Gas Price Equivalents in The Netherlands

New York Times columnist and foreign policy expert Thomas Friedman has written another gem about our oil addiction. He’s long advocated for higher gas and oil prices over the long term to force us to drive less and live more sustainably.

Here are a couple snippets from his most recent column, which I highly recommend reading in its entirety, titled Truth or Consequences:

Cynical ideas, like the McCain-Clinton summertime gas-tax holiday, would only make the problem (America’s oil addiction) worse, and reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounter cigarettes to teenagers…

…What our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Phillip J. Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gas tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.

Photo: Paul Garland’s Flickr

The Miami Herald’s website is reporting that Florida International University is adopting four-day work weeks for most of its employees this summer, in order to save money on electricity by closing many of its buildings one day per week.  Employees will still be required to work the requisite 40 hours each week, but will do so over four days, rather than five, thus allowing buildings to idle for three consecutive days rather than two.  The move, Modesto Maidique, FIU’s president suggests, will save the university $250,000.

Because they are my employer, I can state unequivocally that not all employees are happy with this arrangement; however, many of us are happy that we won’t be spending some of our hard-earned money on gas for our commute for that fifth day of the week. 

It would be interesting to see what might happen to the price of gasoline if this work calendar were adopted by employers across the board.  To be sure, the resulting price drop wouldn’t be 20% (the theoretical amount of gas saved, if everyone were to merely stay home on that day), but it would be interesting, would it not, to see what the oil companies would do were the typical commuter’s consumption reduced instantaneously by 20%?

Image: Carfreeusa.blogspot.com

Has anyone else out there experienced this soon-to-be usual sighting?

If Senators Clinton and McCain have their way, this summer Americans might be duped into thinking that a “gas-tax holiday” will help alleviate the financial strains of filling up. The gas tax holiday undermines the principles of supply and demand and is little more than a cheap political gimmick. If imposed, the holiday would only save the average American consumer $30 throughout the course of the summer.

The gas-tax holiday continues the flawed mentality that the rise in oil prices is a temporary matter. FYI- oil prices nudged past $125 a barrel today, the fourth day this week of record highs. America needs to realize that there isn’t going to be a “quick fix” to this critical problem. The era of whizzing around carefree in gas powered vehicles is coming to a close and we must now turn our focus to more sustainable forms of making the most out of our available land. This shift will not be easy. It’s not that simple to turn back 6 decades of automotive mindset and policy in a country whose infrastructure largely revolves around oil.

As James Howard Kunstler put it in this week’s Businessweek:

It’s not that we’re driving the wrong cars. It’s that we’re driving cars of any size, incessantly.

To view the Gas Tax petition, visit Gas Tax Scam…

Our cultural fear of transit has nothing to do with safety, or socio-economic condition, or any of the other symptoms that critics wage at transit. Our fear has to do with being stranded somewhere without any way of getting around. The flexibility that you have with a car, and don’t with our local transit is enough to keep anyone from riding.

What we need are abundant lines, and more frequent stops that are close to where people can walk to them (not more than a five minute walk!)

My favorite line from this article comes from the head of the Expressway Authority Javier Rodriguez, ”I think we’d be doing great — not just good, but great — if we could get 4 percent transit usage across South Florida.”

Riggggght. Hey guys at the Herald, next time you do a story on transit try to get someone from the Transit Agency to give you a quote, not the head of the Expressway Authority!

Aww jeeez.

• NY Times: Efforts to save the everglades are faltering

• Newsday: Gas prices affecting community, car use

• NY Times: Rising demand for oil provokes new energy crisis

• KITV Honolulu: Gas prices have reached $5 per gallon in parts of Cali

• Miami Herald: Housing crunch (lack of affordable housing) hitting low-income residents hard

• NY Times: High gas prices and long commutes having an impact on the sprawl market