Gas prices are lower than they have been in a long, long time.
Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to world news headlines will not be surprised. After all, the price of oil was falling when the Covid-19 crisis hit. Obviously, demand for fuel to get around, to and from work and to and from other places, has fallen dramatically.
For a little while, Trump wanted to bail out the oil industry.
Seriously?
It seems to me that there are good aspects and bad aspects to this.
On the one hand, I will admit that it is pleasant to not spend much money and see my tank filled. After all, my jobs both still require me to show up to work. There may be less driving on my part than usual, but that certainly does not mean that I am barely driving. In fact, I have still needed to drive, and fairly substantially, on a daily basis. So obviously, on a personal level, the drop in oil prices has been nice, and easier on the wallet.
That said, low gas prices are also a problem, as they often encourage people to drive, even when they do not need to. That is perhaps a particularly bad idea these days, with the coronavirus crisis, since surely, people are getting out of their cars at some point and going somewhere or doing something, most likely in relatively close contact with other people at some point, when we should be on lockdown. But beyond just the Covid-19 lockdown, low gas prices usually still encourage people to drive, or to go out and buy big, gas guzzling vehicles like SUV's and such. Hummer may not be as popular as they once were, but you do occasionally still see them around. And all of that is terrible for the environment, and it encourages people to pollute, unthinkingly and unnecessarily.
Now, I do not want to get on a soap box here, and will readily admit that, yes, I have driven unnecessarily at times, as well. There are times when I have driven too much, without really needing to, for things that were not essential. Times when I drove to places tat could have waited, and where perhaps it would have been better to combine purposes before driving out to someplace. Hell, years ago, before the rather dramatic spike of gas prices in 2005 leading up to and especially following Hurricane Katrina, when I would go out at night and drive around (sometimes very late), listening to music probably too loudly, and without a particular destination or objective.
But those are bad habits. Once I began to pay attention to that, particularly around the time of George W. Bush's illegal and immoral invasion or Iraq, there was an urgency on my end to put a stop to those particular bad habits, which were then more or less under control.
Maybe most people forgot, but gas prices soared following Hurricane Katrina. And much like they did within hours of Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait back in the summer of 1990, gas stations wasted no time spiking up the price of gas. Within hours, gas stations had jacked up the prices, even though in many cases, it was the same gas that had been there before, without any new deliveries of gas that had actually gotten impacted by the natural disaster. Before long, the high gas prices became one of the big topics of conversation, with many expressing their disappointment that the invasion of Iraq had not produced cheaper, more affordable gas. I still remember my boss saying that the days of sub-two dollar gas (per gallon) were over, although this proved not to be entirely true.
Yet, here's the thing: nothing got me to limit my own driving, or to be as aware of how unnecessary a lot of the driving that I was doing was, quite as much as prohibitively expensive gas prices. Once we began to flirt with gas prices of approaching or even, in some cases, over $4.00 per gallon, the need to limit driving, and to end unnecessary driving, became readily apparent.
If that was true with me way back then, maybe a decade and a half ago now, then it seemed also to be true of the country - and again, no country seems to be quite as addicted to casual oil use as Americans. At least that is true of countries that do not mostly produce oil, like those countries in the Middle East. When gas prices were so high back then, you may or may not have seen a drop in the volume of vehicles on the road during morning and afternoon/evening commutes, but you definitely saw a drop in casual driving. Also, you saw a hell of a lot less inefficient and irresponsible gas guzzling vehicles like over-sized SUV's on the road.
So while I recognize and acknowledge that the low as prices have been good for my wallet or finances personally, there also is the understanding that, by and large, low gas prices are not good news. As an environmentalist, this is pretty much undeniable. Yes, driving around aimlessly at night while listening to loud music used to be a kind of escape and even, later, a guilty pleasure. But that does not mean that I should have done it. And if low gas prices encourage that kind of behavior in others, as well as urges them to either get out their SUV's, or even to buy brand new, inefficient gas guzzling vehicles, more expensive gas prices have the opposite effect. If people cannot be trusted to their own devices to be responsible and get more fuel efficient cars (witness the often unrelenting mockery of some vehicles specifically intended to be fuel efficient, such as the Toyota Prius), then hitting them in the wallet may force them to be a lot more efficient in terms of using their gas, and thus, indirectly, force them to be better at being responsible towards continuing life on this planet as we know it.
In other words, while it may hurt us personally, in the wallet (myself included) to have higher gas prices, by and large, it forces us to do what we should know and be willing to do (but apparently, collectively, still neglect to do) on our own, without that kind of urging. Yes, it forces us to limit our gas usage, and that is pretty good news, as far as air quality and minimizing pollution.
