Published on Wednesday, April 13, 2005 by the Toronto StarMitchell Anderson
Enraged about the high price of gas? A trip to the corner store might provide a much-needed reality check to the indignation over excessive fuel costs. Have a quick look at what you can buy for a dollar a litre.
Milk? Nope. Bottled water? Not likely. Roofing tar? No way. For all the shrill outrage about rising prices, gas remains by far the most outrageously underpriced commodity in the world.
Consider the long journey that a litre of gas makes from faraway oil fields to your local filling station. Oil deposits must first be found — often on the other side of the world or on the bottom of the ocean.
After massive infrastructure is developed, oil is extracted, transported across the globe, refined, and trucked thousands of kilometres to where you live. Let's not forget the massive military expenditures from countries like the U.S. to secure foreign oil supplies and the political and human turmoil that this creates. Considering all that, why then should gas cost about half as much as bottled water?
One reason is "perverse" government subsidies that promote things we are actually trying to discourage, such as fossil fuel consumption.
Last year, Ottawa shovelled $5.9 billion of your tax dollars to the fossil-fuel industry. This is far larger than current government support for sustainable energy technologies that will no doubt become the cornerstone of our future economy.
In the absence of either political will or personal restraint, we should be grateful that high gas prices might save us from ourselves. For instance, there is little doubt that governments would continue with perverse subsidies for fossil fuels, imperilling the future of the Canadian economy by hitching our wagon to the dying horse.
Likewise, we would continue to endanger the future health of our planet by driving vehicles that actually get far worse mileage than the Model T did for the simple reason that gasoline happens to be cheaper than water.
Artificially low gas prices have long stifled conservation efforts and alternative technologies, while fuelling a boom in vehicles so grotesquely inefficient that I suspect our children will someday marvel at them in a museum.
SUVs are a fine example of the irrational behaviour in the waning days of cheap oil. The only reason such gas-guzzlers are even legal is that technically they are considered "farm implements." Rather than investing in innovative technologies that would produce more efficient cars, automakers have invested in highly successful lobbying efforts in order to ensure that they don't have to.
The recent accord between the federal government and car makers is a good case in point. After literally years of gentle coddling from the federal government, the automakers agreed to voluntary efficiency requirements that will actually allow emissions to rise by 18 per cent between 1990 and 2010.
The last time Ottawa signed such a non-binding agreement in 1982, it failed completely to improve the average fuel efficiency of Canadian vehicles because there was no legal requirement to do so. It is noteworthy that governments possess a unique power called "regulation" that makes such protracted and fruitless negotiations unnecessary.
Not to fear, the market of Adam Smith will succeed where all else has failed. Higher fuel costs will foster much needed interest, innovation and investment in conservation and alternative technologies.
Some oil companies may turn their massive resources to developing these clean-energy alternatives rather than choosing to go down with their ship. A study by Shell International found that renewable sources could supply 50 per cent of the world's energy needs by 2050.
Rather than posing for photo ops with the car industry, the federal government should seize the opportunity to make some long overdue policy changes. These include shifting gasoline tax revenue to public transit, increasing green infrastructure investment in cities, and expanding investment in renewable energy — the fastest growing energy sector in the world.
A side benefit from this vast global shift away from oil is the small matter of the fate of the planet. Aside from a few well-known pseudo-scientists shilling on behalf of big oil, virtually the entire scientific community is united in the knowledge that climate change is real, it is happening right now and that it is very, very dangerous.
Some, like our beleaguered farmers, should be insulated from ballooning fuel costs.
As for the rest of us, rather than griping about how much it costs to top up your SUV, consider instead the fact that you might well have been an idiot to buy such a vehicle in the first place. Times change and we must change with them. The end of cheap oil is a blessing and we should welcome it.
Mitchell Anderson is a freelance writer who lives in Vancouver.
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0413-25.htm
