Good article, but a lot of typos which makes it lose some credibility.

Saying that the markup at service stations has "gone from .90/gal to .70/gal" is laughably inaccurate. Perhaps from .09 to .07.

I'm going out on a limb here but I think the high price of gas is a long overdue wakeup call to the gas guzzling wasteful consumers.

Cheap gas creates complacency and excess. Now with pricier gas, we start calculating ways to be much more efficient and resourceful. Global warming is real. What better way to wake America up than to hit them in the pocketbooks.

@ironchef: Can you give me an idea of how consumers are being 'wasteful?' Its not like the overwhelming majority oh people are 'just going out for a drive' or leaving their cars running overnight. A lot of people say how much we 'waste' gas, but nobody ever says what they consider wasteful.

Actually the U.S. will not be having a cold winter, in all likelihood: see [www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov]

@homerjay: I think he's referring to the wasteful practices of buying gas guzzling cars, and driving absolutely everywhere instead of electing to walk, bike, or take public transportation over short distances. That's just for starters.

For the past few years gas prices dipped around this time of the year, hitting around $2.00 last October. Now they are around $3.00 so next Spring it should go insane.

Speaking of air fares, I *just* booked a RT flight between PHL and PHX for $228 including all taxes for two weeks from now. That's just insane. (well, it *is* US Air so who knows if I'll actually make it)

@homerjay: My thoughts exactly. There are many areas of the country where you must own a car, because you must drive to get anywhere (the area I live, in rural New England, for instance). Ignorant comments like ironchef's tend to make me a bit annoyed when they're not backed up with anything but "global warming hur hur."

@homerjay: My guess is Ironchef is referring to the Escalades, Navigators, Hummers and other various monster SUVs I see barreling down the freeway at 90+ MPH here in LA on a daily basis...
Driving a Hummer in Los Angeles with 1 passenger is pretty wasteful, no?

This article didn't even scratch the surface:

High oil prices means less fuel consumption.
Less fuel consumption means less tax revenue to governments.
Less tax revenue to governments means higher taxes in other areas.
Higher heating oil prices means more wood and coal burning.
More wood and coal burning means more pollution and less forests.
Since the American economy is based on oil, our economy will spiral down, the dollar already is loosing value due to higher oil prices and the Euro is becoming the new strong currency of dominance. The dollar will continue to slide causing our wealth to deteriorate to 30% or more, meaning Americans will have less and less wealth. More and more Americans will start to move their wealth to Europe and keep it in Euros, since the Euro will be liquid and strong. This will be a self sustaining hemorrhage.
Money will also leave America in the form of foreign investment, since our ability to pay back debt will become less certain and foreign investors will have a better place to keep their money. This in turn will make it harder and harder for Americans to pay back debt and our standard of living will erode faster and faster like nothing we've seen.
Many businesses will collapse such as the travel industry, then service oriented businesses that depend on tourism. Our transportation infrastructure will (and in many cases already has) crumble. Roads and bridges will no longer be safe to use. Goods and services will be harder to come by.
The bright side of the dollar becoming weak is that it will be attractive to buy American made goods. The only problem here is there are not many things made in America anymore. Many of our big industries have already moved over seas. It will take many years before manufacturing can ramp back up. And even when it does, transporting goods will be very expensive.
My opinion is to reverse many of the environmental restriction we have against drilling and refining oil. We need to stop deluding ourselves and realize we are an oil economy. The powerful know this already, the media has done a great job at keeping this a mass secret. Lest anyone thinks the Iraq war was not about Sadam's sudden change from US dollars to Euros and Iran's upcoming war will also be about their change from trading oil in U.S. dollars. Please wake up! The roaring 20's are here and it's almost 1929!

@veronykah:

Exactly. I never saw more Hummers than when I lived in Jacksonville, Fl. That's a place you simply don't need a vehicle like that.

It's so weird, we bitch about gas prices. But then we have soccer mom's drivign Hummer H2's down the road, Tahoe's and god know what else when they can be fine w/ a minivan and get great gas mileage and enough room for all.

Also car manufactures should be pumping out at least 30/mpg, I mean come on people... 19/mpg are u kidding. that's a trip to the grocery store and going to look around some where.

@vastrightwing:

Paranoid much? I suppose your handle says it all ...

Global warming is not even a viable excuse. There is no evidence to disprove that "global warming" isn't just a natural cycle of the Earth. Mankind has not been documenting things for that long at all.

Basically, instead of other companies which put money into research and development to keep prices low in the long term, the oil companies would rather do nothing and increase prices.

