That was the price at which I filled the car in Mill Valley, California yesterday. Having spent the summer driving 14000 miles around the country with gas prices sometimes higher than $4 and almost never lower than $3, this was an opportunity not to be skipped.
The lower gas prices are good news for those of us who depend on cars. If lower prices allow us to drive more, it will be bad news for the planet as we increase our carbon emissions.
Paul Krugman points to collateral damage from the apparent oil glut:
So sorry, all you Texas politicians who want to run for President. Will Mr. Cruz and Mr. Perry start calling for restricting oil production in order to claim their state represents a permanent economic paradise? Could happen -- that's what Saudi rulers do. Extraction industry plutocrats seem to display similar family traits.We could ... be looking at a situation in which Texas is sliding into recession even as the rest of the country is doing fairly well.
We just got home from Tucson, pulling a recreational trailer right up through the center of California and were in shock at the low diesel prices all the way. When we filled up back in Oregon, I thought I must have misread the sign I'd seen on price-- could not be $2.65 a gallon for diesel, but it was.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Americans are going back to high consumption because the majority of the vehicles on the road were small, good mileage cars. People like us who have to haul hay trailers as well as that RV were not the majority by any means. Of course, we've all seen these drops in prices right before they zoom up higher than ever but it's nice while it lasts. It let us go down and work on our Tucson house with a LOT less cost of travel (the RV is nice also to avoid motels which the cats approved).