A few words about gasoline
TigerHawk is in the house!
So now, a few words about gasoline.
Yahoo’s news page is featuring a silly article from Kiplinger.com about saving money on gasoline. Top suggestion: “Find the lowest gas prices.” Seriously? How much remedial home economics does the author assume that her readers need?
The ugly truth is that most Americans will do essentially nothing to cut gasoline consumption. Why? Because it is a great value notwithstanding its record price at the pump. The short version of my argument (the long version is at the two year-old link) is that people prove the value of gasoline by their actions. Even though everybody knows that driving at the low end of highway speed saves a lot of gasoline, they do not do it, presumably because their time is still worth more than the considerable savings in gasoline. Has there been any noticeable increase in carpooling? Not at my company, even though there are plenty of people in a position to do it. Do people turn off their engines at long lights as they did back during the oil crunches in the ’70s? I have not heard a single engine go on when a light turns green, even at multi-minute red lights.
The thesis of the Kiplinger article is, apparently, that people just do not know that they can save gasoline by driving more slowly and smoothly, inflating tires properly, carpooling, and so on. I think that they do know these things — certainly anybody who is older than about 40 remembers the gasoline conservation propaganda (”Fast is Fuelish!”) from the 1970s — but they would still rather spend the money on gasoline than share their commute with a co-worker, arrive a few minutes later, or turn off their automobile’s entertainment system during long red lights. Even at $3.50 or $4 per gallon, consuming gasoline is more preferable than even the trivial inconveniences of conservation.
Something to remember the next time you hear somebody grouse about the price of gasoline.
Topics: everything
Posted by Tigerhawk at 2:39 pm on Sunday, April 20, 2008
6 Responses to “A few words about gasoline”
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April 20th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I work for a Home Health Care agency and I drive about 100 miles every day. There is no carpooling in this job. I have made a point of making all my stops on the way home. Once here, I do not leave for any errands. I am not planning to go anywhere for vacation this year either.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
There is no question that there are particular people, maybe even a lot of them, who cannot really conserve more gasoline without making a fundamental change in their lives. They have it tough, no doubt about it. That does not really answer the question, though: Why don’t people carpool if they can, why don’t they drive more slowly (I see no reduction in average speed on the NJTP or the GSP, for example), and why don’t they turn their engines off at long lights and drawbridges and such?
April 21st, 2008 at 3:00 am
With all due respect, I take routes that have the fewest lights that I can think of, I do the speed limit to the point of being obnoxious to most other drivers and when my mother died, early this year, the car sat for two months with one tank of gas in it all that time. I don’t have the money to pay the futures markets and refineries and the environmentalists are squeezing me to the point of agony and yet I have to work in a town that is approx. 33 mi from my house one weekend a month. Carpooling is out. That dumba**ed writer makes ten to twenty times my salary and she’s going off on me? You make ten to twenty times my salary and you’re saying that I’m asking for what happens? When it pops I think that I’ll be on the front lines. This is a manufactured situation and King Louis comes to mind when looking for parallels.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:11 am
While I’m not quite as strident about it as Mike he’s certainly got a point. The same people who write these articles are the same ones who rail against drilling for oil in ANWR or offshore, building more nuclear plants, attempting to improve and use more “dirty” fuels like coal, and so on. They are also the same idiots who want us to burn food for fuel, at a time when global food prices are rising.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
BTW, Terrye, Bless You! You work in a valued profession!
April 21st, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Fatty, I’ll try to minimize the stridency next time. Keep my feet to the fire.