Glad I get to start working at home soon.

@ShadowFalls: This man speaks truth. Global Warming/Climate Change/whatever is just a politically-motivated fraud.

@homerjay: @Shadowfire:

Driving a car that gets less that 30 mpg is wasteful. You can get trucks and SUVs that will even do that. In general, most people have overly wasteful vehicles. Don't get rid of your car, but don't kid yourself that you need that SUV.

@vastrightwing: And then what do we do when the oil is gone? Our own oil even if you allow Alaska drilling and everywhere else the US has oil, will not last to our grandchildren. Then what?

@shadowfire
That is the point. People have built out homes in places where there is no viable public transit system. People also insist on building homes in areas where it is very expensive to heat and cool them.

If the price of gas went up you'd be certain to see a drive for efficient public transit and a move from the megastore to the local market. If it cost $3 in gas to get to and from the grocery store you will NOT just go and pick up some milk.

As gas goes up the development of local industry and commerce will get bigger, people will ask more for local public transit, and it will no longer seem like a good idea to live in a desert.

@veronykah: You're definitely right about that, but unfortunately (it seems) most of the people driving around in the Hummers also have the homes in Bel Air, Malibu, etc... (in other words, it's wasteful, but they've got the cabbage to burn).

@Techguy1138: You can't blame everyone who lives in a home away from mass transit for the energy crisis..nor can you blame everyone who lives in warm or cold climates either. It's evolved as a societal thing. This country evolved on the theory that the automobile would always be the cheapest way to travel, and for decades, that was true. As that becomes no longer true, people will begin to reconsider hour-long commutes.

There are places where mass transit is just not available. Period. You can't assume that everyone picks their place of residence based upon the availability of mass transit.

Hopefully the availability of mass transit will change as energy prices continue to increase, but blaming people who bought houses in rural areas isn't the solution. I also live in rural New-England. I was born here, my roots are here, and it wasn't as if I picked this place randomly out of an atlas as a random place to live.

We're going to have to undergo a complete overhaul of society if the automobile is no longer a viable source of transportation, and that isn't going to happen overnight.

Maybe the solution lies somewhere along the lines of not overpopulating the planet, and not being wasteful with what energy we have...which is again, going to have to be a complete societal overhaul.

@Techguy1138: People build houses where jobs are. And employers pay people what they need to make now to heat and cool their homes and drive to work. And we pay them to pay people to heat and cool their homes and drive their cars long distances by buying their products.

Funny how it always comes back to you, which is the whole point.

tough luck for you suckers that buy gas. I have a 'company' car. It pays to be 'the man'.

This is off topic, but worth mentioning: Don't get caught up in the current market hysteria. Yes, high oil prices will certainly cause a rise in inflation, but it's going to affect all countries to some extent, not just the US.

The European Central Bank will probably prop up the dollar within the next 6-12 months (adjust interest rates to deflate the Euro) once the EU governments start putting on real pressure after their countries start getting flooded with cheap American products (I think Sarkozy made some statements to that effect in the past few days). China and numerous middle eastern governments will also chip in rather than see their vast US bond holdings decline in relative value. Therefore, the decline of the dollar won't result in any absolute "self-sustaining" prophecy. This is just a market correction, not the end of civilization as we know it. Just my $0.02.

Food prices have already gone up. Check out the loaf of bread you buy and fresh bagels at the grocery store...they are not the same as they were a year ago. When people have to spend more money to buy basic things like bread, other "wants" that make our economy function will not be purchased, and then we can all figure out what happens from there..

I have friends in the UK, where gasoline is significantly higher and has been for years.
They drive less. We'll drive less.
Food costs more there. Food will cost more here.
Houses are smaller because large houses cost more because everything that goes into them costs more. That will happen here, too.
They use more public transport and walk to the store when they can. We will, too.
We'll get over it.

@jrstren: Actually, China is starting to leak USD, and OPEC is talking about eventually moving the price of oil away from just the dollar.

In Europe, fuel prices are already high (2-3x in the US) because of heavy taxation. Funny how they all drive high mileage cars. (relative to the US at least). Government sees people hurt by prices, they can reduce taxation much easier that we can cut prices here.

And if you can tell me what American products you are talking about, I'd sure like to know. We don't make anything here anymore. Except for Japanese cars.

Obviously, I'm being facetious, but American goods will never be cheap enough to compete with the Chinese, Indian, and the rest of asian definition of cheap. (not unless we go into a depression).

