Over the last months, some previously unthinkable changes have been taking place amongst the American people. SUVs have become objects of contempt. Summer travel is turning more and more, into a local adventure. Folks are cutting down on their trips to the mall. Gardens are sprouting all over my neighborhood. Even my car addicted teenage daughter has taken up walking, and is charging her friends for carpooling.
What millions of green blog posts and green media mentions failed to accomplish in months, got taken care of, almost overnight, thanks to one magic number. The $4 a gallon effect is proving what behavioral psychologists have know for a long time. Talk and reasoning have little effect, consequences do.
La Marguerite 
The psychology of an increase is useful, but I wonder how people will repsond if the price flattens and then backs off a small amount? It will be interesting to watch.
A friend has a 17 yr old son who (heavily) uses their old minivan. To give the kid a sense of family responsibility he has a system where they flip a coin each time the car is filled (normaly about $70) to see who pays. That lasted 4 fillups … his son has decided he would rather walk or use his bike.
Of course there are serious issues in the poorer parts of the country – particularly rural areas where the amount of travel is frequently greater than what surburbanites see.
Agreed! Pocketbook pain changes behavior.
SUV’s are ‘objects of contempt’. They are now so unfashionable, many women will want to dump them. I hear women apologizing now for driving big behemoths. The ‘social cringe factor’ is working!
So glad we dumped ours in 2007. There is no way we’d get $14 grand for it today. Although the buyer was a car collector and he appreciated that we babied it so you never know…
http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?p=22
Albeit the fact I don’t consider ” Green “, I sometimes think about calling it quit with elrst.com…
But I think that we environmental bloggers should continue writing on climate change and other things as we :
– are starting fantastic debates (your blog),
– or simply keeping people informed with (hopefully) relevant stuff (me)…
Keep up the good work !
I’m not giving up green blogging until forced economically to do so. ;p
I think it’s a bit early to declare humanity has completed its task, Marguerite.
As a child and in the Army I got to go out hiking among hills. Staggering along under a heavy pack, I learned about something called “the false crest”. I’d look up and see that my upwards journey was coming to an end, the ground topped out. But when I reached that point, I realised it was just one slight dip in the continuing upwards slope, and I had quite a way to go yet. That was very tiring.
It’s hard to set out on a hike and not know how far the destination is, or what kind of rough or easy terrain you’ll pass through. It’s much easier to get somewhere if you know exactly where you’re going and how you’ll get there. But in life and society that is not given to us, each journey is unknown.
A decline in SUV sales is a false crest. There still remain all the other vehicles on the road, and coal-fired power stations, and enormous amounts of meat being consumed, and deforestation, and so on and so forth.
Assuming the Western average of 14-15,000km annual driving (forgetting the US average 19,500km), a typical SUV emits about 3.8t of CO2, and a medium car about 2.4t. Someone getting rid of their SUV will emit 1.4t less – not accounting for the emissions of creating either vehicle. The US or Australian average is about 24t per person, and we need to get down to about 2t. So if we assume that everyone owned an SUV in 2007 and gets rid of them in 2008, we’re 5% of the way there. Of course, not everyone owns an SUV and not everyone who does will get rid of it, so it’s more like 1% of the way.
As Churchill said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
We’ve a long way to go yet. Now, whether green bloggers are any use is, really, another question. But if we are wasting our time, it is not because everything we want done is being done by $4 a gallon fuel.
Hi Marguerite,
To a certain extent I agree with you that if all we are doing is blogging most of us probably are just wasting our time. If I was hoping to change the world with my readership I may as well curl up now.
Generally though I have found that many bloggers gain the confidence through finding a “virtual community” that agrees with their wacked out ideas to become more involved in their local community. They are inspired to find or start a seed saving groups, green book clubs or just go do the occasional talk at the local school (cause they know about worm farms).
There are practical tipping points, mostly cost related, that are going to force behavioural change. Without a group of people that have the knowledge and skills needed to successfully power down the majority of people will rely on what they deem “essential” well past the point where they can’t afford it simply because they don’t see the alternative.
The thought process required to buy a smaller car and make sure its doing less trips is pretty simple petrol makes a large jump ($4/L)… the idea that a family can’t afford to run a car at all is only going to come if there are safe known alternatives…. otherwise you will see a whole lot more of the situation seen in the US last winter where people were making the decision on whether they could afford perceived essentials, such as paying for heating oil, being weighed against food.
To me it comes down to be involved in your local community and lobby for benificial change in any forum you have available… blogging is just one.
