In a recent Newsweek article, “Learning From the Oil Shock,” Robert J. Samuelson discusses Jeffrey Rubin’s (of CIBC World Markets) view on the future of oil consumption. Rubin suggests that gasoline will rise to $7 per gallon and oil to $225 per barrel by 2012. Rubin goes on to muse that there may be one benefit to this striking rise in price: Because rising ocean-freight costs will make importing goods more expensive, some outsourced production will have to return to the United States, benefiting U.S. manufacturers. Conversely, Rubin also suggests that the home-building and auto industries will be the hardest hit. As the article states, “Higher gasoline prices push people to mass transit, bicycles and their feet.” Hmmm…those can’t be our only options, can they?
In this article, there is little mention of future solutions outside of augmenting oil supplies by domestic drilling and developing new biofuels. No mention at all of the burgeoning electric vehicle industry or plug-in hybrids or the many businesses poised on the brink of developing technologies that could begin to repair this problem. Rubin is correct that we got ourselves into this mess, but does he not believe that we can also take some responsibility and get ourselves out?