The guy who runs the FX trading for the bank that bought the bank I work for, (rhymes with Tank of Shmamerika) Claims they see the dollar getting all the way to 1.60 or even 1.70 vs the Euro.

Are we headed for the depression? Probably not. Is it going to get worse? Definitely.

@marsneedsrabbits: Ditto for my wife's family in France.

@marsneedsrabbits: you forgot to add "watch soccer" ...

[ninjatales.wordpress.com]

Everything costs more. So what? You can change your lifestyle or go with the flow. Like us consumers have a say about the price of oil.

I agree with Ironchef on Americans being wasteful with energy, but it's not entirely their fault -- they were raised with cheap energy and had no incentive to conserve. How many people here leave lights on in other rooms when they're not in them? How many leave the AC/heating on when they sleep / go out for the day? How many have appliances & plumbing fixtures that are more than 5 years old? I'd assume the majority here do.

Unfortunately, the majority of the new growth in the USA has been suburbia, which was designed entirely to be navigated with a car. Most areas don't even have sidewalks. Even if they did, stores and work aren't walking distance. Then there's the houses in the suburbs. Virtually none of them were built with energy efficiency in mind. My childhood home was built just prior to the 1970's energy crisis and it showed. Even during the day you needed artificial lighting because cause of the lack of good daylight design.

The real problem with all of this is that many Americans are "just getting by" with what they have now. Granted, many people's definition of "getting by" still includes quite a few luxuries, but they're probably not going to change their lifestyles much. Instead, they'll just go into more debt and think it'll somehow magically remedy itself. With the housing market as it is, downsizing your house to save money isn't a likely option. Nor would be trying to offload a gas-guzzling SUV.

$100/barrel of gas does make throwing a few solar panels on the roof look more tempting each day.

If scientists could harness the energy of my snide gaffaws every time I see someone filling the tank of their Escalade/Hummer, our energy crisis would be over.

How about, "Everything is going to get f*****g expensive"?

We're headed for an economic downturn and the feds aren't doing anything to alleviate it--just delaying the inevitable.

@JKinNYC:

A depression is inevitable, it is only a matter of time.

@vastrightwing:
You nailed it brother.

@ironchef: Oh God, not another Al Gore patsy.

I'm more concerned with the macroeconomic effects. Gas prices don't mean squat to me day-to-day, because I made a choice to live close to my place of employment and rarely drive more than 15 miles. Push comes to shove I can ride my bike to work.

It cracks me up to hear the folks at work who claim to be "green" with their four-banger subcompacts commuting an hour or more one way every day so that they can raise their kids in generic suburbia.

I commute in a "wasteful" V8-powered car but I still consume far less than they do.

I think we ought to put a 2 cent gas tax on fuel and use that to build tons and tons of windmills. It would cost us an extra 40 cents a tank and would lower oil costs in the future. I think that Man has had only a marginal affect on global climate change, so I'm not one of the greeen/hippy types, but the simple fact is that oil is a limited resource. And when you get down to it, it is ENERGY. Even if we move over to H2 (hydrogen, not hummer) or battery cars, we need to get energy. We are at capacity on hydro, and the greenies have limited coal and nuclear, so why not build so many windmills that electricity gets down to 2 cents a KWH? Get it to the point where its cheaper to heat your house with electric, and when gas gets to $4/gallon, companies will be dying to get into the electric car market, but still, we need to have a way to generate that power, and I think windmills are inexpensive ways of doing it, and it keeps the Al Gore loonies happy too.

Where we live is impaired to the point you could not go much of anywhere without a car unless you want to dodge high speed traffic on a road without a shoulder. Even if we did move more to the center of town is is not any better. Nothing needed is in walking distance. Grocery stores are all centered around shopping districts that are devoid of safe sidewalks or sidewalks at all. The metro district refuses to change anything because conservatives don't want their taxes to do up.

There needs to be a huge change in transit but good luck getting cities combined with the anti-tax types to agree to do so. Streetcars, light rail and retrofitting suburban areas with closer walkable shopping. It is not going to happen without some national leadership pushing it. Good luck getting that out of Bush.

Its funny since a lot of whats listed doesnt involve me too much.

We keep our heat kinda low. Low enough where you ahve to walk around in a sweat shirt. I drive a corolla and even if gas goes up to $5 a gallon With an empty tank would only pay $50 at $5 a gallon to fill up.

I only fly maybe once a year.

I dont get a lot of things shipped to me.

I dont feel sorry for all the suv drivers and truck drivers complaining about gas prices. They have no right to complain driving something like that.

