Who Pays for Oil Addiction? View from Sub Urbium, USA

Ezekiel 18:1 “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

In other words, our kids, grand kids, and those after them pay for our addiction.

Sub Urbium today

And here’s the view from the prototypical suburb, Sub Urbium.

Hey, what’s this $6/gallon crap? You know how much I had to spend for a fill-up today? $120. My Chevy Avalanche will burn that up in just a few days with my 70 mile round trip daily commute and errands, especially now that it’s hot and I have to run the AC and always get stuck in traffic 5 miles out of Boston.

And don’t forget: I have to heat my 4200 square foot home with oil 8 months of the year, and I have to keep it cool for most of the other 4 months. This is getting ridiculous. At the rate things are going, I may have to forget about towing my camper to the mountains for vacation in July. How’s a person supposed to live these days?

Those $%$##@ oil companies really have us over a barrel. I think I’ll ask my congressman to vote for that bill outlawing “unconscionable price increases.”

Sub Urbium 2027

Damn, it was 20 years ago when I complained about the price of living and the price of gas. Who was to know that things were going to get worse? Ten bucks a gallon for gasoline if you can get it at all. The cost of living was so high even 20 years ago that I couldn’t just walk away from my Chevy Avalanche lease. Then when the lease expired, well I’d invested so much in it already I couldn’t turn down the low price they offered me to buy it outright. Then gasoline prices kept climbing, and can you believe nobody wanted to buy it from me? So I kept it – I figured gas prices would come down eventually, and I really needed the power and safety of that truck. And today, there it sits, rusty around the fenders, but it still runs. Meantime I had to get one of those stupid plug-in hybrids for my commute, but the thing only goes 40 miles between charges, and I have to pay $10 a day to recharge it at work. You’d think they’d do something about these things, to help out those of us who are still trying to do good for the environment.

On top of it all, I’ve just gotten over another bad case of pneumonia. Can’t keep the house warm and pay for food too. And you’d think somebody would like to buy it – 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, 2 acres, plenty of trees, not far from the Interstate. I’m finally paying off my mortgage and the house isn’t worth any more than I paid for it over 20 years ago. Some of my neighbors are just walking away from theirs – maybe after the “fire” they thought it was best to just take the insurance money and leave.

I’m beginning to worry though. I’m not getting any younger, and it is really getting hard to keep this place in shape. Also, it’s still 10 miles to the nearest grocery store. That’s too far to walk, and you can’t carry much on a bicycle –not that you can be sure what you’ll find at the SuperMart when you get there. Lucky I’ve still got cable and my broadband connection. Maybe I’ll just cocoon for a while.