High Gas Prices is a Good Thing
Off the Shelf
Visions of an Energy-Starved World
By DEVIN LEONARD
Published: September 5, 2009
CHRISTOPHER STEINER was once the happy driver of a sport utility vehicle. Mr. Steiner, the author of “$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better,” makes this confession early in his book: “I drove an old Toyota 4Runner all over the country for a decade — running the odometer past 240,000 miles — and I loved it.”
Therefore, he is far from gleeful when he describes how many S.U.V. owners decided to ditch their beloved big cars when gasoline hit $4 a gallon in 2008. Then, of course, gas prices returned to more affordable levels. Did those owners act too hastily?
No, says Mr. Steiner, a staff writer at Forbes and a civil engineer. We could all end up forsaking our fossil-fuel vehicles in the near future, he says, because of what he calls the dwindling supply and burgeoning demand for gasoline. He says that “Texas- and Saudi Arabia-style gushers” are a thing of the past, and he points to the booming economies of countries like India and China, which will enable hundreds of millions of new drivers to hit the highways.
Ultimately, he contends, these forces will drive the price of fuel far beyond $4 a gallon. In each successive chapter of the book, he describes how an additional $2 price increase might affect us. But will prices climb to the alarming level he suggests in the title?
The author doesn’t go that far. He describes “$20 Per Gallon” as “a thought experiment on the what-ifs of high gas prices focusing on tangible changes rather than abstract ones.”
In short, Mr. Steiner has written a book full of fanciful predictions, some of which should probably be taken seriously, though certainly not all of them. Here are just a few: $8 gasoline will doom most United States airlines. When gas reaches $10 a gallon, Disney World will close. At $12, suburbanites will no longer be able to afford McMansions or their long commutes. And, at $14, it will be too expensive for Wal-Mart to gas up the truck fleet that moves goods around the country.
Mr. Steiner asserts that good would come from such a future. He writes that it would force us to upgrade our public transportation systems, renovate our cities, get around more on foot and eat more locally grown food. Someday, Mr. Steiner assures us, we might even enjoy the rarefied life of Bill, a fictitious 27-year-old whom he imagines as a beneficiary of this energy-market upheaval. Bill, who has what sounds like a fairly lucrative job at a company that designs tidal power stations, lives in a solar-paneled apartment building in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn.
Bill hasn’t traveled by plane in years. Instead, he zips around on ultrafast trains. He can be in Montreal in two hours. He doesn’t even need an electric car — he travels by subway in New York.
Every aspect of Bill’s life — even his workout garb — reflects the shift to alternative energy sources.
“Bill’s running shoes have natural rubber bottoms — as in tree rubber — since the composite petrol-based materials that used to be made from petroleum and were so common in the past’s sneakers are all but forgotten,” Mr. Steiner writes.
Yes, but how do we move from our smoggy, fossil-fuel-dependent existence to Bill’s pristine utopia? The book acknowledges that the transition will be difficult, but glosses over just how painful it could be for the losers in this new, green economy (assuming that gasoline really becomes so unaffordable).
Mr. Steiner writes that high gas prices will force suburbanites to move into cities where they don’t need cars. That may bring a renaissance in rust-belt cities like Cleveland or St. Louis. But cities like New York are already crowded, so what happens when suburbanites from the far reaches of New Jersey descend on Brooklyn? One can only assume that rent will become as unaffordable as gasoline, forcing many people to stay behind in the exurbs in their drafty McMansions.
They may not have many shopping choices, either. The author argues that expensive gas will create vacant suburban strip malls — like one he visits in Coshocton, Ohio, that has been transformed into a graffiti-encrusted vision of suburban decay by the shuttering of a Wal-Mart.
The author writes that such huge abandoned stores will “dot the exurbian and rural landscape from coast to coast” when gas reaches $14 a gallon.
MR. STEINER thinks that this development will lead to a rejuvenation of small towns. But if it’s too expensive for Wal-Mart to get diapers on the shelves, how will the mom-and-pop grocery on Main Street do it? You can’t get everything at the local farm.
The book’s arguments are sometimes overstated in hyperbolic prose. In the chapter about the end of the airline industry as we know it, it says that some companies will be “permanently torpedoed” by high gas prices. It warns that a “giant herd of people” will lose their jobs. And it says that our grandchildren will “undoubtedly gawp in awe” when we recount our childhood trips to Disneyland. Well, that’s something to look forward to in our old age.
But it will be cold comfort. If Mr. Steiner is correct about the future of gas prices, many people will disagree with his premise that their lives are better. And even he may miss the days when he cruised around in his Toyota 4Runner. It sounds as if he already does.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/energy-environment/06she...
