A few predictions about where gas is taking us

With gas at nearly $4 a gallon in most parts of the country and topping $5 in some states, I'd like to make a few predictions about the next few years.

1. Big Oil is going to be as popular as President Bush. There's going to be some serious pushback against oil companies for making record profits while the rest of are forking over $60 or more to fill up our gas tanks. Right now it's just congressional hearings. I'll be surprised if we don't see some sort of regulatory controls put in place, and soon, to rein in the energy speculators who are driving oil costs up so high, so quickly.

That's soon as is in "under the next presidential administration." Bush is solidly in the Republican camp that holds that government regulation of corporations and business is fundamentally bad for America. Whoever our next president is, we're likely to see a different policy take root, one that allows greater regulation of commodities such as oil, such as we had before the Reagan administration began dismantling regulation.

2. People are going to drive a lot less. Forget canceled or scaled-down vacations, basic day-to-day travel is going to take a hit. We're seeing some of that already, as commuter trains are becoming more popular in areas where they exist, as more businesses encourage carpooling, and so on.

Speaking for myself, I've made a tremendous effort to combine trips, even if it means delaying getting something for a few days. I've gone without milk for three days rather than make a trip to the supermarket before I take Rachel to gymnastics on Thursday, right next to the supermarket. We also walk a lot more. I walk Evangeline to school every day now, and back from school when I can, and I expect on Sunday that we will walk to church as well.

We're likely to see changes in the way people attend church or other houses of worship, for that matter. People who have been driving 20 minutes or more to attend worship services somewhere else probably are going to stop. Many of them will just stop going, and others who don't stop going will at least look for a place closer to home.

That will hold true for other things as well. I imagine that we're going to see a rise in the number of people who live near where they work. They'll either get new jobs, or they'll move. A 40- or 60-minute commute by car just isn't going to be feasible anymore.

3. Cars are going to change as well. Remember how upset Detroit was at the thought of tough new mileage standards that were still weaker than anything else in the world?

We're going to see how fast Detroit can design more efficient cars. Cars made in America are going to be smaller and lighter, and they're going to get a heck of a lot better than 24 mpg. Two-seaters like the Fortwo will become more standard for singles, married couples without children, and commuters; and even family cars will change. We're going to see a lot fewer sport utility vehicles and no Hummers, and a lot more hybrids.

New York and Los Angeles already are running some experiments with fuel-cell cars. If any politicians out there are smart and have an eye to the future, they're going to make it a priority to buy those cars for city and state-owned fleets.

That will drive down the price of the cars, for starters, but it also will lay the foundation for a distribution infrastructure for hydrogen fuel, making widespread use more feasible.

4. People are going to continue to buy less. Who can afford to spend $40 taking a family of four out to eat at a restaurant when you can feed that same family for less than $8 with a homemade meal?

And with food and fuel costing so much more, and with fuel driving up the cost of everything it's used to transport, who's got the money for frivolous purchases? Expect less expensive Christmases and birthdays, more hand-me-down clothing, and more of an effort to salvage things we once would have thrown away without a second thought.

5. People with yards are going to realize that there are better things to grow on their land than grass. If you pay $2 for a pound of tomatoes, but can buy an entire tomato plant for that same $2 at a nursery, where are you going to spend your money?

You may buy tomatoes until yours are ripe enough to eat, but we're going to see a lot more people having a go at gardening. I've already saved a bundle on the lettuce we grow in our garden, and I hope to save more on beans, tomatoes, yellow squash and zucchini. Maybe even some spices and some cucumbers. We'll have to see.

Just about everyone can grow some sort of vegetable. Even apartment-dwellers typically have a porch where they could put a tomato plant in a ten-gallon pot, or a windowbox where they can grow lettuce cheaply. A smart politician, or at least one with a sense of leadership, is going to make "liberty gardens" into a matter of patriotism, as FDR did with victory gardens during World War II.

It wouldn't take much effort to turn vacant lots into community gardens, to keep people from going hungry, nor would it take much sacrifice for corporations with huge and useless lawns to convert some of that space over to community agriculture, saving themselves the cost of maintaining their lawns and banking themselves some serious goodwill in the public eye.

the passing of an era

Today, for the first time, I have paid more than $3 for a gallon of gas in this state. Up until now, the highest price I have paid was $2.99, and that was two years ago, when gas prices first reached the stratosphere.

I have made it my goal to reduce the amount of gas we buy for our car to one tank a month, if at all possible. I'm working toward this by walking Evangeline to school in the morning and home from school in the afternoon, combining trips as much as possible, and carpooling with other people when opportunity presents itself.

I also am avoiding accelerating and braking needlessly, which doubtless makes me annoying to the drivers behind me, but it'll save them gas too.