Kind Regards
Belinda
I think the blogging matters in many ways. It provides social and moral support for change. It lets us know that we aren’t “the only ones” and we aren’t “crazy”. It informs the reasons that we are OK, or even happy, with the price changes and resulting behavioral changes. (Otherwise, without an understanding of the situation, it would be that much harder to accept the medicine or even see it as medicine.) It provides ideas and alternatives. And so forth. It also provides “therapy” during times of change. So, I think it matters, alot. My only thought is that blogging shouldn’t begin and end with the computer screen. In other words, in some ways and periodically, the blogging should facilitate and motivate action in the 3-D world. Blogging should (in some ways) point to, suggest, encourage, motivate, inform, and facilitate action in 3-D, when possible and as much as possible. But, I don’t think that notion conflicts with the idea that price changes (in some cases) are necessary to catalyze the actual change that’s being discussed.
Keep up the great work!
Cheers.
Here in Germany the price of gas is about $9.10 per US gallon. I bet if the price in the US had been gradually raised to European levels about three decades ago the US economy would have been able to absorb the increases in base prices we’re seeing today and the auto industry wouldn’t have millions of gas-guzzling tanks they can’t sell. But of course it’s harder to get elected preaching sense.
Seems to work now, that oil prices are soaring. Now what would it be when, one day, prices will flatten ? Old habits will settle themselves again.
I think that the response to high gas prices doesn’t show that environmental awareness, green “buy-in” and sharing of practical knowledge is not useless, but that it works much better in combination with other sources of influence, such as altered budget constraints through higher prices.
It’s what the book Influencer says: You want as much sources of influence as possible. They work better in concert.
People wouldn’t respond as well to the higher gas prices as they do now if there wouldn’t so much knowledge available. There are “green” people everywhere in the USA. Now people want to learn from them.
I already argued on my blog that green attracts the best people. I also think that green people will attract the most attention in the future. I don’t think you can’t get much greener than having a green blog. Only green entrepreneurs (and green politicians, if this would ever happen) would top that, I think.
“I don’t think you _can_ get much greener…”
To make my point clear: No-one could start a vegetable garden if no-one realized it would save them money, or no-one knew how to care for one.
Economists tend to treat knowledge level as some kind of external given, but it’s fully endogenous. Otherwise it would be of no communicating at all… Economists have only recently “discovered” the concept of endogenous economic growth for example.
There’s even a term in business thinking for this, which I can’t come up with now. It warns for putting in incentives for workers if they don’t know how to strive for the goals targeted. They know you want them to go in a certain direction, but they don’t know how to get there efficiently. This results in stressed-out and eventually disengaged workers, and could turn into a total sense of helplessness.
The main goal of this post was to provoke a discussion, which it did . . . Of course, I am not about to give up blogging any time soon. I just think, it needs to be put in perspective, as some of you pointed out. Green blogging creates a climate where seeds for further actions can get planted. That’s all.
[…] of Representatives. And, as blogger La Marguerite notes (although maybe too pessimistically?), the $4 a gallon price shock has done what three million green bloggers have not managed: behavioural […]
Thanks for this thought-provoking post!
I’ve been thinking lately about “spending more for less”, with the goal of buying less junk and being more sustainable.
Although it sounds wrong to my thrift-conscious ears, it makes so much sense for things I buy new, and also groceries and such…. and it even makes sense to look for quality and spend a bit more when I shop second-hand.
It even seems to make sense for gas! We were obviously paying too little for gas since the “gas crisis” in the 70s when the cars turned compact, and over the last 30 years, all the cars grew into giant guzzlers….
Paying more for gas will get our obese cars on a diet!
I love your blog and have added it to my blogroll…
$4 a gallon is the effect of “Market Forces”, and it works every time it’s tried.
Seems like the “tipping point” effect Malcolm Gladwell wrote about a few years ago. I agree with the “what-will-happen-when-prices-decrease” concern. Regardless of how we *think* we change, there are finite resources for consumption. Go green. It shouldn’t be just a marketing technique — the bandwagon effect is certainly powerful, though.
Meryn: Great idea, “Green Politicians” — a 3rd party! Please!
Jeff, thanks for stopping by and for your comment. Your blog and account of personal health troubles are truly inspiring.
Notjustpretty, I agree with you. When I used to be into buying fashion, I liked the analogy of “buy one Prada dress a year, instead of twenty twenty dollar dresses at Target”. This is very much how the French shop. Quality and less, as opposed to lots of junk.
Taraandjeremy, I would not worry too much about what will happen when the prices decrease. If you look at the oil supply and peak oil, there is no way prices can decrease, at least over the long run.
Hello. Good post. In Poland gas costs almost 1,5 euro for 1 liter.
Fixing a suitable windturbine in front of a moving vehicle we can harvest some energy?
I can’t speak for the blogs, as I am new to blogging, and that is just in the reading of them. I can, however, state that the recent dramatic increases in gas prices have made recent dramatic changes in my behavior. For example, I try to consolidate my errands and keep them close in geographic proximity and think twice, if not three or four times, before getting in the car to visit relatives who only live an hour away.