Get that Gasoline (or not)
May. 6th, 2004 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primroseburrowsAm I the only one who's actually glad that the price of gas is going up in the US? I hope it keeps going up, or at least doesn't go down.
Yeah, I know, people are going to have problems maintaining their car expenses. Getting to work is going to be more expensive; our pocketbooks are going to be hit hard. But.
People are going to start combining trips, carpooling, taking public transportation. There'll be more walking, more biking, less getting in the car just to drive around the corner.
Higher gas prices will force car makers to change, as well. Just like in the 70s, and just like in so many countries around the world, cars might get smaller. And that lovely, lovely thing, the hybrid car, will become more and more the norm, until the gas-guzzler is the rare car and the cleaner, cheaper-to-operate hybrid will be what most people drive. Maybe the American cult of the car will start to break up a little.
I know some of you are saying, "but it's going to be such a hardship!" Yeah, it is, for awhile. But it'll be even more of a hardship when the air we take for granted becomes too toxic to breathe, when the last wilderness is eaten up by drilling, when we're all dying of COPD and lung cancer because we can't separate ourselves from our big hunks of steel. Yeah, I'm glad gas prices are going up; you won't hear me complain about it, ever.
This rant was brought to you by my finally listening to NPR again after a couple of weeks ofburying my head in the sand avoiding it.
Yeah, I know. My icon is irony itself.
Yeah, I know, people are going to have problems maintaining their car expenses. Getting to work is going to be more expensive; our pocketbooks are going to be hit hard. But.
People are going to start combining trips, carpooling, taking public transportation. There'll be more walking, more biking, less getting in the car just to drive around the corner.
Higher gas prices will force car makers to change, as well. Just like in the 70s, and just like in so many countries around the world, cars might get smaller. And that lovely, lovely thing, the hybrid car, will become more and more the norm, until the gas-guzzler is the rare car and the cleaner, cheaper-to-operate hybrid will be what most people drive. Maybe the American cult of the car will start to break up a little.
I know some of you are saying, "but it's going to be such a hardship!" Yeah, it is, for awhile. But it'll be even more of a hardship when the air we take for granted becomes too toxic to breathe, when the last wilderness is eaten up by drilling, when we're all dying of COPD and lung cancer because we can't separate ourselves from our big hunks of steel. Yeah, I'm glad gas prices are going up; you won't hear me complain about it, ever.
This rant was brought to you by my finally listening to NPR again after a couple of weeks of
Yeah, I know. My icon is irony itself.
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Also
Date: 2004-05-06 01:54 pm (UTC)Our society has been based, as you put it, on the 'cult of the car' for so long that this isn't going to happen, because in so many places, it can't. Combining trips? Sure, but then I think people already do that. Carpooling? People do it when they can, but it's not as easy as itlooks. Taking public transport? Ask me about trying to get Sam to work when we only had one care.
Most driving, at least where I live, isn't to drive around the corner. It's to drive the multiple miles necessary to get to basic shops. Even in a dense suburban area (where I am), there's little I can walk to comfortably. A church is a five minute walk, and that's the closest. I can get ice cream and books with some effort. :) But our pattern of building is so tied to the car that for many, many people, there aren't viable alternatives to their car.
And then there would be convincing all the people down here who know there's only two things you can count on - land, and your car. I contend this is merely an outgrowth of having horses. Land, and your horse, morphed to land, and your car. And that's cultural, baybee. 150 years on, even if most people don't realise why they think they do.
If you follow the history of tea drinking in the United States, a similar cultural phenomeon affected by a war, then in another four score and seven years (give or take), we may begin to see some dissassociation of the idea, and something equivalent to the current upsurge in tea drinking.