Some People Get It. But What About the Others?
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, which has been keeping these records since the 1940s, Americans are driving less … about 4.3 percent less in the month of March compared to March of ’07. You think 4.3 percent doesn’t sound like a lot? Well, it translates to 11 billion fewer miles and, if we arbitrarily assume an average of 25 miles per gallon, that’s a savings of almost 450 million gallons of gasoline. In one month! If we really want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, driving less is a good way to do it.
Sooner or later, we’ve got to get serious about energy conservation. And that means no more political gimmicks like waiving the federal gas tax for the summer. Or marketing gimmicks like Chrysler’s offer to subsidize the cost of your gas for three years if you buy one of their gas-guzzlers. None of these schemes encourage us to drive smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and drive them less. Just the opposite, in fact.
If you listen to talk radio (as painful as that is), when the subject turns to the price of gasoline you will hear shrill almost hysterical voices demanding that somebody has to do something to lower the price of gasoline. These deluded folks still don’t get it: $4.00 gas is here to stay.
I stopped by the little post office here in Ha’iku the other day and noticed a woman in the parking lot. She was sitting in her big SUV going through the mail she had just collected from her box. The windows were up, the engine was running and the A/C was on. She was there when I went in to mail a package and she was still there ten minutes later when I came out and drove away.
No one likes it when government steps in and tells us what we can and cannot do. But the need to reduce our consumption of energy is very clear and many of us are making a serious effort to conserve. So, dammit, that selfish stupid woman should be required to do the same.
I’m afraid I’m the sort who just walks over, knocks on the window, as says, “Excuse me, ma’am, your engine’s running!”
Sure, she will probably tell me off, but that’s all in a day’s work. If three people did it, she’d get tired of the interruptions and do something different.
I just remind myself that our conservative Republican Vice President, Richard “Dick” Cheney once convened a secret task force to craft an energy policy that’s right for America.
Uh-huh.
The knotty question, of course, is how to enforce conservation on people like that woman at the post office. I don’t know about other jurisdictions, but in Hawaii the annual registration fee for motor vehicles is based on weight. So we could reduce fees for lighter, more fuel-efficient cars and really sock it to the people driving the SUVs. Of course the wealthy won’t care, I suppose.
Quite so! I’d make the argument that government intervention into wasteful activities such as that exhibited by the SUV woman in Ha’iku isn’t entirely without precedent. We have motorcycle helmet laws in many (most?) states specifically because it saves money for our medical insurance pools. Oil, as we now know all too well, is a limited resource. SUV woman’s wasteful activity, even if she can afford it, has a direct effect on the cost of our gasoline because she causes a reduction in the supply. We all know what happens when supply is reduced.