I’ve long believed that political solutions to the climate crisis will be limited in their impact primarily because of the very short attention span of most politicians, i.e. until their next election and due to the influence peddlars in DC, most of whom are ex-politicos. If we’re going to solve this huge global problem then the markets will have to be the drivers of change.

One big factor in this is our own pocketbooks- we know from the oil crisis in the seventies that it took average Americans screaming bloody murder over gas prices and shortages to see any big change in energy policies. So what will it take now? Let’s look at where gas prices might need to go to drive change.

Gas at the pump prices are about $.30/gallon higher on average than six months ago. assuming an average MPH of 23 this means it costs us about $.013 more per mile to drive. If you drive an average of 1200 miles per month, this increase cost you $15.60 more per month than you would have paid six months ago. Probably not enough to really anger a lot of people in the US.

If we’re at $3.30/gallon now, at what price point do we start getting concerned and/or angry? $4/gallon gas would take another $36.40 out of our monthly budgets (on top of that 15.60). Is this a price tipping point? How about $5/gallon- another $52./month? That might do it.

Admittedly, this is a simplistic calculation. Let’s look a little further. There are approximately 200 million licensed drivers in the US, driving 240 million registered passenger vehicles. If these 200 million drivers are each shelling out an extra $1200/year for fuel (based on $5/gallon pricing), that’s $240 billion that is not entering the ecomomy- it’s being sucked up by the oil industry. Is a quarter of a trillion dollars in lost purchasing power, annually, enough to wake this country up? I sure hope so because it’s coming. They’re already there in Europe.

Finally some other related stories: The recent riots in Myanmar (aka Burma) were triggered by the government removing subsidies on gas prices. They went from pennies a gallon to dollars a gallon overnight and the country exploded. In Venezuela, nut case dictator Hugo Chavez (I’m a liberal but I don’t buy into this guy for a second- nothing but a petty tyrant), subsidizes gas so the populace only pays $.07/gallon. This is the classic ‘bread and circuses’ tactic used to keep the populace blissfully unaware of reality.

Oil is never, ever going to cost less, no matter what new fields are found. We have to change our entire society to end our dependence, quitting cold turkey so to speak.