Tipping Point, Turning Point, whatever, maybe it’s here.
Along with gas prices, the price of heating oil, natural gas and electricity is going up quickly. Pretty much every other little thing will go up fairly soon too as a result. By 45% in some cases, beginning this year. Schools are turning down the thermostats this winter. People are already going out less — less disposable income and people need gas to go out in America. Needless to say, the oil companies will make a killing — until, as some regular folks threaten, people begin to turn to alternative energy sources.
Detroit still is pushing gas-guzzlers while the Japanese are introducing hybrids. (Not that the Japanese aren’t above selling a truck or SUV either.) Sort of fiddling while Rome burns.
There’s a trickle-down effect — once oil and gas cost more the electricity will eventually cost more and it will cost more to pretty much make anything and do any kind of business. Even service industries have to heat or cool their offices and run their computers. Everything will eventually cost more and folks will go out less. Maybe they’ll form communities again and sprawl will start to reverse itself, to implode.
That’s my rant. Those nutty solar panels and funny bio-diesel cars might not be such a joke before long.
