Will this energy crisis be different than past ones? Probably not. In reaction to hydrocarbon price-gouging, Americans always seem to apply Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventually, acceptance.
If the price of gas settles in at $3 or $3.50 a gallon, we'll likely learn to live with it. That's what we've done in the past when prices jumped 20 percent over the course of a year. Only the fear of having no gasoline would really change us, and we're not running out anytime soon. As the old joke goes, it's not that there's a shortage of gasoline; rather, there's a shortage of $2-a-gallon gasoline. But oil companies have discovered vast resources of $4-a-gallon gas.
Technology has improved the fuel efficiency and cleanliness of cars. But efficiency can enable bad habits, allowing people to buy 12-mpg vehicles that otherwise would have been 8-mpg vehicles.
My worry is that the car haters among us, who Car and Driver tagged the Anti-Destination League, want to beat cars in general into submission—SUVs in particular. If these folks can't get us out of cars and onto mass transit (never mind how light rail going to play, or how much it'll cost, anywhere outside a few big cities), they want to lower the speed limit and lay draconian fees on anything bulkier than their beloved '68 Beetles, which, by the way, were gross polluters even without the scent of burning plant material wafting from the cockpit.
New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, a usually rational politician (if you overlook his occasional choice in female friends who need money for mortgages and bail), proposed allowing self-service gas pumping in New Jersey, and lowering the speed limit to 55 mph. The Tony Soprano state responded with an immediate "fuggedaboudit" to DIY pumping, even though it might have saved drivers 6 cents a gallon. Only New Jersey and Oregon don't offer motorists the choice.
Less has been said about the speed-limit proposal, maybe because nobody thinks it's going to happen. Lowering the speed limit is a bad idea, even though you do burn a bit more fuel punching through the air at higher speeds, and here's why.
The car is not the only energy consumer, even though it's a big one. An upscale empty-nester who drives a Prius but lives in a 4,500-square-foot house with drafty windows that's heated by a furnace with a clogged filter, and who employs a gardener who uses out-of-tune (and noisy) two-stroke equipment, doesn't deserve a green Energy Star stickers for his forehead. Especially not when he keeps his ski house heated all winter long, too. A Montana farmer with a 25-mile drive to the nearest store in his Ford F150 takes a dim view of for-the-common-good laws, such as lower speed limits, that are proposed by people with a dozen stores and take-out restaurants on their own blocks.
Lower speed limits also diminish respect for the police. Cops get cast in the adversarial role of municipal tax collectors, which nobody likes, and it takes them away from more important work. Sorry, but hiding behind a bridge abutment with a Stalker II radar gun doesn't promote public safety. Insurance companies love lower speed limits because they hope to pay out less: Fewer accidents happen at lower speeds. But even if highway fatalities are the leading cause of death among America's youth, there's no meaningful statistical impact on sober drivers wearing their seatbelts, whether they're going 55, 65, or 75 mph.
We now have the technical capability to model things that use energy and perhaps use energy unnecessarily, along with what causes pollution. You could, for instance, save some energy and get cleaner air by (in homage to "A Modest Proposal") forbidding poor people to drive—because guess who are most likely to be driving older, gas guzzling, out-of-tune vehicles. Given the choice between paying the rent and replacing the catalytic converter, the poor tend to make environmentally unwise choices. Shame on them.
I'm opposed to any knee-jerk rule change that doesn't also consider the energy burned by pleasure boats, vacation homes, low-efficiency air conditioners, flying around the globe on vacation instead of taking an in-state bus tour, snowmobiles, downhill skiing, and hot-air ballooning (all that propane).
Nearly every economist says a dollar-a-gallon gasoline tax, rebated on a more or less per-person basis (less a few pennies a gallon retained by the Washington mafia for administrative purposes) would help push us toward higher efficiency vehicles.
So what can you do? If your "check engine" light comes on, have it checked, in case something's out of tune. (But don't rush out for a tune-up just because some newspaper article says to; modern cars stay in tune a long time.) Keep your tires properly inflated; that helps a lot. (If oil companies believed in saving fuel, they wouldn't charge 25 cents to use the air pump.) Switch to synthetic oil (a minor benefit).
Suburban parents, there's no shame in carpooling to lacrosse practice rather than three of you driving one kid each. When it comes time to get a new car, look at hybrid alternatives (they're getting very good) as well as diesel engines and turbocharged engines, which are now considered economical rather than powerful (they are both, of course). Diesels are not noisy or smelly; they start instantly; and they're pretty good for the environment.
If you've got a lot of people to haul, see if you can get by with a 4,000-pound station wagon or minivan instead of a 5,500-pound SUV. Buy a gas-engine Sienna minivan, for instance, and filch the Hybrid Synergy Drive emblem from your neighbor's Prius one night. Even a minivan can be cool, if it says "hybrid" on the back.
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