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$20.00 per Gallon of Gas

// July 16th, 2009 // General

Scenario:
Gas is twenty bucks a gallon. It costs $2000.00 to fly coast to coast in the United States. Cities have become denser, as the exurbs are deserted, and employees and professionals cannot afford to commute by combustion engine. Plastic is made of corn, canvas bags are standard at the check out counters, and the stocks of solar energy companies are ballooning.

Reality Check:
This story, heard on NPR by me in my steaming-hot, 15-year-old Prizm as I ran errands on one of the hottest days of our summer here in Central California, sounds plausible. We Americans need things to hurt our wallets before we notice them, and the hurt needs to be worse than we’re already feeling.

Given the health care,  housing and employment markets currently, that means that the hurt levels (in this case, gas prices) have to equal to or go beyond where they have been for years in many other countries: $6.00 is one key level for the author of the book being discussed on NPR; the real change in Americans’ willingness to push for change will come when gas reaches $20.00 per gallon. One caller, a man who deals in urban real estate, longed for the price of gas to get higher; he cheers it on every time it rises.  When people can’t afford to live far from their city jobs, his market gets healthier.

Lucky for my family and me, country dwellers that are, we live within walking distance of my work and our daughter’s school (I teach there). And don’t get me wrong, like any progressive I yearn for a more sustainable economy. But given the cost of gas already, the decade-plus age of both our cars, and the already high cost of everything from food to health care to electricity (the five day forecast from posting time is 103/103/102/103/103), I tremble to think of the trauma to individual family budgets of this coming transition from oil addiction, to sustainable energy policy, if those who could be pushing for this change won’t push effectively until gasoline becomes outrageously expensive.

It’s gonna get worse before it gets better (assuming, as I like to, that it is going to get better).