At first glance, Christopher Steiner’s well-structured predictions about rising gas prices seem doomsday at worst and depressing at best. We love to hop on planes, trick out our SUVs and build McMansions in the suburbs. At $20 per gallon, these cheap oil luxuries will be gone along with today’s “bigger is better” American dream.
With each chapter focused on an incremental rise in the price of a gallon of gas ($4, $6, $8), Steiner breaks down gas’s inevitable ascent and the dollar-by-dollar impact on our lives. He also tells us to look forward to it.
Steiner, a civil engineer-cum-staff writer at Forbes magazine, writes with the melodrama of someone trying very hard to prove a point, but the evidence is there and he gives the book the appropriate sense of urgency. As we teeter on $4 gas, $6 does not feel that far off.
With $6 gas, we’ll see the death of the SUV, a suburban favorite, but it will also lead to fewer lives lost in car accidents, cleaner air and a skinnier society. At $8 gas, most major airlines will fail based on exorbitant fuel costs, making trips to Europe a once-in-a-decade luxury.
On the positive side, families will concentrate in one region as teens and young adults embrace college choices and job offers closer to home. Expensive gas will only restrict travel in the short term, though, until the infrastructure for other modes of transportation, such as high-speed rail, is developed.
As prices continue to skyrocket, electric cars will rule, urban population centers will grow increasingly dense, and suburbs will be haunted by the ghosts of Walmarts past. Peak oil grew globalization to epic proportions, but as supply dwindles, locally produced goods will win. “Made in China” goods will stay in China and small towns will see reinvigorated Main Streets.
At $16, we’ll have to kick our sushi habit, as popular bluefin tuna will be more expensive to transport. This is assuming, as Steiner does, that developing economies like China and India are still seeing exponential growth of their middle class and an unquenchable thirst for oil.
When gas has reached the inconceivable price of $20 per gallon, Steiner asserts, our world and our lives will look radically different. High-speed trains will criss-cross the landscape and urban centers will be ringed by farmland. We will be healthier and the earth will be healthier, but we can forget Jet Ski rides and those weekend trips to Vegas. Is that really such a bad thing?
“$20 Per Gallon” takes readers from Asian carp fishing on the Illinois River to subway tunnels in New York to New Songdo City, a green city of the future in South Korea. Steiner spoke to all the right experts across every industry touched by oil and translates their research for the gas-guzzling layman.
As pages turn and prices rise, this book introduces us to the future and makes us question our energy consumption. An engaging story and a must-read for anyone who groans while filling up their tank.