Just for grins,
let’s talk about lowering the speed limit on our interstate
highways – say, to 65 mph on roads where it’s now 75
mph, and where most people drive 80 mph.
Go ahead, roll
your eyes.
We’ve done this before, and I’ll
admit it that it wasn’t much fun. That was in 1974, in
response to the embargo of oil from the Middle East. We adopted the
double-nickel limit of 55 mph. I got a rash of speeding tickets,
two of them going 67 mph, and lost my driver’s license.
I’m sure that my hair, which was back then down to my
shoulders, did nothing to help my cause.
As oil prices
dropped, we got back to 65 mph, and, in the mid-1990s, when
discretion was given to the states, to 75 mph on rural interstates
in most parts of the West. Oil was cheap, and time was valuable, or
so went the logic of the time.
Now, we’re fast
advancing toward our fifth year in a war that arguably is mostly
about ensuring the orderly flow of oil from the Middle East, and
we’re still roaring down the highway as if nothing has
happened.
I’m rolling my eyes.
Engineers
say the most efficient speed for a motor is somewhere between 30
and 55 mph. Beyond 60 mph, the fuel economy begins dropping off
substantially. The cost is only pennies per mile, but that amounts
to a couple of bucks for an hour’s drive. Several studies
show about a 12 percent reduction in gas consumption for those who
slow from 75 mph to 60 mph. Those figures square with my personal
experience. When I drive fast, and often I still do, I spend more
money at the gas pump.
Recently, after spending yet
another $50 to fill up the car, I vowed an experiment on my next
two trips, on a highway where the speed limit is mostly 75 mph.
Instead, I vowed to hew to 65 mph.
I’m here to
report that 65 is a lonely number. Cars whizzed past me on the left
like I was a street lamp. Occasionally, cars would come up behind
me and, even though there were opportunities to pass, they did not
do so – at first. I thought perhaps they had slowed because
of my example. Nope. Soon enough, they’d blast past, probably
still unsure of the kook in the Buick. In four hours I passed four
vehicles.
Our habit of rushing to and fro in the West is
mystifying. We take great pride in our landscapes. We love our
wide-open spaces. But then we do our best to compress them.
Interstate 25 along the Front Range of Colorado is a good example.
Beyond to the west are the peaks of the Continental Divide layered
in blue and chalked with snow. Here and there amid the urban
clutter are still vestiges of the yeomen and their agrarian
homesteads. But on the highway, it’s bumper to bumper at 80
mph, traffic so hurried you’d think we were fleeing a war
zone.
It’s been a gilded age, this time of
free-flowing fossil fuels. We live so well, or at least so
luxuriously, that the $3 per gallon that is the new norm has
modified our travel habits only slightly.
Soon enough,
though, we can expect $4 to $5 per gallon gasoline, and perhaps in
time, the $10 per gallon that the French and English already pay.
How can this not happen? Decades ago we notched our peak production
of oil in the United States, and ever since have been importing
ever larger amounts from foreign shores. While oil remains on
Alaska’s North Shore, it’s probably little more than a
pittance. Pre-oil kerogen from the shales of the Green River
Formation of Colorado and Utah remains problematic. Biodiesel from
French fry grease makes us feel good, but it’s largely
symbolic. In most cases, it’s only a 10 to 20 percent blend.
Cellulosic ethanol, try as it might, is unlikely to be the miracle.
Internationally, production is still increasing, but for
how long? A growing number of oil experts think we’re up
against global peak oil even as the Chinese begin ramping up their
production at an incline that looks more like a 30-degree slope in
the Palouse of Washington state than a wheat field in eastern
Montana.
Would you slow down 10 minutes on the hour and
look at the scenery? Yes, that is a preposterous notion.
Isn’t that what wars are for?
Allen Best
is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of HighCountry
News (hcn.org). He writes about environmental issues from the
Denver area.
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