Get Out Your Bicycles! Gas is Heading to $7 a Gallon

Jeff Rubin, a leading economist at CIBC World Markets, has a message for us all: start thinking about alternate transportation. In 4 years, gas prices will likely hit $7-$10 per gallon, making it too expensive for many people.

Treehugger has it:

“Stripping out natural gas liquids, oil production has not grown for over two years, which certainly goes a long way to explaining why oil prices have doubled over that period,” Rubin said. “It is increasingly clear that the outlook for oil supply signals a period of unprecedented scarcity.”

Rubin predicts hybrids will go “from marketing and PR fluff to the core of car production.” People will move closer to where they work. “I think there will be fewer people on the road in North America in five years than there is right now.”

Seems to me as if now is the time for cities all over America to start planning better public transit systems, since not all of us have the luxury of living close enough to walk or ride a bike to our places of work, grocery stores and other essential destinations - and the poor probably won’t be able to make that move. Let’s hope that the powers that be take this seriously.

The good news is, prices like this will definitely get more people to trade in their ridiculous look-at-me gas guzzlers in for something a little more reasonable. I’d venture to guess that we’ll be seeing less Hummers on the road, and I for one am happy about that, because my egg-throwing arm is getting tired.

Link [Treehugger]

Photo credit: Flickr user Brianfit