Feeling good about gas prices?

I’m torn between elation and depression. This morning, gas is $1.92 per gallon. When I bought gas last week, it was $2.13 per gallon, but I can vividly recall a few short weeks ago when gas was $3.94 per gallon.

I am delighted that all of us “working stiffs” can now afford to drive to work (assuming of course we still have jobs); with gas prices this low, maybe we’ll even have enough money to pay our mortgages (unless our homes were foreclosed prior to Fannie’s and Freddie’s attack of Christmas spirit/guilt) and buy a car from one of the Big Three. I hear big SUVs are now bargain priced. Hence, my depression.

As someone who learned to drive in the mid-1970s (yes, I’m that old), I can distinctly remember the pain of waiting in lines at the gas station to pay more than $1 for gas that had been around $0.29 per gallon just before I earned my driver’s license. For those too young to remember this and whose history classes never made it past WWII, the exorbitant (at least by historical standards) prices for a gallon of gas followed the 1973/74 Oil Embargo. In response, we began to drive less (we couldn’t afford the gas). Congress lowered the speed limits on all the highways to 55mph (or as I remember, Congress required states that wanted federal highway funding to lower their speed limits); the Big Three American automakers were forced to begin designing more fuel efficient cars. Instead of powerful and stylish muscle cars, we got Pintos, Vegas, and eventually Chevettes. Those of us fortunate enough to drive the latter referred to them as “little ‘vettes,” but trust me, no one confused them with Corvettes.

By the end of the 1980s, however, we had already forgotten our lessons. Oil dependency is not good for the US, not for our people and certainly not for our economy. Oil dependency is a poor substitute for foreign policy.

Thus my depressed spirit. I hoped that this time we would commit to developing alternative energy sources, sources that are renewable, environmentally safe, and readily available. I hoped that this time we would commit to breaking our dependence on oil—for ourselves, our economy, and our foreign policy.

I will, of course, relish the relatively low cost of filling up my gas tank, but I will also mourn the now minimized imperative to develop alternative energy resources.