If I re-enter the work force, as seems likely I must, my goal is to land a job here in Nova Bastille or in one of the immediately adjacent municipalities so I can bicycle to work. We're not even going to look at new cars that get less than 40 mpg, and 50 mpg will be our gold standard.

I invite everyone else reading this to join me in sticking it to Big Oil.

new rules to live by

Taken and adapted from CHRefugee:

1. Stop giving me that pop-up ad for Classmates.com. I'm not in touch with my high school classmates 20 after graduation, because high school sucked and the people who made it suck were my classmates. Why would I want to reconnect with them -- so they can make middle age suck too?
2. Don't eat anything that's served to you out a window unless you're a seagull. People acted all shocked that a human finger was found in a bowl of Wendy's chili last summer. The chili cost less than a dollar. What did you expect it to contain, trout?
3. Don't complain about high gas prices. There's an easy way to deal with it: Drive less, and do it in a car with better mileage than a minivan or sport utility vehicle. And don't tell me that corn-based ethanol is going to save us all. Corn is for food, not for putting into our gas tanks.
4. Stop saying that teenage boys who have sex with their hot, blonde teachers are permanently damaged. There isn't a man alive today who didn't want that same thing when he was a teenager. Try sending the message to teenage boys that women are people, not sexual encounters.
5. If you need to shave and you still collect baseball cards, you're a dope. If you're a kid, the cards are keepsakes of your idols. If you're a grown man, they're pictures of men.
6. Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone. Here's how much men care about your eyebrows: Do you have two of them? Okay, we're done.
7. There's no such thing as flavored water. Flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That's your flavored water.
8. Stop screwing with old people. Target is introducing a redesigned pill bottle that's square, with a bigger label. And the top is now the bottom. And by the time grandpa gets it open, he will be in the morgue. Congratulations, Target, you just solved the Social Security crisis.
9. The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the jerk. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a "decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n'-Low, and one NutraSweet," your picture deserves to be in the dictionary, next to the word jerk.
10. I'm not the cashier. If I'm spending my money at your store, is it too much to ask to have one of your employees run my purchases across the scanner, ring me up, and tell me how much my bill comes to? No one has complained, "Stores are getting too personal and friendly. They should lay off some cashiers and replace them with Do-It-Yourself express lanes."
11. A tattoo with Chinese characters it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above your butt crack, and it means "beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.
12. Competitive eating isn't a sport. It's one of the seven deadly sins, and it's gross. ESPN recently televised the U.S. Open of Competitive Eating, because watching those athletes at the poker table was just too damn exciting. What's next, competitive farting? They already do that. It's called "The Howard Stern Show."
13. I don't need a bigger mega M&Ms. If I'm extra hungry for M&Ms, I'll go nuts and eat two.
14. If you're going to insist on making movies based on old TV shows, then you have to give everyone in the theater a remote so we can see what's playing on the other screens. These things were TV shows in the first place because the idea wasn't good enough to be a movie.
15. No more gift registries. You know, it used to be just for weddings. Now it's for babies and new homes and honeymoons and graduations from rehab. Picking out the stuff you want and having other people buy it for you isn't gift giving, it's just a lazy way to go looting and pillaging.
16. If you ever hope to be a credible adult and want a job that pays better than minimum wage, then for God's sake don't pierce or tattoo every available piece of flesh. If you do, then plan your future around saying "Do you want fries with that?"

i love writing humor

This is from an upcoming Brothers Grinn mailing, pending any changes or additions by my co-smartass. I can almost imagine someone in the oil industry trying to put this sort of spin on the current state of gas prices:

POLL: AMERICANS LIKE HIGH GAS PRICES

Americans not only enjoy paying $3 or more per gallon at the pump, many of them would like to pay more, a recent survey has found.

The survey, conducted by ExxonMobil, asked viewers if they would prefer to spend their life savings on gas over the course of six months, or if they would rather be locked in a closet overnight with Ernest Borgnine while he recites his lines from "McHale's Navy" using the voice of Miss Piggy.

The survey showed that 84 percent of all male motorists prefer to spend their extra money on gas, with the number dropping significantly, to 4 percent, if they were locked in the closet with Scarlet Johannsen instead of with Ernest Borgnine.

The number of women who preferred to spend their money on gas hovered around 80 percent whether they were locked in a closet with Ernest Borgnine or with Scarlett Johannsen. The number of women who would rather pay at the pump rose sharply to 98 percent when the alternative was to be locked up with Ashton Kuchner.

"America will never allow itself to be locked in a closet with anyone," said analyst Ron Milton of Catasauqua University in eastern Pennsylvania. "It's our right to squander natural resources, waste our wealth and poison the air. Buy more SUVs! We're Americans."

