Pollywogs!

Being on guard for concepts in life that are counter-intuitive is an important skill to have in your arsenal.  It is very easy to believe that is something IS a certain way, and much harder to actually see the way it truly is.

I find I have this bias, this difficulty in seeing or inability to predict, often with regards to environmentalism and large corporations.  Being able to winnow out the best path or the truth from such an overwhelming amount of noise, suppression and purposeful misdirection can be nearly impossible.  Simply saying “I assume this is the truth” reduces the mental workload enormously, and served our ancestors very well for hundreds of thousands of years.

In this modern day and age, it is not serving us well at all.  For most folks in a conventional sense, we can continue to act in a way which is actively destructive with little to no regard for the future, as the truth that our small action has any real impact is completely counter-intuitive.  Personally and specifically, the idea that WalMart can have a positive impact (in some aspects) by cutting costs via preferring locally grown produce due to reduced shipping costs,  I find quite counter-intuitive.

Today, I’m going to illustrate a few things which are likely counterintuitive for most folks about the high price of gasoline.

Higher gas prices could be a positive in many different ways.  Currently of course, these prices are a terrible burden for those who can’t afford the cost, and an annoyance to those who can.  Of course everyone just wants lower gas prices for fucks sake! But what if higher gas prices actually improved our current situation in nearly every sense?

…a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.

To ease the burden on the less well-off, “anyone earning under $80,000 a year would be compensated with a reduction in the payroll taxes,” said Verleger. Or, he suggested, the government could use the gasoline tax to buy back gas guzzlers from the public and “crush them.”

But the message going forward to every car buyer and carmaker would be this: The price of gasoline is never going back down. Therefore, if you buy a big gas guzzler today, you are locking yourself into perpetually high gasoline bills. You are buying a pig that will eat you out of house and home. At the same time, if you, a manufacturer, continue building fleets of nonhybrid gas guzzlers, you are condemning yourself, your employees and shareholders to oblivion.

What a cruel thing for a candidate to say? I disagree. Every decade we look back and say: “If only we had done the right thing then, we would be in a different position today.” (emphasis added)

Ok, so there are people who think that high gas prices are a good thing…why?  Why would they want to have a minimum price for gasoline???

How about the highest participation in mass transit in the United States since 1957?

“It’s very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas.”

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges — of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year — are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

Another side effect is that people are beginning to actually conserve and be more thrifty in their gas purchases.

The increase in transit use coincides with other signs that American motorists are beginning to change their driving habits, including buying smaller vehicles. The Energy Department recently predicted that Americans would consume slightly less gasoline this year than last — for the first yearly decline since 1991.

That thrift is also starting to swing the purchasing choices away from the unsustainable and slowly towards more rational decisions:

In fact, after 17 years worth of being this country’s best-selling vehicle, the Ford F-150 full-size pickup (42,973) has fallen for the first time to fifth place behind the Honda Accord (43,728), Toyota Camry (51,291), Corolla (52,826) and your new best-selling vehicle in the U.S., the Honda Civic (53,299). Note to automakers: that would be the sound of the canary in your coal mine hitting the floor.

And of course (and perhaps most importantly) the reduced consumption from higher prices results in an immediate and substantial benefit to the environment:

As Dubner blogged last week, Americans logged 11 billion fewer miles on the road in March of this year than they did in March 2007. That contributed to a cut of 9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted by the U.S. in the first quarter of 2008.

Increasing mass transit usage, modifying our purchasing habits towards more appropriate choices, and reducing our carbon load on the planet?  It may be counter-intuitive, but higher gas prices could be one of the best things to happen to the United States in a long time.