Demand, Baby, Demand!
There was a time not so long ago when most of the U.S. was fretting over high oil prices. Gasoline was heading north of $4/gallon and politicians everywhere were heeding the call to take action. Most Republicans running for office (including McCain and especially Palin) proposed that the solution to high prices was to drill for more oil. In other words, increase supply.
I disagreed . (Along with most energy experts). Supply is inherently prone to lag. There’s a delay of 3-5 years (or more) before a new oil well will bring any new oil to the market. Not exactly the cure for today’s high prices.
Instead, I advocated that we do everything in our power to cut demand. This can be done virtually overnight. As the last few months have demonstrated conclusively. All around the world, but especially in the U.S., people are driving less and using less oil. This decrease in demand has caused the recent drop in oil, not the rally chant of “drill, baby, drill”.
Where do we go from here? Now that oil is back under $100/bbl we can’t get complacent. We need to aggressively invest in efficiency . (“Invest, baby, efficiently!”) For some regions, this means light rail. For others, modernized buses. For all, it means fuel efficient cars (and since Detroit has proven themselves incapable of planning, I think we should mandate it with CAFE standards).
But it has to go beyond that. We need to think about geography and how it impacts energy use. Does it really make sense to live 15 miles from work, 10 miles from the grocery store, or 5 miles from your children’s school? [answer: no] Can we build our communities to be more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists? [answer: yes] Are airplanes really the best way to travel between Chicago and Minneapolis? [answer: modern trains would be faster/cheaper/more efficient ]
Cut demand and the prices will follow. Demand, Baby, Demand!
Filed under energy, politics : Comments (1) : Oct 14th, 2008 by tadfad
October 16th, 2008 at 14:38
It’s funny because for so long I’d say the right actually argued that we couldn’t reduce demand. Oddly it is clear that we can, unfortunately in this case for bad reasons but it shows that demand can be pushed down.
You’re right it is the time right now to work on reducing that demand over the long term.