Survey results have a margin of error of plus or minus 50 percent.

BICYCLISTS JOIN EVOLUTION DEBATE

A group of Kansas bicyclists have joined the debate in that state over whether to teach Intelligent Design as a viable scientific theory alongside evolution.

The group, a wide mix of professionals who have decided to save gas by riding their bikes to work, have rallied together under the banner "Natural Selection, not Intelligent Design." The bicyclists are taking their message to the state's hoghways, where they expect to get the widest possible audience.

"It's the only way I know how to get to work anyway," explained Robin O'Connor, as she pedaled her bike onto a busy interstate and was immediately hit by a tractor trailer going 90 mph.

So far, about 40 percent of the group's founders have given their lives for the cause. The remaining members explain that they will continue to carry the mission forward until they have proven that natural selection has guided the human evolutionary process by eliminating those unfit for survival, such as those who ride their bikes on highways with no shoulders.

Despite their unorthodox method of argument, their efforts have received attention from the Kansas State Board of Education, and caused a few members to reconsider their position.

"I had always thought that life was so complex and wonderful that it had to be the work of an intelligent designer," said one board member who has supported the Intelligent Design position in the past. "But these idiots sure are making a good argument against any intelligence being involved in any way in their origin."

another stupid "gas out" idea

Remember the stupidity behind the Gas Out six years ago? The idea at the time, when gas was probably temporarily around $1.20 a gallon, was that if everyone went one whole day without buying gas, it would force the oil companies to drastically lower their prices. There was no actual change in people's gasoline consumption or driving habits, mind you. There was just one day when everyone was supposed to avoid buying gas, and either fill up the day before or the day after.

Well, I guess it's still easier to blame Big Oil for gas prices rather than making changes in our driving habits. A friend of mine named David McCandless, who found the idea about as ridiculous as I do, forwarded me the latest Gas Out idea. What's appalling about this is that it almost contains a modicum of understanding about market forces, but not enough to actually create an intelligent plan.

The new Gas Out involves boycotting ExxonMobil, which may or may not be a bad idea, but certainly would be useless for driving down the cost of gas. True, ExxonMobil is the biggest of Big Oil, and a major boycott might drive down the price of a gallon of gas at the local Exxon and Mobil stations, because the decreased demand (for those brands) will force them to lower their prices in order to remain competitive with other brands.

Unfortunately, the decreased demand at ExxonMobil would lead to an increased demand for other brands of gas, whether they be Lukoil, Sunoco, Amoco, Chevron or Sheetz, and therefore theoretically would drive up their costs slightly. At best, ExxonMobil prices would drop a few pennies, everyone else's would go up a few pennies, then people would switch back to ExxonMobil because of the lower prices there, thereby leveling out the artifically increased demand at the other stations.

Since the overall appetite for oil would remain the same, I think we could expect the price of gasoline to remain fairly steady.

Is this what's passing for logic these days? No wonder America's falling so far behind the other nations in terms of academic achievement, and losing its edge in the sciences. This is really stupid. Whoever came up with it definitely has a rudimentary understanding of supply and demand, and how they affect economics. Unfortunately, he's not applying the rule properly. To lower gasoline prices, we need to use a lot less of it, period. Not just buy less of it from ExxonMobil, but buy and burn less of it overall.

I read that for hybrids to meaningfully affect gas consumption (demand), 20 percent of our cars need to be hybrids. Right now we're closer to 2 percent. The high price of gas is forcing people to eschew gas-guzzling vehicles in favor of hybrids, but we have a long way to go before we're at the one-in-five mark. Maybe more people should just actually ride their bikes to work, even if it means a longer commute.

pain at the pump

Gas prices here in New Jersey and throughout the United States have been positively painful latelyevels. I filled my car's gas tank on Tuesday, even though it was three-quarters full, because I was passing a gas station where regular fuel was $2.55 and I had no idea when I would see gas that cheaply again. Since then, when I took the car out on Wednesday, I saw gas going for as high as $3.19. I'm sure it's even worse in other states.

So, in a fit of civic-mindedness, I actually wrote to my elected officials Thursday night and asked them, not to lower gasoline prices, but to encourage greater conservation efforts and, more importantly, to encourage our nation's auto manufacturers to produce the alternative-fuel vehicles we have heard much about but seen little of.

On the first front, I believe Congress could do much to encourage greater conservation simply with an appeal to our nation's industries to allow telecommuting when possible, and even providing a financial incentive such as a tax credit or other recognition for businesses that encourage telecommuting. They also could prevail upon Bush to stop flying to Crawford, Texas, all the time, ground their limosines, and encourage the use of more fuel-efficient vehicles, like hybrids, for starters.

