We told you so dept: Gas Price really does affect Demand
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 09.16.05
Many months ago when gas was still cheap we derided the President of GM for saying, about gas prices and SUV sales, "Rich people don't care". We have said all along that when gas costs more than a bottle of Dasani alternatives become attractive. People vote with their wallets and as this graph shows, consumption of gasoline has dropped precipitously since the current spike. Are people walking more? Riding bikes? Car pooling? The CO2 numbers will follow and the Long Emergency will take just a little bit longer to get here. ::Econobrowser
From what data is this chart built? It would be very interesting to follow this over the next several quarters. It would also be interesting to see price-adjusted demand. In otherwords, are people still spending more on fuel despite the decline in demand? It may be that demand has fallen just because people simply can't afford any more gas and are making changes as a result.
This graph would be more useful if it also plotted average gas prices over the same time.
MT
Following the links back, the data appear to come from a US Government Agency called the Energy Information Administration, based on the very last graph on the page.
::EIA
I think you sort of missed the point of The Long Emergency. The idea is not that we're going to run out of oil per se, just that it will get so scarce and thus so expensive that we won't be able to continue to use it the way we do now. Which, this data suggests, is exactly what's happening already. So decreased gasoline consumption due to high prices doesn't mean the Long Emergency will be delayed; if anything, it means it's already begun! (If only in a small way.)
Actually I was wondering about this a couple weeks ago. For Labor Day weekend I went with a bunch of guys down to Delaware from Connecticut. Normally going up and the down the coast is a real pain from traffic. There was no traffic, even going over the George Washington Bridge.