Remember just a few weeks ago, when the price of oil was toying with the hysterical record of $100 per barrel? We couldn’t panic enough. We joined petrochemical support groups, chanted in basements full of sandalwood candles, made complicated plans to dig for oil in the back yard. In fact, at the height of the alarm, I was hoping to make a fat profit by selling barrels of oil I’d bought a few years ago for $21 per barrel.
I love the smell of sweet crude and fast cash.
I wish I weren’t kidding. The cash, of course, goes to titans of the industry and owners of the land from which the crude springs. But lately, oil has plummeted to around $90 per barrel. We’re so awash in relief that we’re reacting the only way we know how, by motoring onward in big pieces of junk, spraying exhaust fumes like dogs marking territory.
None of this is new. From the time chrome bumpers were invented, we’ve been pretending that oil will always flow cheap and easy. It’s an illusion, though, that even smoke and mirrors can’t hide. Oil costs will rise again. Then drop. Then rise a little higher.
To top it off, we’re paying more than dollars to keep our vehicles spewing down the highway. Smog, lung ailments, gun- and cellphone-wielding motorists — it’s all too familiar. And that doesn’t even include how out of shape we are because cars have replaced our legs.
I can’t help thinking that we have a self-replicating problem. For generations, kids have grown up believing that, at the age when driving begins, all other means of transportation are stupid, embarrassing and inconvenient. My brother would hop into his rusted heap and drive 300 yards to his buddy’s house. It didn’t occur to him to move his feet down the sidewalk for two minutes.
My wife and I have been weaned off the gas nipple for decades. All year long, we bike and walk to work and around town for errands, and it’s amazing how much money we save. Sometimes our car sits for three months before it needs to be filled. People keep saying how lucky we are, but it’s been a conscious choice of ours to live close to where we work and play. Luck really doesn’t have much to do with it.
Others, though, think I’m being smug, so I hasten to add that it isn’t always easy. I have to keep the tires filled and clean my bike chain every month or so.
The mood on the streets can be ugly, too. A few winters ago, I was biking on a thin layer of snow and came up to an intersection too fast. I fell over but didn’t hurt myself. Some guy in a Muscle Atrophy edition of a Road Rage-R saw me fall. He rolled down his window and, across two lanes of traffic, shouted, “Does it hurt enough for you?” He laughed, then drove off.
Does it hurt enough yet? Maybe not. The other day, I was caught between what I thought were two mobile homes in transit, but they actually were SUVs. Six tons of resources to transport two people. I love this country.
I keep having a vision. A toilet sits on a pedestal in the middle of an arena. Five gallons of gas, the last drops in America, float in the bowl. A silent crowd watches while a spiffy fellow presses the lever, flushing the gas into oblivion.
“That’s all, folks,” he says. “You can’t buy any more with your good looks, with your first-born, with your auntie’s zirconium jewelry.”
The ceremony ends, television crews stow gear, reporters from Cable Nonsense News close their notebooks. The crowd walks away.
And, glory be, we’re still walking.
Paul Miller of Fort Collins is editor of Colorado State Magazine.
