Gas Prices On The Rise, Traveling On The Decline

It is safe to say that most of us have family road trips embedded somewhere in our childhood memories. The epic summer road trip has become a paradigm for an American family vacation. With General Motors and Chrysler battling it out with federal judges in bankruptcy court, and an overall slumping economy, businesses were hoping for a surge this summer from those family vacationers.

They were banking on much lower gas prices compared to last year. Unfortunately, the recent dip in gas prices appears to be more of an anomaly. On January 1, 2009, gas prices averaged just $1.62 and as of May 30, the average has jumped back up to $2.49. In fact, the national average for a regular unleaded gallon of gas has increased by more than 20% over this past month alone.

Although the latest national average is a far cry from the all-time high of last July at $4.11, the jump in prices suggests more hardships for a majority of Americans, and is not likely to encourage American people to get in their cars this summer for an old fashioned family road trip.

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Welcome to Peak Oil.

www.kunstler.com/mags_diary24.html
December 8, 2008
People Get Ready
James Kunstler
Those of us studying the Peak Oil story have said that the "bumpy plateau" years of peak production would be expressed in tremendous price volatility, and for exactly the reasons now evident -- that the high-price phase would mangle advanced economies, that they would fall back in paralysis, then respond anew to oil price collapses by straggling up again, only to be crushed again when a resumption in demand for oil drove the price back up.