Earth2Tech details the scenarios that $7 gas would create, which include stagflation, fewer cars on the road, and families spending more on gas than food. While this would eventually lead to less pollution and carbon in the air, the getting there would be bumpy indeed. New cleantech industries will thrive, others, but like anything related to gas-powered cars, will suffer.
Heh, a commenter who lives London is not sympathetic
$7 gallon. Wow…if only! The price at the pump here (London) is 118p per litre (cheese-eating surrender monkey measurement of volume). That equates to about $11 a gallon. So I am pretty sure you can avoid the Apocalypse with those prices if we can. You might just have to stop needlessly burning up large amounts of the earth’s fossil fuels just to carry around 6 empty seats and a dozen cupholders.
Well, pass the cheese, because I suspected this could happen in 2000 so I bought a Prius. It gets 45 mpg and Sue’s VW Beetle diesel gets 40 mpg. We live right next to a BART station in the SF Bay area and thus don’t need the cars nearly as much as when we lived in Connecticut and L.A. Would it be everyone could live near excellent mass transit.
High oil prices don’t cause stagflation– bad fiscal policy does.