Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
10 Things You Can Like About $4 Gas
Amanda Ripley, TIME Magazine
The world had long assumed that Americans were just unrepentant energy pigs. If gas prices went up, well, we kept our Explorers aimed at the horizon, and little changed. We truthfully didn’t have lots of options. Unlike Europeans, we didn’t have jobs we could bike to or convenient public transit. Gasoline prices never stayed high enough long enough to force those kinds of shifts in how we lived.
Now here we are. Gas prices are near $4 per gal., as no one needs to tell you, and they are likely to stay that way. Most of us still don’t have the alternatives we need to adapt with grace, which means that many will adapt just by suffering. We will run out of gas on I-80, ease our minivans over to the shoulder and tell the kids everything is O.K. We’ll fall behind on Visa bills to pay for gas so we can buy food made ever more expensive by energy costs.
But it’s also true that Americans are finding options where there seemed to be none. They’re ready to change – and waiting for their infrastructure to catch up.
… 1. Globalized Jobs Return Home
… 2. Sprawl Stalls
… 3. Four-Day Workweeks
… 4. Less Pollution
… 5. More Frugality
… 6. Fewer Traffic Deaths
… 7. Cheaper Insurance
… 8. Less Traffic
… 9. More Cops on the Beat [price of gas means fewer cops in cruisers]
… 10. Less Obesity
(July 2008)
So we can’t afford to drive. But here’s the upside
Mary Dejevsky, UK Independent
For complicated reasons, I have been doing quite a bit of long-distance driving recently. … the experience of my recent journeys suggests that the price of petrol – at £1.16 a litre, if you are lucky – and more for diesel, is having a noticeable effect on lifestyle. Between the various centres of population, my drives up and down the M4 have become quite lonely.
There are vast delivery lorries, yes, including some from across the Channel, and the usual quotient of long-distance coaches. But there are relatively few private cars, either on weekdays or at weekends. Car traffic picks up around the cities, but vanishes again on the open road. I noticed exactly the same driving from the south of France a month ago. People just do not seem to be driving long-distance, whether for business or pleasure, as they used to.
Now you can argue that this is an excellent development; and I would not disagree. Can it be that stratospheric fuel prices have succeeded in doing what no government or green agitator has yet managed: getting ordinary people out of their cars and, perhaps, on to public transport? If recent plans for Britain to develop its first new railways (with the exception of the Channel rail link) for a century are a guide, perhaps we can look forward to a new age of investment in public transport.
But the implications go much further than this.
(3 July 2008)
Politics Failed, but Fuel Prices Cut Congestion
William Neuman, New York Times
Soaring gas prices and higher tolls seem to be doing for traffic in New York what Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s ambitious congestion pricing was supposed to do: reducing the number of cars clogging the city’s streets and pushing more people to use mass transit.
In May, with gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, traffic at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s bridges and tunnels dropped 4.7 percent compared with the same month the previous year.
Preliminary data for June shows a similar decrease in traffic, and officials say the change is largely because of higher prices at the pump.
(3 July 2008)
Soaring fuel prices prompt consumers to reconsider overseas travel
Ayuhiko Sasaki and Hideo Kamata, Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan)
The rocketing cost of fuel is influencing this summer’s retail economic environment, with customers hesitating to travel abroad and instead choosing domestic train-based trips.
Sales of energy-saving air conditioners are also growing steadily, according to sources.
… Travel agencies are unhappy with the trend, saying the number of reservations for foreign trips this summer has decreased sharply. A Nippon Travel Agency Co. spokesman said reservations for tours to North America and Hawaii decreased by about 40 percent compared with the same period last year.
… Accordingly, the demand for domestic trips is growing instead. According to Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai), reservations for summer trips have increased by about 30 percent compared with the same period last year. Many of the trips use the Tokaido Shinkansen line, the company said.
(3 July 2008)
Going green, on two wheels
Maura Kelly, Guardian
After lagging behind Europe for years, the United States is finally starting to catch up when it comes to making life better for bicyclists. In a country that’s increasingly troubled by traffic, obesity and – perhaps worst of all – climate change, that’s great news.
Two cities in particular have been leading the way. Portland, Oregon has seen a 400% increase in bike traffic in the last 20 years. And since 2000, the city has installed more than 200 additional miles of bike lanes, bringing the total number close to 300. Not coincidentally, an estimated 16% of Portlanders currently use two wheels to get to work.
Davis, California is the only other US locale besides Portland that the League of American Bicyclists has designated as Platinum-rated for bicycle-friendliness. While it isn’t as hip as its neighbour to the north, Davis has been a supreme bike city for even longer – it actively began to incorporate cycling into its transportation infrastructure in the 1960s.
(3 July 2008)
