We’re so lucky.
We live in historic times. CNNMoney.com said it pretty well: “Gasoline prices have soared to levels never seen before as even the inflation-adjusted price for a gallon of unleaded topped the 1981 record spike in price that had stood for 26 years.”
As long as we’re ripping off large chunks of someone else’s reporting for our editorial, here’s more from CNN: “The Lundberg Survey, a bi-weekly gas price tracking service, put the price of a gallon of unleaded at $3.18 in its latest reading released late Sunday, up more than 11 cents from its reading of two weeks ago.”
Actually, for a pretty good roundup of this issue, you might check out http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/21/news/ economy/record_gas_monday/?postversion=2007052117.
But it wouldn’t be like us not to see a silver lining on a cloud so undeniably dreary, would it?
Nope. These unbelievably high prices, which are manipulated up by adjusting market forces (producing less than full refinery capacity) are absolutely the greatest inspiration for people and companies to change (a) methods of transportation (b) sources of fuel and (c) tolerance for politicians who turn a blind eye to consumer gouging.
So let’s rejoice. True, it’s the poorest who suffer most from these dastardly dealings. After all, someone in housekeeping or a porter at a downtown casino can’t go out and buy a motorcycle just to bring down their monthly fuel bill. They might be able to find a functioning scooter on Craigslist.com for $750, but then there’s the $300 helmet, $300 a year insurance, $21 for a motorcycle learner’s permit, $106 registration, and at least a grand apiece for the general practitioner who’ll pull our heads out our asses for tolerating this government-assisted gouging for so long.
Don’t let anyone bullshit you, either. The rich get it in the shorts, too. Can someone who lives on South McCarran Boulevard and Caughlin Parkway catch a bus? No. They’d die of starvation before a bus came within four miles of their house. Of course, they could bike the four miles down to West Plumb Lane and South Arlington Avenue, but then it’s a straight bike ride uphill on the way home. And besides, those rich people up there wouldn’t use public transportation and can afford to pay $3.45 a gallon, right?
Again, don’t let anyone bullshit you. These gas prices affect everyone in the community in a bad way, except for the profiteers—which includes the soulless politicians who take the oily handouts from the greasy oilmen who are only too happy to send the planet further into the warming black yaw of global suicide.
But ye of little faith, ye who bought bicycles or practiced walking or rented horses, you get to pay, too. Just because you were smart enough to get into a hybrid—bet you used that old V-8 as a trade-in, thus doubling the number of cars on the road and the global carbon load, you freaking hypocrite—you can bet those massive trucking companies aren’t scurrying to switch over to electric semi truck-trailers to haul your plastic bottles of organic maple syrup across the country, nor are those farmers using biodiesel Massey-Ferguson combines to harvest their ethanol-producing maize—as the Native Americans called it when it was food instead of fuel—to prolong our addiction to the old petrochemical enema.
So rejoice because, with the highest gas prices in history, one thing becomes clear: We are screwed. And with clarity comes the possibility that we’ll do something about our fuckedupedness.
We’re so lucky.