The current price of gas in the Chattanooga area is $3.38-$3.52 per gallon for regular. Ouch, that’s a lot of money to put in our tanks! And here I own an SUV and an old V6 Camry that requires premium fuel (yes, the environmental science professor). But that means I can talk, and not from the perspective of a radical treehugger.
First, let me say that we knew what we were getting into when we bought the 4Runner, so I am not in any position to complain about the price of gas. And as a general rule, I don’t. I made an informed choice to purchase that vehicle, knowing full well it would not be cheap to operate and it was only likely to get worse in the future. We do use it extensively for Scouting activities and family activities, and it has served us well.
The Camry was a gift. It will not die. Anyway, I digress.
I am an Independent. My vote goes to the candidate that makes the most sense and has a reasonable environmental record. Yes, that narrows the field considerably, doesn’t it? I tend not to vote for the candidate that goes on too much about how religious they are (I am a Christian, and have yet to see a self-avowed Christian politician actually behave like one despite all the attention it gets – Jimmy Carter does a great job, especially since he’s been out of office – I’d vote for him if he were running in ‘08).
So now we have high gas prices. What’s amazing is that people are surprised by this! There is a finite amount of oil, yet demand keeps increasing. What else is going to happen to the price? It had to happen sooner or later – we just have not wanted to face up to it (I well remember the gas shortages of the 1970’s, but as a society we sure have a short collective memory). Later has arrived, and it’s time to pay the piper for the tunes we’ve been calling for the last 50 years.
So now everybody’s all up-in-arms about the price of gas. We are in reaction mode again – we wait until there is a problem and then complain and fuss about doing something about it. What are we going to do?
Candidate McCain suggests a “Federal Gas Tax Holiday” over the summer. Drop the price by 18.4 cents per gallon. Well, that would help if it actually would happen that way (more on that later). My initial response to this was “Great – lower the price and what will happen? People will drive more because gas is a little cheaper!” This plan has real political appeal – it seems like nobody in this country likes taxes anyway – this sounds like a winner. You can just hear the country moving over to the McCain candadicy and thinking come November “This guy has ideas that will help us right now! I’ll vote for him!”
Now I will admit that after the last 7 years that I have absolutely no intention of voting for a Republican. Not that all Republicans are bad, but the US is in a real mess right now and it isn’t Al Gore’s fault. Anyway, so what happens? Hillary Clinton, who I was leaning towards, jumps on this bandwagon of political expediency and announces her own version of the “Federal Gas Tax Holiday”. Oh, puh-LEASE!
Which leaves Barack Obama. And what does he do? He says that the “Federal Gas Tax Holiday” is gimmick that is not really going to help anybody (except maybe the oil companies) and will probably cause larger problems down the road (so to speak).
And he’s absolutely right! We don’t need a reduction in the gas tax. What America really needs is gas that costs $5-$8 per gallon (like a lot of the rest of the world pays). Then maybe we would get over this addiction to huge, high-powered, gas wasting vehicles (me too!) and we would have affordable choices in economical, efficient vehicles from our own auto industry.
The answer is efficiency and conservation. Nobody wants to hear that, but at least Barack Obama has the guts to buck the “easy, sure sounds good to me” nonsense that the other candidates are proposing.
Senator Obama’s stock has gone way up with me!
BTW, check out this FactCheck.org article on this whole issue, with some of President Bush’s own ideas about how opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling will solve our problems (not!).
