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Driving sure was fun while it lasted

By DONALD KAUL

WHO SAID that the power of the Press is dead? A few weeks ago I told people to stop whining about the high price of gasoline and do something about it; namely, use less gas.

Almost immediately, the American people responded. In March of this year Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles than they did in March of 2007 and used 4.3 percent less gasoline.

That marks the first time since 1979 that traffic has declined from one March to the next and constitutes the biggest drop since the government started keeping track in 1942. Which means that my advice has had a greater impact on gas consumption than either World War II or the gas lines of the Carter years.

I am so proud.

I am well aware, however, that with power comes responsibility. So it is with deep humility that I say to my fellow Americans:

It’s not good enough, kids. You have to do better.

YOU’RE STILL spending, on the average, four percent of your disposable income on fuel (in some rural areas, 10-15 percent). That’s more than twice as much as you were spending in 1998. In other words, too much.

And you haven’t even thought about increasing fuel standards or lowering speed limits. All you’ve done is complain and cut a measly 4.3 percent from your gas bill.

A Chicago woman, a single mother of two, told the New York Times: “Rising gas prices end up hurting working, lower class people like me, who can’t afford it anymore.”

So what else is new? All bad things—wars, economic depressions, inflation, George Bush—end up hurting the working classes most. That is the way of the world, folks, particularly when the world is being run by a party whose answer to all problems is tax cuts for the rich.

SO DON’T think government will help you. Don’t wait for the oil companies to give you a hand. And if you’re expecting our oil-producing Arab allies to bail you out, forget it.

To repeat what I’ve said before: If you want to stop spending so much on fuel, use less of it. And I’m not talking about a four percent cut, I’m talking a 20, 30, even 40 percent cut in consumption.

That won’t be easy. You can only do so much with car-pooling, driving sensibly and one-trip multiple errands. You’re going to have to find alternative modes of transportation.

I don’t mean to blow my own horn, but this is what I have done: I got rid of one of my cars, thus making my wife and me a one-car family. I can’t tell you that there aren’t moments of conflict over who should have the car and when, but basically it’s working out fine. And it gives one a sense of moral superiority.

WHEN IT’S inconvenient to walk or ride a bike to where I’m going, I take a bus. This has its own inconveniences, of course, but so does dragging around a 3,500-pound car that has to be parked and attracts expensive tickets, not to mention dents in the doors.

Buses would be more convenient if there were more of them and there’d be more of them if more people used them. Start using them.

As for long-distance hauls, there are trains. Yes, they’re still with us. They’re like Santa Claus—just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

I RECENTLY took two train rides—one from New York to Michigan (in a sleeping compartment) and one a round-trip between Ann Arbor and Chicago.

I’m here to say they were…OK. Not a patch on what train travel used to be in this country and still is in Europe, but better than sitting, fists clenched on a steering wheel, for hour after hour as you dodge homicidal truckers.

Gas prices are going to get higher before they get lower. It’s time to adjust our living to them. Complaining is just a waste of hot air.

Don Kaul is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-losing Washington correspondent who, by his own account, is right more than he’s wrong. dkaul1@verizon.net (Distributed by MinutemanMedia.org)