I can already hear the keyboard's clickity-clacks of people writing me angry comments. Rest assured, we all suffer from this in one way or another.
There are many resources that our planet needs to survive that nobody can argue against their importance. Air, water and vegetation are some simple examples. Another example is gasoline. The difference between them though is that gasoline has only been used extensively for a little over a hundred years, whereas the others have been around long before we ever came about.
So let's see. 100 years versus millions of years. How in the world did we manage to put such a volatile resource that is controlled by a few individuals as a major dependency for our planet? We now have a single point of failure that was made by humans that affects every single person on our planet.
When gasoline prices rise, we all hurt when we spend more money at the pump. That's obvious. This extra cost doesn't simply dissappear though - it has to be recovered somewhere. Food, Builders, Heating, Cooling, basically anything and everything will start increasing in cost. I find it hard to find examples of who isn't being affected by this.
But what about the people making the oil? Aren't they getting rich? Yes they are, but it's not going to last at this rate. It's not in their best interests to keep the prices high because many then people will start putting more efforts into finding alternatives. We all tend to try to find the path of least resistance.
So long as gasoline is affordable, we will always continue using it. If it ain't broken, why fix it? Right? That's what the oil companies want us to believe. Well it's not true. It's broken. Gasoline is a short term solution. We should not build future technologies on an infrastructure that has so many volatile components to it.
If only we could have more people, scientists, engineers and governments focus more on finding energy sources that can help our junkie planet kick the nasty habit of gasoline. Do we really need cars that go 300 km/h? What if we can produce cars that reach a maximum of 120 km/h but not run on gasoline? I seriously doubt we thought this through.
If we can get a new generation to start thinking about these problems, we would be so much better off. We teach kids many subjects in school, in order to make our world and society a better place. Why not start teaching them that it is in their best interest to start looking for better ways to produce energy? The most we teach kids is that alternative energy sources exist but that oil is what we use. And that's pretty much where we stop. We need to have our society take energy 101. We need to let people see that this is not a healthy solution for our planet and we need to change.
It appears that the high prices that have caused people to suffer quite a bit lately, and that has in turn started having people think more about just how we power our planet. If higher prices mean that we start looking at quiting the habit, then let them rise.
Posted by boredottawa at June 5, 2008 10:27 AM"If higher prices mean that we start looking at quiting the habit, then let them rise."
Maybe I'm taking the sentiment/this one sentence out of context, and I realize that my example is in no way comparable to gasoline, but - Have they not tried this with cigarettes and it still hasn't worked?
I agree with what you've said, but I also think society is slow to change because they don't see the benefits immediately. If they don't see immediate benefits, then why bother, you know? There's no planning for the future because so many of us have been taught to just consume, and consume some more. Instead of just alternative fuel sources, we need alternative (and innovative) modes of transportation. Instead of waiting for change I think someone needs to just come up with a new mode of transportation other than just the bus, or a new car, and just turn off all the oil taps. I don't think people learn to change until there's an immediate "crisis".
I like the ad where the guy rides a horse instead of drives.
Posted by: Nuke at June 16, 2008 05:22 PMI think I'm now up to 61 emails regarding this post. Now I have one comment :)
You hit the nail when you said that:
"I agree with what you've said, but I also think society is slow to change because they don't see the benefits immediately"
and that
"I don't think people learn to change until there's an immediate 'crisis'."
I'll address the smoking metaphor really quickly. It's not the same. Smoking is not something that is part of the foundation of nearly every society. If we were to run out of Tobacco, a percentage of our population would go a little crazy, but we would move on. Oil is most definitely not that simple. It is used directly/indirectly by nearly every person on the planet. It is very unique in that it's difficult to compare it to anything else.
Now for your earlier points, the rise of gasoline will cause a crisis. I recently received a link to an article where houses in the Southern California, have gone done in price because they were built far away from the city centre. This is actually the same as many parts of the world.
Buying a house and then losing 20% on it is not a small time problem. For some people, it is a crisis. This, and many more examples will eventually cause this generation to start rethinking such designs.
Posted by: roy at June 18, 2008 09:53 AMYeah, I actually cut out a lot of what I had intended to leave as a comment because it seemed more appropriate to write it in an email. But I don't think I know you well enough to write a somewhat random email about gas prices :p
I can't comment too much about homes and oil/gas prices, I don't know a whole lot. But as someone who lives about 30-45 minutes away (by car) from downtown I can understand the decrease in price. That being said, diverting funding towards increasing the quality of public transportation could help solve that. The buses in my neighbourhood, for example, are sporadic at best. Expanding the lightrail could be helpful. Instead of city councillors giving themselves raises, we the public could raise more of a fuss about that raise going towards research or education.
I can see how for some people it already is a crisis, but at the same time we need to take a hit *now*, in some respect, in order to see the bigger gain.