>> If we didn't "need", the oil, if it wasn't imperative to "modern
>> life" (making us complicit), the demand would not be as
>> significant and the oil companies would be >peddling it like bad
>> drugs (which they, along with the rest of corporate America do.)
>
> We're already past that point, consumption is not up to
> production. We're already not consuming enough to satisfy
> capital's productive capacity. Leading to the invention of the SUV
> and billions in advertising lies to sell it. And leading to
> destruction of productive capacity to jack up prices (as with
> closing refineries). They wouldn't need to do that if consumption
> were outstripping production.
Individual choices, if they become widespread, have impacts on the political economy. The unorganized birth strike in Japan that I mentioned recently is one example.
"End User Prices and Taxes for Selected Refined Petroleum Products for France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and United States, Most Recent Month (National Currency and U.S. Dollars per Unit) and Last Twelve Months (National Currency per Unit)": <http://library.iea.org/Textbase/stats/surveys/mps.pdf>.
The end user price for gasoline in the USA is half that in Japan and one third that in Europe (p. 3). (In contrast, the end user price of domestic heating oil in Japan is about the same as that in the USA, both being lower than that in Europe, and the end user price of fuel oil for industry in Europe is about the same as that in the USA, both being lower than that in Japan [p. 2].) The difference is tax policy. The gasoline tax in the USA needs to be at least doubled, and the tax so raised needs to be invested in mass transport and city and regional planning rather than more highways.
Raise the gasoline tax, and both individual consumers and producers will eventually respond. It will reduce the recreational mileages driven, make consumers prefer more fuel-economical vehicles, motivate car makers to make more fuel-economical vehicles, and so forth. It will make changes in housing patterns, encouraging workers to live closer to workplaces (provided that they can make changes before the housing market goes down -- once the housing market goes down, many of the working-class home owners will be stuck where they are, as equity shrinks and debt looms larger, the latter becoming bigger than the market price of the house in many cases).
"Table 2. Estimated Burden of Gasoline Spending on Households": <http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=3991&sequence=7&from=0#table2>.
The cost of higher gasoline taxes will be borne by a very broad middle-income swathe of the population (the poorest, often carless, already use mass transportation, and the richest will feel no immediate impact). They won't like that, but they may be persuaded that the sacrifice is worth it for the sake of the environment. Also, they may be persuaded that higher gas prices will not only change residential patterns but production patterns as well. Labor may gain more leverage over firms, as higher transportation costs may discourage firms from decentralizing production (within and across national borders). Suburbanization and globalization of production depends on cheap transportation costs.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>