H4PJ Blog

Michael Bell: Blog Contributor

Hello everyone. Are you getting tired of spending $50 filling up your car’s fuel tank (or over $100 for your SUV/truck’s fuel tank)? Today, there are no long lines or closed fuel stations as in years long past. But, unlike the high fuel costs of 1973 and 1979 caused by supply disruptions, fuel costs today seem to be propelled by the falling dollar (thanks to America’s debtor status and an enormous annual trade deficit caused by chronic overconsumption of imports) and higher global demand of oil by China and India. Although the events that caused sudden high fuel costs in 1973 and 1979 were temporary, today’s high fuel costs are likely to exist for a long time barring any national measures to deal with the situation.

In my view, it is unlikely there will be any cheap substitutes for gasoline and diesel anytime soon and I don’t see any major technology breakthroughs on the horizon that will use fuel more efficiently. Thus, the solution is to use energy more wisely. So, I pose the question: What are we waiting for? I’m not talking about minor efficiency changes at the margin. I’m talking about major changes in our energy consumption behavior. One change I’d like to mention in this blog for your consideration is telecommuting.

American drivers spend 3.7 billion hours a year stuck in traffic. That’s a lot of time spent going nowhere fast. Just think of all the fuel wasted, air pollution created, greenhouse gases emitted, and time wasted! It has been estimated that if ten percent of workers telecommuted just one day a week, 1.2 million gallons of fuel would be saved and almost 13,000 tons of air pollution would be eliminated weekly.

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