There’s lots of hand-wringing over the totally-surprising rise in gas prices in the press (I mean, who would have ever predicted that rising demand and limited supply would cause price increases?). USA Today unwittingly finds a silver lining:
As she folds clothes at a Laundromat near her home in San Pablo, Calif., Thamara Morales, 30, counts up the ways high gas prices have changed her life…Trips to Wal-Mart are out. The closest one is about 15 miles away. Just to get there and back costs more than she might save by going.
Yes, this might hurt Wal-Mart. It will also hurt the sales of behemoth SUVs and minivans, and certainly discourages the construction of more pre-fab “exurban” communities. This particular American Way of Life – a two car garage in an enormous shack in a white bread suburb of nowhere in the desert, an hour-long commute to an office park, and endless driving to work, school, mall – has always been a selfish, environmentally destructive waste of resources. Soon, it may not even be affordable.
Frankly, gas prices have been too low, for too long, subsidized by the federal government’s investment in research and oil reserves. This has allowed Americans to wastefully consume without regard for the planet or even the finite nature of the resource that we are exhausting. (The Times magazine had a good article on the diminishing returns for oil production this Sunday.)
So, as much as the recent spike in gas prices hurts (and, as a car owner who needs his car for work, I know), it is good that it forces us to begin to confront our extreme dependence on oil now, before it’s too late.
I, of course, advocate a massive program of affordable housing construction in our major cities, as well as huge investments in railroad infrastructure within those cities, and between those cities and their immediate suburbs. And, yes, we should recycle and invest in alternative energy and all the other things that the hippies call for. But big cities are probably the greenest solution for our large populations, and we should begin to prepare for the inevitable migration back to the cities that will result from expensive gas.