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 PrintableVersion Letter from AmericaBad gas?When we first arrived in America, some nine or so years ago now, petrol (‘gas’) cost a little over a dollar an American-size gallon. This summer gas registers at over $4 a gallon. That (for the mathematically challenged among you) means a price hike by a factor of four times. What’s more, much of that increase has happened within the last year. For a while beforehand gas prices had hovered more normally around the mid $2 range. Of course, in England petrol remains far more expensive. But what matters for the impact on the culture is the differential. Petrol is still, when you calculate it all in terms of dollars to pound and gallons to litres, about twice as expensive in the UK as in the USA. But when we arrived the difference was far greater than that. Petrol in the UK was at least four times as expensive back in the late 1990s, if not rather more. Changed behaviourThis much higher relative change in the cost of gas is causing some interesting switches in behaviour. The formerly ubiquitous SUV (= ‘Sports Utility Vehicle’, or mammoth 4 x 4) is not nearly as popular as it was. Everyone seems to want a hybrid, if they can get their hands on one, a car with a battery and a gas tank as well, with radically decreased fuel costs thereby, of course. You still see plenty of SUVs on the road, and ‘minivans’ (those people movers much beloved by families), but the new car market is tending to go smaller, and being taken over by cars with better gas mileage. It’s even affecting the housing market. The economy in America is in a serious downturn at present, but the housing market decline appears somewhat regional. The further away from the centres of work the house the more likely it is to be decreasing rapidly in value for it indicates significant (and now expensive) commutes to work. Previously, buying properties in the far fringes of the suburbs — a large plot of land, sort of in the middle of nowhere — was a growing phenomenon. Now people seem to be considering, and actually moving back towards the centre of cities, or at least close to them, where there is public transport, and you don’t have to drive for however many hours on the highway before you get to anything. All of this certainly is fueled by the economic impact that is causing fuel prices to rise. But America has seen high gas prices before — most particularly in the 1970s — yet this time around there may be something different about it. Not only are the prices high, they also speak to a growing environmental concern, a concern about obesity, lack of exercise, and a whole set of related issues that are (or were) part and parcel of ‘modern’ life. Hence some interesting repercussions. The outsourcing, which saw companies moving their base of operations around the globe and then shipping the products back to America for purchase, is beginning to look less cost effective, given the high price of fuel. Then there’s the regional variation in housing prices. Then there’s the car market. But there’s also that growing sense that maybe the culture and country that above all others symbolises our consumer society is just beginning — beginning, mind — to realise that consumption can become too much of a good thing. Gospel & changing cultureAnd, if that’s the case, then our rhetoric, as we seek to reach out to and then disciple those in the world, needs to be nuanced somewhat as the social factors in the culture gradually shift. The environment, and recycling, and looking after planet earth and all of that ‘green’ agenda, may gradually come to seem not so avant garde and, well, ‘odd’ to the American mainstream as previously. Whether that’s a good thing or not, and probably like most things changes in our world it will be a mixture of both, it will certainly be new. Josh Moody,
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