Sunday, September 4th, 2005 at 6:26 pm | In Technology, Politics |

Note: I know it’s a little long, but I recommend reading this entire post if you’ve got the time.

Maybe this is blasphemy, but I’m not so sure that higher gas prices are a bad thing. I know that the price spike affects virtually every aspect of modern convenience, boosting the transportation costs of food and other products, but it could be what is needed to force what I’m going to call “gas reform”. It should probably be “fuel efficency reform with an emphasis on the research of renewable energy sources”, but that’s a little long.

It’s kind of like tort reform, but everybody wins. Well, at least in the long run.

Right now America has a bad habit of carelessly guzzling gasoline. Increased fuel prices force a change in habits. In manufacturing habits, in buying habits, in driving habits.

From “Gas prices too high? Try Europe” in the Christian Science Monitor:

“Societies adjust over decades to higher fuel prices,” says Jos Dings, head of Transport and Energy, a coalition of European environmental NGOs. “They find many mechanisms.”

Chief among them, say experts, is the habit of driving smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. While the average light duty vehicle on US highways gets 21.6 miles per gallon (m.p.g.), according to a study by the Paris based International Energy Agency (IEA), in Paris, its European counterpart manages 32.1 m.p.g.

“European consumers are very sensitive to fuel economy and sophisticated about engine options,” says Lew Fulton, a transport analyst with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). “European car magazines are full of comparisons of fuel costs over the life of a vehicle.”

When demand changes, manufacturers need to deliver. The Detroit-based auto makers will be forced to produce smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles that exceed the fuel-efficency of today’s hybrids and rival luxury cars with their comfort and style. The first step: don’t make hybrid cars so damn ugly. The Honda Civic hybrid (Japanese, of course) is a good start. American auto makers aren’t making more fuel-efficient vehicles because they don’t have to.

Higher gas prices should also make cash-conscious drivers drive more slowly and safely.

“There is really good evidence that higher prices reduce traffic,” says Stephen Glaister, a professor of transportation at London’s Imperial College. “If fuel prices go up 10 percent … fuel consumed goes down by about 7 percent, as people start to use fuel more efficiently, not accelerating so aggressively and switching to more fuel-efficient cars. It does change people’s behavior.”

The US authorities, however, “are unwilling to use resource price as part of their strategy” to conserve oil, says Lee Schipper, head of transportation research at the Washington-based World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank.

“The biggest hole in our policy today is fuel taxation,” he adds. “Tax increases are something Americans should do but don’t know how to do, and I wonder if they will ever be able to.

Some additional thoughts:

The gas tax holiday for Wisconsin is a bad idea. It’ll save individuals a couple bucks and cost the state millions that could and should be used for other things, such as education. See previous post: Treating what’s ailing Wisconsin

Hydrogen cars are the stupidest idea ever. Hydrogen is essentially a battery. It can’t be harvested, it has to be created in process that splits the hydrogen from oxygen in a water molecule. For the process to occur, it has to be powered by electricity. How do we get electricity? From fossil fuels, such as coal and gasoline. That should probably proceed any article on the future of hydrogen cars, yeah? Oh, and it’s expensive as hell.

The same thing goes for Ethanol. It’s made from corn… great! Except that to grow corn you need to transport fertilizer and water. You’ve got to use machines to plant and harvest… machines that run on gasoline. And you’ve got to run a refinery to extract the ethanol from the corn. A refinery that, unless there’s some new technology I’m not aware of, will run on electricity. And not electricity produced by wind turbines. In total, you’re using a lot more energy to create the ethanol than you’ll ever get from the final product.

Really, it doesn’t help anyone except subsidy-receiving farmers. So, how about taking those subsidies and spending that money on education so that someone in state government can think to call someone who knows something about science and maybe create some public policy that actually helps people.

And well we’re at it, maybe someone could tell a reporter to ask a couple questions when they’re doing stories on renewable energy because we all know that these blog things are just a fad anyway