The whole point of the Hummer is that it chugs fuel, and chugs it proudly, devoid of any sort of neurotic preoccupation with gloomy prophecies of Peak Oil or gas at 10 bucks a gallon.
And here is where its symbolic fortitude is most threatened: For American life to work, the illusion of endless abundance must be maintained. Sure, we must adapt to a future of less-abundant natural resources. Our vehicles will need to become radically more efficient. But we require vestiges of the old dream to sustain our national optimism, which in turn nourishes our national character.
Everyone complains about high gas prices, yet viable solutions to today’s energy crisis get tabled by the very people who do the complaining. Certain Californians come to mind - folks who philosophically luxuriate in a moratorium on offshore drilling only to boil over on Wilshire Boulevard when faced with gas at $5.50 a gallon.
Then there’s Congress.
Some proposed solutions to the gas-price crisis, such as a windfall profits tax on oil companies, would merely take us back to the good old days of the gas line. Incentives matter. So do disincentives. When you penalize companies for bringing gas to market, less gas (at higher prices) will come to market.
But Congress has been getting energy wrong for quite a few years now. When President Bush launched a viable energy plan in 2001, Democrats submarined it. They said a strategy for increased drilling would take too long to have an effect - maybe eight to ten years. So why bother?
And here we are again. In the midst of the 2008 energy crisis, Democrats say any new drilling allowances in the present will take at least eight to ten years to bear fruit. It’s a line of reasoning that will never produce a solution, even though solutions were what the Democrats promised.Why on earth did we buy a car like this?
Well, a lot of people once did. In fact, until late 2004, a lot of people went out of their way to buy precisely these monsters because -– if you can believe it -– the government actually offered a tax break for buying a car that weighed over 6,000 pounds if you were self-employed and needed it to transport heavy work machinery. Like farm equipment. Or a laptop.
But that’s not why we bought ours.
We bought our Land Rover because our friends had one. They were fun, attractive, athletic kinds of people, and it seemed to us that that they had a fun, attractive, athletic kind of a car. A swashbuckling kind of a car. With its extra-high roof rack, its khaki-colored interior, its front end that looked like the face of a panther, their Land Rover looked like it could take you away from Safeway and out on safari.
High gas prices could turn out to be a lifesaver for some drivers. The authors of a new study say gas prices are causing driving declines that could result in a third fewer auto deaths annually, with the most dramatic drop likely to be among teen drivers.
Professors Michael Morrisey of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and David Grabowski of Harvard Medical School said they found that for every 10 percent increase in gas prices there was a 2.3 percent decline in auto deaths. For drivers ages 15 to 17, the decline was 6 percent, and for ages 18 to 21, it was 3.2 percent.
Their study looked at fatalities from 1985 to 2006, when gas prices reached about $2.50 a gallon. With gas now averaging more than $4 a gallon, Morrisey said he expects to see much greater drop — about 1,000 deaths a month.
-- JOAN LOWY
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