For now, it seems that Covid-19 has taken care of unnecessary driving, and wasteful use of gas while prices are so low. But many nations, and a number of American states, are preparing to open back up, even if this is done gradually, in phases. Will gas prices spike back up? Or will low gas prices, once again, kind of tacitly encourage people to engage in bad behavior once again, after weeks and weeks of visibly cleaner and clearer air in cities around the world?
Time will tell.
But those are bad habits. Once I began to pay attention to that, particularly around the time of George W. Bush's illegal and immoral invasion or Iraq, there was an urgency on my end to put a stop to those particular bad habits, which were then more or less under control.
Maybe most people forgot, but gas prices soared following Hurricane Katrina. And much like they did within hours of Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait back in the summer of 1990, gas stations wasted no time spiking up the price of gas. Within hours, gas stations had jacked up the prices, even though in many cases, it was the same gas that had been there before, without any new deliveries of gas that had actually gotten impacted by the natural disaster. Before long, the high gas prices became one of the big topics of conversation, with many expressing their disappointment that the invasion of Iraq had not produced cheaper, more affordable gas. I still remember my boss saying that the days of sub-two dollar gas (per gallon) were over, although this proved not to be entirely true.
Yet, here's the thing: nothing got me to limit my own driving, or to be as aware of how unnecessary a lot of the driving that I was doing was, quite as much as prohibitively expensive gas prices. Once we began to flirt with gas prices of approaching or even, in some cases, over $4.00 per gallon, the need to limit driving, and to end unnecessary driving, became readily apparent.
If that was true with me way back then, maybe a decade and a half ago now, then it seemed also to be true of the country - and again, no country seems to be quite as addicted to casual oil use as Americans. At least that is true of countries that do not mostly produce oil, like those countries in the Middle East. When gas prices were so high back then, you may or may not have seen a drop in the volume of vehicles on the road during morning and afternoon/evening commutes, but you definitely saw a drop in casual driving. Also, you saw a hell of a lot less inefficient and irresponsible gas guzzling vehicles like over-sized SUV's on the road.
So while I recognize and acknowledge that the low as prices have been good for my wallet or finances personally, there also is the understanding that, by and large, low gas prices are not good news. As an environmentalist, this is pretty much undeniable. Yes, driving around aimlessly at night while listening to loud music used to be a kind of escape and even, later, a guilty pleasure. But that does not mean that I should have done it. And if low gas prices encourage that kind of behavior in others, as well as urges them to either get out their SUV's, or even to buy brand new, inefficient gas guzzling vehicles, more expensive gas prices have the opposite effect. If people cannot be trusted to their own devices to be responsible and get more fuel efficient cars (witness the often unrelenting mockery of some vehicles specifically intended to be fuel efficient, such as the Toyota Prius), then hitting them in the wallet may force them to be a lot more efficient in terms of using their gas, and thus, indirectly, force them to be better at being responsible towards continuing life on this planet as we know it.
In other words, while it may hurt us personally, in the wallet (myself included) to have higher gas prices, by and large, it forces us to do what we should know and be willing to do (but apparently, collectively, still neglect to do) on our own, without that kind of urging. Yes, it forces us to limit our gas usage, and that is pretty good news, as far as air quality and minimizing pollution.
For now, it seems that Covid-19 has taken care of unnecessary driving, and wasteful use of gas while prices are so low. But many nations, and a number of American states, are preparing to open back up, even if this is done gradually, in phases. Will gas prices spike back up? Or will low gas prices, once again, kind of tacitly encourage people to engage in bad behavior once again, after weeks and weeks of visibly cleaner and clearer air in cities around the world?
Time will tell.
This picture was from a few weeks ago, probably sometime in late March (memory is not serving me). This was the first time in years (since October 31, 2016, specifically, when Governor Chris Christie raised taxes on gas, making prices much higher) that gas prices in New Jersey dipped down below $2.00 per gallon.
Then, gas prices just kept getting lower....
And lower....
And lower still.....
Until recently, it seems, they bottomed out. Even while the price of a barrel of oil reached record new lows not seen in decades, gas prices did not keep plummeting, but leveled off. Below is a picture of a gas station in West Milford. Later that same day, I actually got gas somewhere else for two cents less than what is seen here in this picture. Maybe they will get lower still. But for now, these are the lowest prices that I believe I have seen in well over a decade, maybe a decade and a half, or even possibly two decades (especially taking inflation into consideration), since that huge dip in gas prices back in 1998.
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