"Take my license, all that jive,
I can't drive 55"
- Sammy Hagar

I got my driver’s license just in time for the speed limit to be lowered to 55 miles per hour.

55 probably saved my life. I was not only a fast driver but a stupid one. It took several speeding tickets, but I eventually learned my lesson. When I finally did have an accident, I was going slow enough to not hurt anybody.

Although it may have saved me, 55 was not implemented for safety reasons. It was a way to conserve gasoline.

Are we going to make any moves like that again?

Everyone is upset about the price of gasoline. It is only going to get worse. $4-per-gallon gas is coming and may not go away.

Yet few leaders are talking about conservation.

I’m not one to lead the conservation parade. I drive the biggest Cadillac they make. If the speed limit is 65, I drive it. If it were 100, I would drive that fast too. My car is a comfortable ride at almost any speed.
 

And it gets about 15 miles to the gallon.  

I thought that the bump in gas prices was a blip caused by the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, or other short-term factors.  That was before I saw a television interview with T. Boone Pickens.

Pickens, who knows the oil business inside and out, said that we have a limited supply of oil and a growing demand for oil production.  Countries like China and India are late arrivers on the industrialization scene, and they need oil too.     

They want oil; we want oil; everybody wants oil.  The basic law of economics states that when demand exceeds supply, the price of the thing in demand will keep going up.

Thus, don’t sit around waiting for gas prices to go down.  Or the price of heating fuel, for that matter.

I’ve never been a fan of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, but he was ahead of the curve on the conservation front.  People thought that he looked silly sitting in front of the fireplace in a sweater, but he was trying to set a presidential example. 

I don’t see that example anywhere now.  Politicians will jump in front of the television cameras and whine about price gouging, but they are not willing to do anything that will cause the demand for oil to decrease.

Conservation means tough choices and lifestyle changes.  No one wants to irritate voters by preaching that.

I’m not crazy about a 55 mile per hour speed limit.  I’m also not crazy about driving a smaller car.  I drove a Ford Maverick for most of the time that I was in high school.   I hated it.  It was small, and I felt every bump in the road. I remember my teeth chattering every time I drove it over a railroad crossing.

Not to mention taking a date to the drive-in. I will spare the details for a family newspaper, but suffice it to say that it was not paradise by the dashboard light. The small car made it more like Purgatory.  You could see Heaven but couldn’t get there.
    
There are a lot of baby boomers who drove Mavericks, Pintos, and Vegas at 55 miles per hour who do not want to be constrained to that lifestyle again.  Automobiles are symbols of freedom, and people want to drive big cars, trucks, and SUVs as fast as they can.

Which means we run out of oil.  Or start paying $5 or $6 a gallon for gas.  

High gas prices have not kept people from driving.  It has hurt the sale of large cars and SUVs but not like it did in the 1970’s when you couldn’t give gas-guzzlers away.  With prices for gas and food going up, we could be setting ourselves up for an economic slap in the face.

When it happens, I wonder if we will have any leaders with the guts that Jimmy Carter showed—someone willing to suggest conservation programs even if they make us all less comfortable.

Like Sammy Hager, I don’t want to drive 55, but I’m starting to wonder if we have another choice.

Don McNay is Chairman of the Board for McNay Settlement Group, which has never had a Maverick, Pinto, or Vega as its corporate car.  You can write to him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or read other things he has written at www.donmcnay.com.  His award-winning column is syndicated on the CNHI News Service.