliver of the world's production and expect a wholesale change towards renewables is among the most naive suppositions imaginable. We're going to use gasoline to power our automobiles all the way through $20 a gallon and beyond, and if the poorer among us can't afford it, well, they'll simply be the first to be priced out of private personal automobiling.

The Chinese aren't building electric cars and electric scooters for their burgeoning suburban middle class, either. Gas is still the preferred energy medium.

Come on. I didn't change one fucking thing, not one, between $2 and $4, to curb my energy use and neither did you. We all grudgingly accepted the increase and simply didn't spend that money elsewhere. The same thing will happen in 2013 when gas rises to $5. It will still be cheaper than bottled water, so we won't bother with changing our behavior.

It will have to get a whole lot more expensive for us Americans to do anything about our profligate energy use. A whole lot more expensive...and that's years away...