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Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free.
-- 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, Paul Simon
If there are 50 ways to leave your lover, there must be even more ways to reduce the impact of record gasoline prices that have been eating Americans' pocketbooks alive.
Like Stan, you might need a new plan.
You could car-pool with a neighbor. Or you could organize your weekend errands, making multiple stops in a single trip from home. If you're considering switching jobs, you could give heavy priority to shortening your work commute.
Like Gus, you might hop on the bus. More North Texans are taking public transit with local gas prices exceeding $3.50 a gallon.
If Lee really wants to get himself free from oppressive fuel bills, he could drop off the key to his old gas-gulping vehicle and trade it in for a more fuel-efficient model.
Roy shouldn't be coy if he's not being fairly compensated for using his own car on the job. He needs to tell his boss up front that the company mileage rate needs boosting.
Jack could slip out the back of the line of gridlocked, gas-wasting vehicles on the freeway and trim his fuel bill if he alters the timing of his work commute, or starts telecommuting from home.
It's already happening
Millions of Americans are taking steps to shave their fuel bills, whether by planning a vacation closer to home, walking to a nearby convenience store or avoiding gas-gobbling jackrabbit starts when a traffic light turns green.
This year, tens of millions of Americans will change jobs, move or buy a new vehicle. Many can realize appreciable fuel savings by finding a job closer to home or buying a car that gets 30 miles per gallon instead of 20.
Americans already are scaling back on fuel consumption, even though the U.S. population and number of vehicles are growing annually. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that record oil prices will cut demand for petroleum products this year by 330,000 barrels a day. While U.S. sales of big SUVs and pickups have markedly declined this year, sales of many small cars have risen by double-digit percentages. Ford's domestic SUV sales plunged 36 percent in April, but sales of the compact Ford Focus jumped 44 percent.
Crude awakening
The pocketbook-jolting gas prices are the progeny of almost inexplicably high crude oil prices, which topped $126 a barrel Friday. That's double the price from a year ago.
Correspondingly, average U.S. gas prices are about $3.67 a gallon, with the government projecting the average to peak at $3.73 in June. The average diesel price is about $4.27, a hellish development for truckers.
Oil prices no longer can be explained merely by the laws of supply and demand. U.S. oil inventories are the highest in eight months. The weak U.S. dollar and speculative trading have helped bump prices to surreal levels.
But we shouldn't resort to panicky political gimmicks such as the federal gas tax "holiday" proposed by presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The tax hiatus would eliminate roughly $10 billion in revenues that are sorely needed for road improvements.
Energy policy
In the short term, each of us should develop a personal energy policy for whittling our gas bills, while also clamoring for effective federal and state energy policies that could make an important difference in the long term.
For inspiration, we need only look back to the '70s and '80s, when we dramatically improved vehicle fuel economy and found myriad other ways to trim energy consumption. That was an impassioned response to oil prices surging from $3 a barrel to $35 in less than a decade. Our crash energy diet contributed mightily to a plunge in oil prices in the mid-'80s.
In December, Congress approved, and President Bush signed, a bill to boost fuel economy standards to 35 mpg by 2020 -- a 40 percent improvement over prior levels. That's an important start.
We should, within limits, expand domestic oil and natural gas exploration, as Bush urges. More importantly, however, we must put a much greater focus on energy conservation and developing alternative energy sources, including wind, solar, biofuels, nuclear and clean coal. We must greatly advance automotive technologies so that alternatives to the internal combustion engine -- such as widely affordable electric cars -- might someday become a reality.
It won't be easy, or cheap, to accomplish these feats. But we must move forward with fervor, spurred by the specter of $4-a-gallon gasoline in a world in which 6.6 billion humans are devouring 85 million barrels of non-renewable oil every 24 hours.
Online: www.fueleconomy.gov
