In Utah, gas prices have increased from $3 a gallon in August 2007 to $4.25, according to market research done by AAA.
Consumers have already taken heed.
“In the last two months our hybrid orders have been going through the ceiling: we have sold 57 new and 45 used in the past 60 days,” said Richard Prospero, sales manager at Larry H. Miller Toyota.
Ridership on TRAX has also soared, going up 9 percent in May and 20 percent in June, said Utah Transit Authority spokeswoman Carrie Bohnsack-Ware. The public is obviously reacting to higher gas prices.
Locally, people have reacted to the gas crisis by either tightening their wallets or taking the rise in prices in stride, but the same can’t be said nationally.
A year ago Congress passed a bill mandating that by 2020 all new cars must have at least 35 miles per gallon, but that seems rather soft given that we already have cars like the Prius averaging in the mid-40s. American automakers could easily meet higher standards, and the government has not yet made a serious effort in this direction.
Take, for instance, numbers from the Defense Energy Support Center showing the United States Military alone consumes some 123 million barrels of oil a year at a cost of billions of dollars a year, making it the country’s biggest individual user and dwarfing entire states’ consumption, including Utah’s. Utah goes through nearly 48 million barrels annually, according to StateMaster.com, an Internet depository of information from United States government agencies.
While the United States military is little more than a drop in the bucket compared to how much the country at large goes through-some 20 million barrels a day-it is indicative of just how much money we unnecessarily spend.
When the government itself is not pursuing higher fuel efficiency by continuing to purchase and use dated vehicles like the four- to eight-miles-per-gallon Humvee, we know we have a problem.
It is the government’s duty to put tax dollars to their most effective use. By doing so they could also speed up the process of the United States moving to a more fuel-efficient economy.
Consumers nationwide, including here in Utah, have already begun to resolve the challenges with rising fuel prices. The government should take a cue from its people and begin dealing more rigorously with the issue by seeking higher fuel standards itself-and, more importantly, applying those standards to itself.