Four dollar a gallon gasoline! And higher in some parts of the country! Back in the 1960s, when most things cost a
tenth of what they do now, and cars got have the miles per gallon, gas was 36 cents a gallon. Do the math --- gas
is not that much more expensive than it was then. In Denmark, I read recently, it's ten dollars a gallon. Our cheap
gas has helped us design a way of living that misses one opportunity after another, not just for being frugal with
energy and saving our planet, but for having a style of life that's congenial and convenient. Just like the good old
days...
When I was a boy, my mother used to tell of her childhood, and the stories seemed very quaint, indeed. Now I find
that when I tell my kids about how things were when I was young, my stories seem quaint, too. But the world really
has changed, and the United States, as a country, has embraced design choices that have seemed to chart a
course towards "progress," but have had unforeseen and not always happy consequences. The changes have
come about gradually, so that we can't exactly identify a tipping point for most of them, but we now find ourselves in
a world of big cars that we have to drive everywhere to get to work, to get the kids to school, to get to the grocery
store, to go to the movies, to take the kids to soccer, and so on and on. The era of the mini-van is almost
synonymous with the title Soccer Mom. People drive their SUVs - Sports Utility Vehicle (what a name!) - to the gym
so that they can exercise, but they won't walk to the corner store --- because they can't. There is often no corner
store any more. Along the way, as corporations globalized and chain stores replaced the mom-and-pops, we let
some good things about small towns and walkable communities disappear, without figuring out a way to preserve
or replace them. Putting every new house on a two-acre lot with plenty of grass to mow has some nice things about
it, but it's also alienating and wasteful. We take McDonald's and Walmart for granted, but they, too, are alienating
and wasteful.
When I lived in Connecticut, I spent a certain amount of time in meeting of Planning and Zoning Commissions,
where folks went on about "preserving the rural character" of their town as an argument for two- or four-acre
residential zoning. These were not rural folks who were doing this, but commuters, by automobile, to jobs in cities
miles away. By the mere act of living in the town, they were destroying its rural character. It would have been better
to figure out how to make the town a convenient, well-planned community, "rural" looking or not.
Now that I live in California, I can see what planning for automobiles burning cheap gas can do. We all managed to
let it happen, making incremental decisions along the way. And now people are jammed by the cost of even getting
to work.
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