Seismic Shifts

The temporary spikes in gas prices after Katrina have turned out to be not so temporary. We now face the same high prices for the long-haul, which is going to effect not only West Virginia but the entire country's way of life. Except for some isolated pockets in our older major cities, like New York, Boston, and Chicago, all of us depend on the automobile for transportation to work, transportation to get foods and other necessities, and transportation to get to medical services. I think my life is fairly typical. I am lucky in that I only live about five miles away from my office, but of course I drive my car there. Our children's school are about the same distance away in a different direction, and so my wife drives our sons there. The nation is truly addicted to automobiles. There is a grocery store a little over a mile away, but how does one carry home groceries for five? So we drive to the store. Target, Lowe's, Petsmart, the mall, all are in one general location about six miles away. We have to drive there. The situation is bleaker in West Virginia, as a lot of people must drive 30 minutes or more to get to work or school or go to Wal-Mart or the nearest supermarket.

There are temporary solutions that will prevent the economy from griding to a halt. Some of the workforce around the nation that commute into places like Washington, D.C., Altanta, and Los Angelos could, with the help of computers and high-speed internet, work out of virtual offices from their homes. Likewise, although they were mocked into oblivion during the internet bubble, services such as online grocery delivery companies could be expanded to cover about every commodity we need, from light fixtures to cat food. But are we doomed to become a country of hermits, constantly hooked up to our computers for every single aspect of our existence, like the tales of some cyper-punk novel?

The real solution is to become less dependent on the combustion-engine automobile. One way to achieve this is to push development of alternative sources of generating motion in vehicles, whether it is hybrid engines, pure electric engines, hydrogen engines or some other type of renewable fuel source. Another solution is to change the basic way we live. We need cars because we have to get around. As I showed above, if we didn't have our cars, I don't get to work easily, we don't get groceries, our children can't get to school. Of course there are alternatives to the car. I could cycle to work. Our children could go a school that is a lot closer to us, but not as well-performing. Food could be bought in bulk to last longer. But is that our only choice, to make our life less appealing and less enjoyable, and deny opportunities to ourselves and our children? And for a lot of people, there is no choice. Work, stores and schools are still thirty, forty miles away, and while our lives are constantly stretched to multiple sites and places, then the automobile will continue to dominate our lives. And while we are still filling those cars and trucks up with gasoline, our lives are still vunerable to price shocks from storms, shortages, terrorism, and geo-politics. We must figure out how to reorganize our lives so that we are not dependent on the automobile, and West Virginia can and should be on the cutting edge of this reorganization.