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April 24, 2008
I’m coming a bit late to this, but cannot let it go by without commenting.
The New York Times’ energy correspondent, Jad Mouwad, wrote a fascinating piece about the global oil market in the Week in Review section last Sunday. It included the startling fact that the U.S. has dramatically increased its consumption of oil since 1980 while most of the developed world has actually cut back.
Much of it has been covered before, although he certainly laid out the issues in a compelling way. And he made no bones about the fact that underlying the staggering rise in oil prices over the last year is a very basic one of limited supply and soaring demand.
Yes, the weak dollar has attracted speculators. But the bottom line seems to be that the days of cheap oil are gone.
And that means a massive shift in the way we live.
To be sure, we are adapting. Those Apocalyptic twins – higher fuel prices and the threat of global warming – are already forcing us to look at smaller, more fuel efficient cars.
But when it comes to adapting, it seems we are way behind the rest of the world. Indeed, while most developed nations have cut their consumption of oil since 1980 – Denmark by 33 percent, Germany by 20 percent, France by 14 percent, Italy by 13 percent – we have increased our consumption by 21 percent. Only Britain (+2 percent) and Japan (+0.2 percent) join is on the plus side of the equation.
As Mouwad writes: “This can partly be explained by the fact that the United States has some of the lowest gasoline prices in the world, the least fuel-efficient cars on the roads, the lowest energy taxes, and the longest daily commutes of any industrialized nation. The result: about a quarter of the world’s oil goes to the United States every day, and of that, more than half goes to its cars and trucks.”
What to do? He cites cites Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba who suggests the following measures to cut U.S. gasoline consumption.
Smil argues that getting rid of on one in four light trucks, switching one in four vehicles to diesel and reducing distances driven 25 percent would cut consumption by about 30 percent.
Fine, except this is a free society so we cannot force anyone to sell their truck, switch to diesel or drive shorter distances.
But maybe we won’t have to. High gas prices and a growing concern for the environment are already driving Americans out of big SUVs and into small, fuel efficient vehicles.
And the trend is just beginning.
- Peter C.T. Elsworth
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth 
at 11:31 AM to commentary
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