When Sam’s great-grandfather was a teen like Sam, he would be sent off every Sunday morning to get a loaf of bread from the local bakery for the family’s supper. He would jump into the family car and speed off to town. Occasionally, he would have to stop and fill up on gas so that his father would not run out on his way to work the next day. Sam’s great-grandfather thus became familiar with the cost of gas from that youthful age. When he was older there was war that made heavy demands on gas supplies and the cost of gas surged. To prevent the havoc that price-gouging and speculation would have on their nation, the government began gas rationing. The cost of gas was still relatively high, but it did not become unaffordable. After the war, Sam’s grandfather was born and the availability of gas, and thus its price, returned to more reasonable levels along with the government’s removal of rationing. He was sure the country would deal with this in the future.
When Sam’s grandfather was a teenager he was also sent to the bakery every Sunday for a loaf of fresh bread. And like his father before him, he learned a little about the cost of gas each week. Sometimes at Sunday supper, he would mention that the price of gas had gone up a little and his father (great-granddad) would regal everyone with the stories about how little gas cost when he was a boy and how much it cost when it was rationed during the war. When granddad was older, and a man in his own right, there was a sudden constriction in the oil supply that produced an economic crisis that shot gas prices through the roof. It was during this high priced gas period that Sam’s father was born. The entire nation roiled over their vulnerability and dependence on resources that rested in the control of others whose interests were, well, their own. The government once again stepped in and put in a pathetic rationing kind of process, but the price was still high. The shortage passed after damaging the economy, people’s lives and the nation’s self-image. And granddad remembered his father’s supper table stories and thought how ironic that in his life the same plague would befall him. The government lifted the rationing system. Granddad noticed that the price of gas was still a little higher than previously and there were the occasional bumps up in price throughout his life. A solution to prevent this from happening again must be within our grasp.
Sam’s father formally established the family tradition of being sent to the bakery on Sundays when he got his driver’s license. Like his father and grandfather before him, Sam’s father noticed the price of gas even though he only had to use his father’s credit card and could have been blatantly unaware had he not been an observant lad. And like his father, Sam’s dad heard tales of both his father and grandfather that illustrated the unreliability and unpredictability of both gas and its cost. While a young man, Sam’s father was sure that the nation and the world economy had finally gotten their management of the oil supply under good regulation. It thus came as a rather rude surprise to his father when the price of gas rose without a war, without a production constriction, without any discernable problem except that there was high demand and a booming economy. So even in the good times, the nation and Sam’s dad found themselves in yet another gas price pinch. While this explosive rise in gas prices hurt Dad’s bank account, it was a major windfall for the oil and gas industry. Never had the companies seen higher profits. The government didn’t actually do much of anything except letting the economic rod beat back demand a little.
Once again, gas prices relented somewhat from their peak and Sam’s dad was reminded of all the stories he had heard at the Sunday meals. The nation got use to yet another level of slightly higher gas and things moved on. Sam was born, and in due course he stepped into his family tradition’s responsibility. He had heard all the gas stories, even the stories of the gas stories. His father often told him that the country needed to get its act together and free itself from this outside influence. Sam during his bread trips noted the cost of gas as his forefathers had, and he understood the problems that the cost of gas had caused in his family. He considered it likely that with the present high price of gas that there was little chance that things could get much worse than they already were. Besides the government was working on ways to eliminate the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, on oil itself, and on a global economy that could change the oil market for unforeseeable reasons.
Imagine his shock when the price of gas begin to inch up, then spurt and start receiving the experts prognostications of new record highs undreamt of in living memory. Sam couldn’t believe his misfortune that he should suffer the same tribulation that had plagued his family and his country for generations. He hoped that like before the price of gas would eventually pull-back to more affordable levels, even though he knew it would never be as low as before. He sure hoped that the government would finally get on with really addressing the nation’s energy needs, and find a way off the perpetual roller-coaster problem of not being able to meet your own needs. With the recent birth of his son, Sam didn’t want his son to inherit along with the family task of getting the Sunday bread, the national Achilles’ heel of an oil addiction that no one could afford. Surely there was enough time yet to come to grips with that problem.
Recognizing is only the first step in dealing with a problem. Once seen it must be confronted.
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