@jeffjohnvol: The problem with windmills is that you have to chop down all the nearby trees for them to work. Not to mention wind is *sporadic* at best. This may be fine for our vast wasteland of a midwest, but totally unacceptable in the Eastern / Coastal states. Offshore windmills may work in those areas, but would be hard to contruct & maintain & may cause environmental problems.

"Won't someone please think of the fish?"

@ShadowFalls: Depression? Maybe that's a bit overly pessimistic. Recession? Absolutely.

@Caswell: This, I don't worry about at all. I always thought the people who moved waaay out into the suburbs because "taxes are lower" or "I can get a larger house for the same money" were idiots to begin with. Let 'em pay. They were already paying with the extra hours taken from their life every day, now they can pay with their wallets as well.

@jeffjohnvol: I appreciate the enthusiasm, but wind generators are expensive and don't put out all of that much power on their own. You're not going to see $0.02/kWh power from renewables unless you're talking about hydro power. Anyone who lives off-grid will tell you that it's far less expensive to conserve electricity (including making radical, expensive changes to your home for energy efficiency) than it is to generate electricity. Unless some sort of breakthrough happens in renewable technology, this is scene for awhile.

@bohemian: I'm not sure how one would "fix" the current suburbia transportation problems. It's not like we're dealing with cities where everything is right outside your door. Just looking at Tampa and the pie-in-the-sky plans they've come up with for light rail, it still wouldn't even make a dent in traffic. Bus lines to replace where people commute to are hopelessly slow and are still stuck in the same gridlock that everyone else is in. You still have to drive to the pick-up points. About the only place I see this working would be the severely economically-depressed areas where there are acres of abandoned/poor housing where you can run a bulldozer through miles at a time. Post-Katrina New Orleans would have been ideal, especially considering the poverty many residents lived in. The burden of car ownership could have been eliminated or severely reduced, but alas, they still don't have any real rebuilding plans, just whatever haphazard efforts people are doing on their own.

@Jaysyn: We build generators here in the US (General Electric) so it would be good for the economy, and if they are so expensive, then why to they keep building more and more. Off shore would work if you can get the Kennedy's to allow it. There are plenty of areas you can do it and not need to cut down trees.
@FLConsumer: Hydro is great, and preferable, but there isn't much more hydro capacity, especially in the South East. There is some extra capacity in Canada where they are rerouting a river to increase their water flow. At 40 cents a tank and generating billions to spend, it could be done in a decade. And by reducing the demand for heating oil and NG (as elec drops), the fuel costs would lower and almost pay for itself.

@jeffjohnvol:

Expensive? I didn't say anything about expensive. Or that it was a bad idea, it just can't work everywhere.

@FLConsumer: Efficient sturdy solar panels are availible now. The ones I'm talking about are much cheaper than the old glass panels & can resist hail or storm damage fairly well.

@marsneedsrabbits: The difference is that the UK is much smaller, much more densely-populated, and most of its population centers have been population centers since the Roman occupation, and therefore were not built car-centric.

It's going to be much more difficult for the U.S. to have a comprehensive mass transit policy -- it always has been more difficult -- because we're NOT a pedestrian-built country, and we're sooooooo spread out.

Shipping rates will never change. FedEx/UPS/DHL can't afford to raise their prices. It's too risky, especially around the holiday season.

@Jaysyn: Sorry, I attributed that to the wrong poster.

True, wind won't work everywhere, just as hydro won't work everywhere. My point is that we need to increase our energy production as much as possible to plan for an eventual drying up of petroleum products. It'll happen, hopefully not in our lifetime, but it will eventually happen. If the oil goes away, it needs to be replaced by something.

The more power you can produce and put into the grid, the cheaper it gets. Put them in the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges for example.

Part of the problem is that where wind is most plentiful, there aren't many people there. North Dakota for example, and you lose power over the lines on long distances, but if you have those wind plants (or hydro or nuclear) making hydrogen, you can pipe that with minimal losses.

Imagine getting hydrogen piped to your house (instead of NG) and your fuel cell making your electricity for you. And you can use the excess steam to flush your toilets, LOL.

@JKinNYC:
Can you point me towards a full size pick up truck that I can haul a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood in that gets 30 mpg?

@randotheking:
I just got a notice from UPS that they are raising shipping rates as of December 31. [www.ups.com]

@Jaysyn: I saw an interesting thing on the Discovery channel (I think) that had a farmer that let GE put wind towers in between their fields. They made an additional $3K a month revenue from the power it generated.