by Zeke Allen

Created on: May 04, 2009   Last Updated: May 05, 2009

Early in the fall of last year, I asked my students to speculate about the changes in their lives if oil hit $100 a barrel. Little did I know that oil would actually rise to $150 a barrel and then drop again to its current level of just under a third of that, around $50 a barrel. After doing a little bit of reading, I learned that the huge jump in prices had almost nothing to do with supply and demand, predictions for both were within 2% throughout the race to high prices and the drop back to lower prices. It had everything to do with speculation and investors driving the price up and then running for the hills once it became clear that the game was up.

One very good thing did come out of the huge jump in prices, however, and that was the amazing effect of $4.00 a gallon gas on American consumer habits. The SUV has all but died as the pillar holding up the American auto industry, commuters took to mass transit in droves, and suddenly Americans were taking fewer trips, thinking seriously about how to conserve gas, and making all kinds of decisions based on the economics of gasoline in their budgets that had positive effects for the economics of the country (in the long term), the environment, and even the quality of life in our country. Sadly, the price has dropped and though some lingering effects remain (goodbye GM and Chrysler) most Americans have returned to their old habits, at least regarding driving.

Some of us have had the opportunity to live outside this country, and when I was very young I lived briefly in Germany. During that time and later on during some return trips to Germany and other parts of Europe, I fell in love with train travel. While I lived in Korea, I was astounded by the fact that I didn't need a car anywhere in the country. Public transit was so effective and affordable that a car was almost never necessary. Upon my return to the U.S., each time I was saddened by the fact that we choose, as a country, to live without those conveniences and instead live in a blight of strip malls and suburban and urban blight all made possible and necessary by our obsession with cars.

Instead of well-planned cities and small towns surrounded by pretty, unspoiled countryside, our cities are filled with unused or run down sections and surrounded by ever-expanding suburbs which are only accessible sensibly by huge interstates that are constantly in need of repair and upgrade to keep up. We supply all these places with fleets of huge trucks that further increase

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