It would also be nice to see more options in terms of fuel. Internal combustion engines can be modified fairly easily to run on natural gas, as I witnessed firsthand in New Zealand in 1987, and again in Haiti during the ill-conceived embargo of the previous Bush and Clinton administrations. Aside from the post office trucks and a few other government-type vehicles, I'm aware of no such vehicles here in the United States, let alone places for people to fuel them.

More to the point, I've heard reports of prototype fuel cell vehicles for years, but I'm not aware of any efforts to put them into mass production. It would be nice if our elected officials exerted some effort to encourage these alternatives. Left to the market, these changes are going to be disastrously slow in coming and horrendously expensive when they do.

This current presidential administration has been extremely friendly to the automotive and oil industries, through measures such as relaxing fuel-economy standards in early 2001. It's past time we as a nation took seriously our obligation to consider the environment and the economy we will be leaving our children. Any incentive the government can give the auto industry to break our dependence on imported oil can only be a good thing.

Can we develop those alternate fuels now?

Dear Mr. President,

Maybe you haven't noticed, but the price of gas is getting cripplingly high for many of us in America.

It's reaching the point where we're reassessing not just recreational travel plans, but how much we use the car at all. It's driving up the costs of food, clothes and everything else that has to be transported from somewhere else to here.

It's bad enough for the middle class. I shudder to think of what it must be like for the working class and the unemployed who already are struggling to pay their bills. This isn't the time to drill for oil in the Arctic, or time to hope that freeing Iraq from Saddam Hussein so that Shi'a clerics can establish a harsh theocracy is going to bring new fuel into the country.

We're at the point that we should be using heavily fuel sources that require fewer fossil fuels or none at all.

Think you could spare a thought for us working families, instead of for your friends and campaign donors in the oil industry?

gas out

In case you didn't know, Friday is supposed to be the day of the great American "gas out."

Friday is the day when drivers all across the country are supposed to boycott gasoline stations, according to a petition circulating on the Internet. Supposedly, by not buying gas, the American consumer public will send a clear message to oil companies -- and the oil-producing countries in the Middle East -- that the recent hikes in the price of gas are unacceptable.

Yeah. That'll work.

I heard about this undertaking through an e-mail a friend sent me. The message has been circulating nearly two months now and, given the nature of the Internet, probably will circulate in one form or another as long as there are people with e-mail.

The text runs something like this:

It's time we did something about the price of gasoline in America! We are all sick and tired of high prices when there are literally millions of gallons in storage.

Know what I found out? If there was just one day when no one purchased any gasoline, prices would drop drastically. ...

I have decided to see how many Americans we can get to not buy any gasoline on one particular day!

Let's have a gas out! Do not buy any gasoline on April 30, 1999! Buy on Thursday before, or Saturday after. Do not buy any gasoline on Friday, April 30, 1999.

After outlining this strategy, the author of the note asks for gullible readers like my friend to pass the letter on to as many people as possible, with the assurance that only a few million participants will be enough. After all, we can make a difference.

I rank this particular exploit right up there with tilting at windmills as a suitable pastime for Don Quixote. Much as I love the idea of the common person "sending a message" to the corporate world, I'm unconvinced that a boycott of this nature is going to have any real effect; moreover, it strikes me as incredibly immature.

It's quite possible the nameless author of this petition doesn't remember the mid-1970s. I was less than 10, but I remember some parts quite clearly. As I recall, the world supposedly was running out of oil then, and by the end of the century, so popular belief had it, all the fossil fuels would be gone.

We had strict rationing of gasoline based on the last number on our license plates. If your plate ended in an even number and you had an empty tank on an odd day of the month, you were out of luck. A few years earlier, when I was too young to remember, there were limits on how many gallons motorists could buy at one time.

Nowadays gas costs about $1 a gallon in Central Jersey, a little less in some places and a little more in others. I usually can fill my Cavalier for less than $15. I'll assume the author is from California, where a gallon of unleaded costs about $1.80, according to the Gas Out Web site. He still doesn't know how good he has it.

When I was in Haiti during the 1994 embargo, gasoline cost upward of $40 U.S. a gallon and had to be bought on the black market because it was being smuggled in from the Dominican Republic. Even in countries not currently under economic sanctions, gasoline can cost about $4 or $5 a gallon everyday.

So while I admire the idealism, however misplaced it has to be, I feel kind of sorry for people who are up in arms over a measly 20-cent gas hike. If they really want to send a message to the oil industry, they should buy a bicycle and ride that to work all summer instead.

It might even improve their health and the air quality.