Gas Prices Are Too Low!

Energy consumption in the Western world is unreal. That said, we are never going to curb our energy use. We shouldn’t even bother to try. Technology has been a tremendous boon to the quality of human existence and the more technology and population grows, the more energy our world will consume. We have to find a way to keep up with energy demands. The usual method of looking for more oil is drying up. But we won’t be getting off of oil any time soon unless we raise prices. Yes. That’s right. I said we should be raising the price of gas. Gas Prices are too damn low! That’s right. We should be paying $12 a gallon. Why? Really it’s quite simple. It’s a matter of short term pain for long term gain.

Most of our alternative energy technology is still stuck in the 1970’s when gas prices were at an all time high because of OPEC. That’s when diesel motors got their biggest boost. It’s when solar panels first started to show up on rooftops. It’s when the entrepreneurial spirit of America thrived. With today’s high gas prices we have already begun to see a renewed interest in these technologies. There is talk of nanotechnology, hydrogen fuel cells, bio-diesel, and more. The top selling vehicle in many urban areas is the Toyota Prius, and where I live in BC Canada, the roads are dotted with a Daimler Benz product called the “Smart”, a product which has been in Europe for 9 years and looks to make a showing in the U.S. in 2007. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Artificially raising the price of gasoline can only serve to stimulate capitalism and invention. Furthermore, the resulting factor would be the energy independence that we have been paying lip service to for thirty years, while making the countries with which we have the most political differences rich beyond their wildest dreams. In my estimation, the goal of solving our energy dependence has got to include making petroleum as monetarily valuable as leaves on a tree. It’s sort of hard to wage jihad when your money tree dries up!

That’s not to say we are necessarily going in the right direction in terms of replacing gasoline as our primary engine fuel. There is a lot of talk about technologies whose byproduct is water or steam. I hear people say things like “Well water can’t be harmful… pure crystal clean water. I call BS! Can you IMAGINE the effect on climate if we start artificially putting water in the air from the hundreds of millions of vehicles that traverse our planet? No way. I dare say, the only solid answer is going to be solar technology. In any case, none of these things is going to happen so long as the price of gas stays low. You may think its high now, and yet, you are still willing to pay it. It has to get to that point. It has to be a back breaking, economy crippling sort of price or else nothing will ever change.

There is talk of more hybrids, but hybrids don’t solve the problem. They just delay it, and polluting the environment is silly if we don’t have to. Even a little bit of pollution is still pollution. Can you imagine if your doctor told you that the result of a treatment would be cancer, but it would just be a “little” bit of cancer, so therefore recommended the treatment? It’s pure lunacy. While it’s a step in the right direction, it’s too small a basket in which to put our eggs.

I don’t know what the real answer is. Quite possibly, the answer to solving our energy consumption needs going forward will be more of a smorgasbord of ideas than a single solution, but I do know this. Until gasoline is no longer one of the easy options, we will never find the real solutions that are sitting out there waiting for some bright entrepreneur to become the next Bill Gates. A viable energy solution must be renewable, non-polluting, cost effective, and must take into account that whatever the by-product, it is possible to create too much of a good thing. I don’t want to pay $12 per gallon, but it might just be that I need to. It might just be that we all do. At least, that’s my take on the matter.