Visions of an Energy-Starved World
By DEVIN LEONARD
Published: September 5, 2009
CHRISTOPHER STEINER was once the happy driver of a sport utility vehicle. Mr. Steiner, the author of “$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better,” makes this confession early in his book: “I drove an old Toyota 4Runner all over the country for a decade — running the odometer past 240,000 miles — and I loved it.”
Therefore, he is far from gleeful when he describes how many S.U.V. owners decided to ditch their beloved big cars when gasoline hit $4 a gallon in 2008. Then, of course, gas prices returned to more affordable levels. Did those owners act too hastily?
No, says Mr. Steiner, a staff writer at Forbes and a civil engineer. We could all end up forsaking our fossil-fuel vehicles in the near future, he says, because of what he calls the dwindling supply and burgeoning demand for gasoline. He says that “Texas- and Saudi Arabia-style gushers” are a thing of the past, and he points to the booming economies of countries like India and China, which will enable hundreds of millions of new drivers to hit the highways.
Ultimately, he contends, these forces will drive the price of fuel far beyond $4 a gallon. In each successive chapter of the book, he describes how an additional $2 price increase might affect us. But will prices climb to the alarming level he suggests in the title?
The author doesn’t go that far. He describes “$20 Per Gallon” as “a thought experiment on the what-ifs of high gas prices focusing on tangible changes rather than abstract ones.”
In short, Mr. Steiner has written a book full of fanciful predictions, some of which should probably be taken seriously, though certainly not all of them. Here are just a few: $8 gasoline will doom most United States airlines. When gas reaches $10 a gallon, Disney World will close. At $12, suburbanites will no longer be able to afford McMansions or their long commutes. And, at $14, it will be too expensive for Wal-Mart to gas up the truck fleet that moves goods around the country.
Mr. Steiner asserts that good would come from such a future. He writes that it would force us to upgrade our public transportation systems, renovate our cities, get around more on foot and eat more locally grown food. Someday, Mr. Steiner assures us, we might even enjoy the rarefied life of Bill, a fictitious 27-year-old whom he imagines as a beneficiary of this energy-market upheaval. Bill, who has what sounds like a fairly lucrative job at a company that designs tidal power stations, lives in a solar-paneled apartment building in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn.
Bill hasn’t traveled by plane in years. Instead, he zips around on ultrafast trains. He can be in Montreal in two hours. He doesn’t even need an electric car — he travels by subway in New York.
Every aspect of Bill’s life — even his workout garb — reflects the shift to alternative energy sources.
“Bill’s running shoes have natural rubber bottoms — as in tree rubber — since the composite petrol-based materials that used to be made from petroleum and were so common in the past’s sneakers are all but forgotten,” Mr. Steiner writes.
Yes, but how do we move from our smoggy, fossil-fuel-dependent existence to Bill’s pristine utopia? The book acknowledges that the transition will be difficult, but glosses over just how painful it could be for the losers in this new, green economy (assuming that gasoline really becomes so unaffordable).
Mr. Steiner writes that high gas prices will force suburbanites to move into cities where they don’t need cars. That may bring a renaissance in rust-belt cities like Cleveland or St. Louis. But cities like New York are already crowded, so what happens when suburbanites from the far reaches of New Jersey descend on Brooklyn? One can only assume that rent will become as unaffordable as gasoline, forcing many people to stay behind in the exurbs in their drafty McMansions.
They may not have many shopping choices, either. The author argues that expensive gas will create vacant suburban strip malls — like one he visits in Coshocton, Ohio, that has been transformed into a graffiti-encrusted vision of suburban decay by the shuttering of a Wal-Mart.
The author writes that such huge abandoned stores will “dot the exurbian and rural landscape from coast to coast” when gas reaches $14 a gallon.
MR. STEINER thinks that this development will lead to a rejuvenation of small towns. But if it’s too expensive for Wal-Mart to get diapers on the shelves, how will the mom-and-pop grocery on Main Street do it? You can’t get everything at the local farm.
The book’s arguments are sometimes overstated in hyperbolic prose. In the chapter about the end of the airline industry as we know it, it says that some companies will be “permanently torpedoed” by high gas prices. It warns that a “giant herd of people” will lose their jobs. And it says that our grandchildren will “undoubtedly gawp in awe” when we recount our childhood trips to Disneyland. Well, that’s something to look forward to in our old age.
But it will be cold comfort. If Mr. Steiner is correct about the future of gas prices, many people will disagree with his premise that their lives are better. And even he may miss the days when he cruised around in his Toyota 4Runner. It sounds as if he already does.
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/energy-environment/06she...
Comment
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Comment by Edward D Webb on September 8, 2009 at 6:22pm
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i have always felt that its high gas prices vs heating prices
in the summer everyone travels, so that hold you captive for the high prices, they also in the summer canot sell heating oil, in the winter they do sell heating oil so the money is made there, and they cut you a break on gas
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