I paid $6 to put barely more than two gallons of gas into my wife’s car. That is not because of the war, it’s not because of instability in Iran, it’s not because of the summer driving season or the winter cold season, and it’s not because speculators have jacked up the price of crude. It’s not because of ethanol, alternative fuels, or regionally mandated refinery requirements.
It may be “because of” a refinery shortage, but in reality there is no such thing, since the gas companies pay a lot of people a lot of money to forecast future demand and build appropriately. (While no one can predict a specific hurricane years out, financial forecasts do anticipate the impact of foreseeable-yet-unpredictable events such as spills, lawsuits, and refinery disasters… it’s like saving for your kids braces: you don’t know exactly when the dentist will recommend them, but you know they’re coming, and you can approximate the when within a year or two.) Every business with large capital expenditures models these kinds of things: it’s called “risk management” and it’s a big part of how business decide where, how, and when to build.)
Mostly, I paid that much because the market will bear these prices. If you or I ran ExxonMobil, and we discovered that people were willing to pay $2.88 for a gallon of gas independent of world events, guess what: we’d charge them $2.88. For a long time, the threshold was lower, but in our post-9/11 world, I guess as a population we’ve decided to tolerate worse.
The companies are not to blame. We are. As long as we’re lazy about it, rest assured they’ll keep taking advantage. We’re lazy on a number of levels: for starters, we don’t change our habits. Moreover, we’re curious about the wrong things. We wonder how the Iraq war will affect gas prices… yet as the world’s #1 gasoline consumer, there are plenty of things we do over here to keep gas prices stratospheric. There are plenty of questions to ask about the mysterious deaths of popular EV programs by Chevy and others, or why Chevron stopped manufacturing NiMH batteries large enough to run cars such as Toyota’s RAV-4 EV… though that’s not to suggest that Toyota would have kept going even if they did. Answers to these questions would make us far better off.
Which is why I want off the grid. It’ll take some time, and I may not be able to do it 100%, but I’m on the path. First up is to get off petroleum. I already drive a Mini Cooper and get over 30 mpg. If I can do it, wait ’til you see my next car… Regenerative electricity? That’ll be next.
I never considered myself a tree hugger, but I find I like trees a lot more than I like people who would profit from my laziness. I think I’ll support the trees.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 