Gas is cheap again -- let's waste it!
Posted
Oct 27 2008, 10:52 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
I paid $2.65 a gallon at the pump over the weekend. Not that long ago, the same station was charging $4.67. Every day as I wait for the bus, I check the gas station signage, and every day it drops a little lower. Compared with the hue and cry about how expensive gas was getting, I've barely heard a peep about the tumbling prices.
Then again, the current economic upheaval continues to demand attention. No wonder nobody seems to notice that the average price of gas has come down about $1.47 since mid-July-- and a lot more than that in some areas. In fact, it's gone below $2 in many places.
AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report’s overnight survey yesterday found a 40th straight day of declining prices, with a national average of $2.67, the lowest in 19 months. That’s a 35% decline from the July 17 peak of $4.14 a gallon.
But prices have fallen to $2 or less in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, many parts of Oklahoma and near Kansas City, Mo. Try out MSN Autos’ Gas Prices tool: It’ll show you the cheapest station in your area, with prices updated nightly by the Oil Price Information Service. Another place to check before you leave the house: GasBuddy, which uses readers’ reports.
Some experts say that Americans won't change their behavior, though -- that they'll continue to carpool, use public transit, consolidate errands and look for other ways to save gas. A specialist in consumer motivational psychology interviewed by The Associated Press predicted there would be no "significant, sudden change in behavior" just because prices have dropped.
I agree. I think it'll take at least six months before we're back to our gas-guzzling ways.
How quickly we forget
We've seen this before. Remember the gas shortages and rationing of the 1970s, and the concomitant fear that gas prices that might soon reach a dollar a gallon? At the time, that was unbelievable.
Our national nightmare faded quickly in the artificial light of the conspicuous-consumption '80s and the self-indulgent '90s. All the gas we wanted! And those little fuel-efficient cars were so 1976. The SUV became the symbol of affluence and the Humvee a symbol of aggressive affluence.
Everybody wanted a car. Everybody needed a car. Parents I knew talked about "having" to get cars for their kids as soon as they got their licenses, as though this were some inevitable right of passage -- or the inalienable right of every American teen.
The fact is, you probably did need a car if you lived in a city with poor or nonexistent public transit. If you lived in a suburb many miles from your workplace, you probably needed a car, too.
Drive, baby, drive
I was feeling similarly jaded a couple of months ago, when I wrote an essay called "How long will the 'new frugality' last?" My point was that frugality is now "in" but that it might be out once more as soon as times were better.
If the price of fuel keeps dropping, I think we as a nation will get complacent again. I hope we won't. But I bet we will.
We'll go back to driving everywhere, even to places that are within an easy walk. We'll quit consolidating our errands. And yeah, I know that carpooling doesn't work for everyone, but how many people do you know who even try it?
We won't care about conserving gas because we won't have to -- it will be affordable once more. But for how long? And more to the point, why don't we think about long-term solutions vs. how much it will cost us to fill up this week?
The trouble with us as a nation is that we expect everything to go our way, all the time. We want cheap gas. We want big cars. We want fast cars -- if you want to see some road rage, try suggesting a lower speed limit.
Where is it written that just because we want something we should have it? Even the Declaration of Independence says only that we have the right to the pursuit of happiness.
That means we have to do the work. In this case that means smarter choices. It doesn't mean putting the pedal to the metal. And it sure doesn't mean driving three blocks to the store for a pack of gum, no matter how cheap regular unleaded is this week.
