She's Real Fine, My $4.09

It's been a while since I blogged here, so I will do it now. What I see right now is a price of crude oil that keeps going up and up with seemingly no stop. The last time I saw it, on the Fourth of July, 2008, it was $145/barrel, or $3.45 a gallon. That is about the price of wholesale gasoline, and retail gasoline just recently hit $4.00 a gallon here in Virginia. That's right, $4 a gallon is here.

The national average is $4.09 a gallon. She's real fine, my $4.09, my $4.09. No, that wasn't what the Beach Boys meant when they sang their song about a hot rod car called a 409. That was back in the 1960s, when oil was plentiful, summers were endless, and were spent surfing at the beach and chasing all the girls, especially California girls. I looked up in Wikipedia to see just what a 409 was. I was not interested in beach music back in the early 1960s, and I could have cared less, and only know of the song because my brother played it all the time. I couldn't imagine it was a horse, despite the lyrics ("Giddy-ap, Giddy-ap, 409"). There was a brand of Chevrolet back then (i.e, not a hot rod but a schlock rod, like Mickey Mouse - that came from another song during those days) with a 409-cubic inch engine. That's 6.7 liters! Wow! My gas-guzzler Plymouth Voyager has at most a 3.0-liter. There was a Beach Boy mentality back then that said this would go forever.

We now know differently. There is only a finite amount of oil on this planet. Apparently there were 2 trillion barrels of oil in this planet, and 1 trillion has been pumped out. So therefore, a peak in production can be expected, and many analysts think it was somewhere between 2005-2008. The high price of oil and gasoline is causing Americans to cut back, but Indians and Chinese are still continuing to increase their use of oil. Now people are wondering when shortages will occur. I think they will not occur for some time. The shortages of the 1970s were caused by regulations on gasoline prices. There are none now, so instead prices will skyrocket. Those who have the last buck, instead of the last place in the gasoline line, will do without.

So what do we do? A mixture of developing new sources of energy, such as solar, wind, and batteries for cars, as well as conservation, is what will work in the long run. It is pointless to dig the ANWR, drill off-shore, or tear up Montana and Wyoming in search of oil for shale, since these are still non-renewable resources. We are already doing that. If it doesn't work we need to do something else.

And something else we need to do. I fear for what will happen if shortages develop and people have to do without. The Beach Boys sang about the 409; they have another song about a Thunderbird, which symbolizes our oil culture: "And with the radio blasting
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now, And she'll have fun fun fun 'til her daddy takes the t-bird away" When will Big Daddy Peak Oil take our fun away?