The Good News About Rising Gas Prices

In lieu of recent spikes in the price of oil I sincerely feel badly for folks like Troy and others who have to commute long distances to work.

Having said that, on some level, I am very happy about the rising cost of gasoline.

The only way to get the average eco-ignorant American to think about reducing their consumption of gasoline is to hit them in the wallet. Our crack like addiction to oil contributes to global warming (regardless of what Bush says), makes the world more unsafe and actually perpetuates a broken national energy policy.

Once the average consumer realizes that oil prices are probably never going to come down enough to make their Hummer make sense anymore, they might be more likely to pursue hybrids. Once manufacturers see more people interested, they will build more and different hybrids. Who says you can't develop a smart enough hybrid engine to work for a large SUV? If you build it, they will come.

Our national fixation with driving drives our need for more and more oil. Most of the states that sell us large amounts of oil are some of the most despotic on the planet. Saudi Arabia provides roughly 20% of our oil. This is a nation where women cannot vote , drive or cannot go outside unless escorted by a male family member. Think about that. Iran for example is awash in oil profits. Iran will never open it's economy to foreign investment or ideas of true reform unless it is hurting for cash. As long as we are willing to pay any price for crude, and it seems we are, we are actually supporting authoritariansim. In oil rich countries there is a straight line connecting oil profits and support for terrorism. We are fighting the War on Terrorism against ourselves. We are our own worst enemy.

What really kills me is that Californians are so collectively stupid on this issue that according to an LA Times article I read yesterday, our appetite for large vehicles is expected to continue to grow. We need to be vehicularly bitch slapped and if it takes $4 a gallon gas to do it we have only ourselves to blame.

Without rethinking our dependence on oil because of high prices we will never be forced to re-evaluate how we generate energy. Our current national energy policy is a collection of dysfunctional short term fixes better suited to the 20th century. We need new thinking about technologies to generate our energy from a variety of sources. This country has some of the best intellectual resources in the world. It is time to use them in the realm or energy development. If higher oil prices is what drives that than so be it.

Now it is definitely true that the resultant increase in energy costs will adversely affect businesses, especially smaller ones. It is unfortunate and our government should do whatever it can to realistically help. Higher oil prices mean less consumer spending which drives about 2/3 of our national economy and that will have negative short term effects. The sad and sorry truth is that there is no way around these hardships. We are at a crossroads. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, custom furniture makers, cobblers and other small businesses of the day felt the pinch of the coming of a new age. We were able to get passed it then and we will now. I don't mean to sound harsh, but from a socio-historical point of view the situation is what it is. We are running out of oil and we can't pretend we are not and that means our paradigm must shift accordingly.

The good news about the rising cost of oil is that it might be a wake up call. An opportunity to realize we must fundamentally change how we view the world, it's resources and our gluttonous consumption of them. Christians should be leading the way. It strikes me as odd that some believers do not regard creation as highly as those who know not the name of Jesus. I even know Christians who say things like "Even if global warming is true, Jesus will probably come back before it gets bad". What the heck kind of thinking is that? I also find it alarming that many Christians do not think of mass consumption or mass consumerism, swallowing up the Earth's resources for no other reason than to make the natural world bend to our every whim as sin?

As oil prices increase perhaps some of us will realize that we truly cannot have everything and maybe we don't need everything. We might even come to grips with the notion that we are not this invincible semi-divine entity that can do as we please without consequence. Our actions affect others. We are not the center of the universe. We might learn that we must become more responsible. And that my friends, is good news no matter what the price at the pump.

Peace to all.