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Hot or Not: Rising Gas Prices
Jun 15 2009 by Jennifer Newman
It must be summer, because I just paid more than $50 to fill my SUV’s gas tank. Gas prices are on the rise again, though not as sharply as last year — at least not yet. There’s no question that rising gas prices are a Not.
On Thursday, the national average for a gallon of regular gas was $2.62. Just one month ago, the national average was $2.24. That’s a 38 cent increase. When I filled up my SUV’s gas tank last week on the north side of Chicago, I paid $3.09 a gallon for regular gas. For 17.7 gallons of gas, that’s a grand total of about $55. Yikes.
I can take some comfort in the fact that I won’t need to fill my car up again for several weeks (we’re a one-car family and drive mostly on the weekends). But I know not everyone can do that. For a lot of people, rising gas prices might mean having to choose between buying gas or some other necessity. Last year’s high gas prices — they peaked at $4.11 on June 17, 2008 — stretched many people’s budgets to their limits. With the state of our economy, too many people are already at their financial limits; they can’t handle the additional burden of high gas prices, too.
So what can we do? After last summer’s high gas prices, we’re all familiar with gas-saving techniques. In case you’ve forgotten, though, here’s MotherProof.com’s suggestions, as well as more tips from our friends at Cars.com.
User Comments
Gas in California is at 3.00 a gallon for the regular hoping it doesnt get any higher
This will probably be an unpopular comment, but I for one don’t mind seeing gas prices on the rise, as it will invariably lower overall consumption. Probably the best move would be for the federal government to slowly raise them to a higher level with a larger gas tax, and then use that tax as a buffer (which could be raised and lowered) to keep gas prices steadier so consumers don’t feel the pain of constantly shifting commodity prices (the subject of this article), even if the overall price was higher. This would help ease the pain our shifting away from using as much as we do (which needs to happen), provide a good tax base, and in the end help out GM and others by providing some incentive for purchasing more fuel efficient cars. If politicians were even forward thinking (heaven forbid) they might use a drop of this money towards cycling and MUP infrastructure, or light rail, or heavy rail for that matter. I don’t expect any of this to happen any time soon, but already we pay way to little for gas. It’s just a matter of time before that changes one way or another.