High Gas Prices Direct Assault on American Commuter – Consumer Lifestyle

As gasoline prices were escalating seemingly without hope of stalling or coming down, due to all-time record oil prices, and in the context of a severely weakened consumer economy, we found ourselves confronted with a major challenge to the basic assumptions of the dynamics of our economy. We have seen, in just one year, our entire political landscape change to privilege not only energy, but renewable energy and transport efficiency as key national strategic goals.

Facing the probability that our economic lifestyle as we have built and lived it, is no longer sustainable, we are now forced to make serious choices about how to sustain the key elements of our national culture and character, without succumbing to the downward spiral of economic trends, fuel pricing, and failing consumer credit, if we try to sustain our lifestyle without the key infrastructure changes needed to enable this.


Daimler-Chrysler has announced it intends to eliminate petroleum-based fuel from its entire fleet of new cars by the year 2015, as it has now perceived the value-added efficiency gains to be achieved by applying cutting edge technologies to its new models. Toyota plans for all of its vehicles to run on hybrid technology, and Ford has announced it will transition multiple plants from manufacturing gas-guzzling SUVs to making Euro-market compact cars for the US market.

The US presidential candidates both intend to push for flex-fuel vehicles as an industry standard, as well as hybrid technology, high-efficiency electric-car batteries, and dramatic reductions in carbon emissions, all of which will contribute to a dramatic restructuring of the details of our energy and transport economy. Having won a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award, in relation to his work on raising awareness of the global climate-stability crisis, Al Gore has announced a strategy that would generate all US energy needs from clean resources within 10 years.

The Hot Spring