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June 9, 2008
If you think $4.15 or so a gallon is expensive, try crossing the border into Connecticut where the price of regular was around $4.35 a gallon this weekend when I was down in Mystic.
And with the way crude oil prices are going, can $5.00 a gallon be far away? I don't think so, not with crude prices seen at $150 a barrel by July 4th, according to Goldman Sachs.
How symbolic is that? All the guff talked about energy independence over the decades and nothing done about it apart from filling salt domes with crude oil.
Why? because no president has had the desire or the vision or the courage to push through energy saving measures like imposing higher taxes, as was done in Europe after the run-up in oil prices in the early 1980s. Gas prices in Europe may be double those of the United States, but nobody is driving a hogmobile.
Instead U.S. politicians kowtowed to consumers who didn't want to pay more at the pump and to the auto companies who wanted to continue feeding at the trough of profits from gas-guzzling SUVs.
Well, here we are about to celebrate Independence Day with crude oil prices possibly at $150 a barrel. Maybe even more.
Looking on the bright side, Rhode Island is a small state, so we don't have to travel that far to go to work or to the beach.
By contrast, big rural states, especially in the south and stretching up thorugh the Plain States, are distinguished by rural poverty and big distances which are often driven in old, clapped-out cars and trucks that are hopeless gas guzzlers. For the most part, public transportation is not available, or indeed feasible.
By contrast, we in the Northeast may be least affected because we "make more money and drive shorter distances, or ... take a bus or train to work," according to The New York Times.
As a result, a much higher percentage of the rural's poor's household budget goes to gasoline compared to the average household in more densely populated regions, the Times said.
So spare a thought for those who are a lot worse affected by the high gas prices than we are here in Rhode Island.
- Peter C.T. Elsworth
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth 
at 12:22 PM to Gas prices
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