In a country where the car is king, the price of oil = a challenge to long-cherished assumptions

[marmar]

from the Independent UK:



Rupert Cornwell: Out of America

For a country where the car is king, the soaring price of oil means some long-cherished assumptions are being challenged as never before

Sunday, 15 June 2008



Like many a longtime foreign resident of the US, I'm sometimes asked to recommend a book which explains to a newcomer how the place functions.

The possibilities are endless. But my answer never varies. I suggest they read Edge City by Joel Garreau. It's about the quiet, half-century-long revolution that has transformed America – a revolution that soaring oil prices have placed under threat as never before.

It came out back in 1991, a wonderful study of the rise of new communities around traditional old cities. The book is not about inner-city decay and the flight to the suburbs, but about the birth of a separate civilisation of gleaming new corporate offices, megachurches and shopping malls.

In turn, these edge cities helped fuel the growth of even further-flung "exurbs", rich commuter communities living a new frontier idyll. Today, exurbs remain some of the most dynamic and attractive parts of America. But this new civilisation has an Achilles heel. It has no interest in public transport. For its existence, it depends on the car.

Back in 1991, that didn't seem a problem. The internal combustion engine looked set to reign for ever. As Garreau wrote then, "no ... analyst around thinks there is any supply and demand reason – other than war – that the price of oil should go any higher than $30 a barrel ... in this generation." Back then a gallon of gas cost $1.30. Last week the national average price breached $4, and the price of oil flirted with $140 a barrel.

It's easy for Europeans to mock Americans for their anguish at $4 gasoline, when the soaring euro has pushed petrol prices to the equivalent of $10 or more a gallon in parts of the EU. But, in Europe, high taxes have long kept petrol expensive. In the US, where taxes constitute only a fraction of the cost, a jump in the cost of crude has a proportionately far greater impact. Petrol prices in Europe haven't virtually doubled in three years as they have here. And in Europe, unlike America, an entire way of life has not been founded on the mistaken premise that gasoline would be forever cheap. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell-out-of-america-847329.html

[ileus]

1. petrol should be set at 1.25/ga.