Source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...?story_id=4333

Discusses mass transit, lower obesity rates (cited study), fewer traffic accidents, shorter commutes and biofuel development.

 

My favorite part of high gas prices is getting to hear obnoxious SUV owners whine like little babies.

 

(The Ford Escape Hybrid is an SUV, so while I concur in spirit I don't paint all drivers of a particular vehicle w/one brush.

 

I personally don't see very much good that come out of high fuel prices. I have two neighbors which have SUV's they can't feed. And to make it worse they still have the payments, can't sell them and can't afford another 2nd vehicle.

While some definetly cheer their situation- I do feel for them as their families struggle with making the payments on a vehicle they can hardly use, along with higher natural gas and electricity costs, higher taxes and general cost of living. Surely their choice of vehicle amplifies the problem. I can't just wave my finger in a "Told you so" moment.

Then there's the real possibility of a near 100% collapse of the airline industry, the domino effect on practically all business. But yes, a few will do very good.

-Steve

 

If you feel for them, you could offer to carpool with them (if not to work, due to location differences, then on weekends for shopping/errands/kids sports leagues that your families share in common) and offer to pay part of their gas bill.

Not being snarky, it's a genuine idea if you wish to help. Since their vehicles are SUVs, they can carry multiple people and thus offset the higher fuel costs of driving that vs. a hybrid or fuel efficient 100% gas/diesel driver doing the carpooling in your neighborhood.

The point of the article has very little to do, if anything, with saying "I told you so," it is surfacing some very real, tangible positive things that happen when a society has to tighten its belt with rapidly rising energy costs. My husband bike commutes to work (26+ mile round-trip) one day a week now and takes our Escape Hybrid one day a week. Why? Because we also own an F150 Supercrew 4x4. That gets less use as we voluntarily ration gas, refusing to refuel the F150 more than once a month. And we're not scraping by... it's just a common sense thing we can do to ease the drain on our pocketbook and be an example to others, *some* of whom can do similar things.

100 ways to get higher fuel economy in ANY vehicle -> http://ecomodder.com/forum/EM-hyperm...ecodriving.php

 

Well we made our bed and now we get to lie in it. I mean for all of us, I like my hybrid but seriously this idea of personal transport has to die. Here in DFW I personally know of a tiny subdivision (think 2-3 bedroom houses with a garage big enough for one car in most cases) next to the light rail that just got razed and a mixed use is taking its place (Spring Valley at Greenville in Richardson if you must know, go north on Greenville in Street view and all the houses to your left are gone til you hit the Church/School area). Mass transit is the only way. Oh here's a cute video with the hybrid Civic in it touting how efficient trains are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jDk-g02GNw

 

"Then there's the real possibility of a near 100% collapse of the airline industry..."

We can only hope!

I'll happily pay $4 or more for gas if it means the bitter end to that government-sponsored anit-trust violation called the airline industry that has been defrauding travelers of their time, their money, and their civil rights for decades -- all in the name of "safety" -- yet which curiously 7 years ago this September missed all the muslim hijackers, all the weapons they smuggled aboard, all the contingency plans that could have dealt with the situation once they knew several planes had been hijacked, and instead sat back and watched like the deer-in-the-headlights bureaucrats that they are while cave men from a third-world nation flew commercial airplanes full of submissive, obedient "customers" who mistakenly believed that "airline security" meant something other than "you passengers had better obey our ticket agents and flight attendants, no matter how bad they screw you, or else we'll strand you in an airport hundreds of mile from home while we charge you with federal crimes" into commercial and government office buildings, killing thousands of people, destroying entire city blocks, and sending our nation into an economic recession and a protracted war in the middle east that continues to this day.

Like I said, we can only hope!

 

Expensive gas is going to seperate the people who really need a guzzler for some legitimate purpose for those who do not. Those who need a truck will pay the price, those who do not will tend to downsize.

The biggest plus is that we will soon have a wonderful selection of of higher mileage and alternate fuel/electric vehicles available. We are going from a niche market to the main stream!

 

The assumption is that high fuel prices will drive the growth of mass transit and less reliance on "personal transportation". So if we had the well developed mass transit of Europe and $9/g gas, what would we expect? Well according the World Bank it could be higher car per capita rates as observed in Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Even the liberal France is within 2% and environmentally conscious Scandinavian countries with $12/g gas and up to 100% tax on new car purchases are only 10-20% less than the US.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/tr...portation-cars

This article can be seen as representing one side of the political spectrum. As there are just as many who see the upside of high fuel cost as a reason to drill in ANWR or off the Florida coast and open new distilleries and nuclear plants. Be careful with your glee for high gas prices.

 

This weekend I read two different newspapers published in SC and both had several articles about drilling for oil off the SC coast

SC is a conservative state and almost all of it's national representatives are pro-drilling. Anyone want to buy prime coastal property with oceanfront oil-rig views