I'm seeing a lot of frenzy on blogs and in the MSM about the price of gas going through the roof. If I didn't live in the city where there is plenty of public transportation, I might be in a panic. I own a car, I bought it four years ago when I worked in the suburbs and it's almost paid off, but I don't even have twenty thousand miles on it yet. I drive it to work in the winter, the four miles I travel back and fourth, and in the spring and summer, and most of the fall, I either ride my bike, or I walk. A tank of gas lasts me nearly a month, as long as I don't have to make any trips to the suburbs. I don't know what people who live in the suburbs are thinking right now, but if I lived in Hagerstown MD or some other place outside the Beltway, I would be pretty concerned about now.
Because the oil is running out.
I like the analogy of the twelve step program to cure America of it's addiction to oil, but the suburbs are not set up for anything but driving. A lot of the suburbs don't even have sidewalks, so if you're walking that 15 miles to the super Walmart, will you just walk in the streets? And when you're taking home those super-sized boxes of pampers and toilet paper, will you have to have your own shopping basket to wheel it home? In the city, it's pretty easy to walk to the Safeway with one of those old lady fold up carts, and wheel it home with enough food and toilet paper for a week. In the suburbs, driving is not a choice, it is unfortunately the only way to get around. It's not like you can just walk to the nearest Metro, because the nearest Metro might be in Fairfax VA, and if you live in say Manassas VA, it might be twenty miles to the nearest metro. Biking twenty miles to the Metro every morning? And once you got there, where would you lock your bike?
I feel pretty safe because I live in the city, but what if when oil becomes really scarce, and lets face it, we're not that far away, the food and supplies don't make it to the urban areas? It's not like we have good rail systems like they do in Europe, we've let them decay and I'm not hearing any politician, not even the Democrats, talking about investing any capital to revive them. It would seem smart to plan for major oil interruptions, since we are determined to have war in the countries that produce it. Congress needs to face some harsh realities, and plan for a future without oil.
What I will miss most of all, is not the riding to work, or taking a late night drive in the summer, but the travel that has been so easy for people of the middle class. My partner A., has never seen Paris or Venice, so I'm skimping on all of the extras this year, I'm wearing last years clothes even though they are a bit snug this year, I'm going to start cutting coupons, and I'm going down to a half a pack of cigarettes a day, just so I can take her to Paris and Venice before air travel becomes obsolete. If there's someplace you've always wanted to see, do it now, don't wait for retirement, in twenty years life will be very different.
When A. and I are sitting in our rockers, waiting on the Social Security check so that we can get out the old lady shopping cart and walk to the Safeway, we'll be able to remember September of 2006 when there was plenty of gas, enough gas to get us all the way to Paris, and we will fondly recall a breakfast of brioche and cafe au lait at some place on the Avenue de Champs Elysee at a time when many things were possible, and consider how lucky we were to have been able to have the option to drive to work if it was raining, or take the BMW out for a midnight drive with the top down. And I'm sure that sitting in a rocker remembering Paris will be enough for me when I'm eighty, as long as A. is sitting next to me.
