American Pie: Those Gas Pump Blues
The soaring cost of gasoline has resulted in a change in driving habits in the USA, John Merchant reports.
But how long will those changes last? And what is the real reason for the huge increase in the price of gasoline?
For more of John’s thoughtful columns please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/american_pie/
The howls of anguish from American motorists, faced with paying over 4 dollars a gallon for gas, have probably been heard all over the world. The reaction from the English and European motoring public to Americas’ discomfort predictably has been less than sympathetic. Accustomed for years to the high taxes applied to gasoline sales, the British and Europeans would willingly exchange the US prices for theirs, and look upon US motorists as a bunch of crybabies.
But while I agree that my fellow countrymen are a spoiled, self indulgent bunch of people, the reality of our gas crisis is not quite that black and white. In the first place a US gallon doesn’t take us quite as far as an Imperial gallon. Secondly, Americans generally have to drive further to work and even to buy groceries. For most families, given the lack of a public transportation infrastructure, it is essential to own more than one car, especially in the two career families that are the norm.
US citizens are not responsible for the dismantling of the railroads and inner city public transportation systems, or for the unwillingness of the Government to subsidize the expansion of existing services. Nor is the average US citizen to blame for the planning decisions that result in urban sprawl and inevitably lengthen the distance between homes, jobs and services.
Also, in fairness, our British and European cousins are not faced with the high medical insurance costs Americans have to budget for, or the need to set aside substantial proportions of their income to provide a living pension. So increased gas prices, however small, are just another burden on the already tight, average family budget.
OK, so nobody makes us buy gas guzzling SUV’s, but then no one could have anticipated the sudden and rapid gas price increase, or its magnitude, and if you bought an SUV within the past year, you’re probably stuck with it for the next four years, because you couldn’t sell it if you wanted to.
At the root of most Americans’ resentment is the absence of any rational explanation for the price increases, and a suspicion that we are being led by the nose. Declining crude oil supplies versus increased demand, OPEC machinations, fevered global commodity trading, and increased refining costs, have all been posited as the cause, and just as quickly denied. None of these excuses quite fit the rapid increase in gas prices at the pump anyway, or the day to day fluctuations.
How is it that gas stations, almost overnight, were able to erect illuminated signs for their gas prices that can be changed remotely? How come the price of gas at the pump goes up immediately the cost of a barrel of oil increases, and doesn’t come down for three or four days after an decrease? Paranoia is rife, and not surprisingly among those of us who remember the so called oil crisis in the mid-seventies, when motorists sat in line at gas stations for hours, and at the same time, loaded oil tankers were anchored in the waters off the New Jersey coast.
That crisis went away like magic, with no more explanation of its cessation than of its onset. It’s not surprising then that Joe and Jane public is convinced this time around that the oil companies or the Bush administration is manipulating the prices. To what end you might ask? The Bush administration has tried repeatedly over the past eight years to persuade Congress and the Senate to legislate the removal of restrictions on drilling for oil offshore and on environmentally protected land in Alaska. What better way to get the legislation passed than to enrage the politicians’ constituents by making them pay through the nose for gas from imported oil?
The oil companies, for their part, are I’m sure very interested in determining how much motorists are prepared or willing to pay for gas and still maintain their driving patterns. Long before prices reached their peak, 4 dollars a gallon was being touted as being as high as it would go. Where did that come from? In fact the price of a gallon of gas reached well over 4 dollars, but by that time US drivers had radically changed their driving habits, thus indicating their unwillingness or inability to accommodate the increases.
The Federal Highway Administration has just reported that U.S. motorists drove 250.2 billion miles in June, a drop of 12.2 billion miles, or 4.7%, compared with the same month a year earlier. It was the eighth straight year-over-year monthly drop and the biggest June decline ever, the agency said. The drop in June was particularly notable because the summer months are usually the busiest times for road travel in the U.S. as families go on vacation.
As I write, the price of gas has shown a decline for the past week or more and is now below the magic 4 dollar ceiling. The single positive thing that has come out of all the finagling is that we have become more disciplined about the way we use our vehicles. My concern is that if the price of gas continues to drop, we will resume our careless driving habits.
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