RE: Life after the oil crash

Glenn Morton responded to my suggestion to ration gasoline with:

"Having, in the very middle of my career been a salesman, I can tell you
that that is a tax on salesmen and women who have to drive a whole lot. I
think it is a great tax because now I am not a saleman but they might have a
slightly different view. The problem with ANY scheme of assuming a proper
amount for an average person to consume is that it always skewers the other
guy but never the guy who thinks the scheme up.

If someone told me that I am only allowed 50,000 miles of air travel a year,
I wouldn't see my family very much and wouldn't be able to do my job. I
wouldn't like that limit. But if the ticket prices go up, I am free then to
figure out what I am willing to forgo in order to travel more than that."

True, any scheme will involve some "skewering of the other guy." However,
as Christians, we need to make sure that "the widows and the fatherless" (in
this case, the poor and the disenfranchised) are skewered less than the rest
of us. Again, there's a role for Christians to play in the public forum.
As to limiting the amount of air travel to, say, 50 000 miles per year, I
did not suggest that at all. I suggested a system that would allow people to
travel at a reasonable cost. Anything beyond that would come at a premium.
This suggestion is perhaps idealistic and may not be ideal (and I welcome a
better suggestion). As to not being able to visit family as much, I recall
that, when we emigrated to Canada (by boat!), my parents were sure that they
would not see their parents or family ever again. However, they made that
choice willingly. It turned out that my mother died a few years later and
never did see her relatives again. My father never saw his parents again
but, because of cheap oil, has been able to go back for a number of visits.

When the first oil crisis hit us, back in the early 1970s, I predicted that
the day would come when the average Canadian or American would only be able
to make one or two trips in his or her lifetime to visit relatives on the
other side of the continent. I think we have to start accepting this
possibility and plan accordingly, perhaps by considering where we want to
live.

We should not only think of personal travel, but also the portable fossil
fuels used in transportation. I can buy strawberries in January when it's
-40 outside. That's only possible because diesel fuel is cheap enough to
transport strawberries from California to Manitoba (and probably because the
strawberry growers can use cheap labour to pick them). Question, is this a
good use of our resources?

Chuck Vandergraaf

Pinawa, MB
Received on Fri Oct 28 10:42:42 2005