I Used to Be Smart.

Rising oil costs might not be so bad.

Here’s what I mean: if high gas prices localize Americans, then there is virtue in expensive oil.

I believe that localization is a good thing. It is how people were meant to be: connected. Connected to each other, to their communities, to the land on which those communities were built. Connected to their food, the cost of growing that food, the land on which the food was grown.

Cheap oil, largely, has shattered these connections. Cheap oil has allowed us to live miles from where we work. Cheap oil has allowed to us to shop in neighboring towns. It has allowed us to send our kids to school miles from their homes. Cheap oil brings us tomatoes from Mexico in the dead of winter, and apples from New Zealand when American ones will not do. All of this has fractured us.

It’s not cheap oil’s fault. Cheap oil just happened to be around to fuel all of human vices. So, it’s not the oil, or even the oil barons that I blame. It is the basest of human natures. Our desire for the bottom line, our failure to see past the veneers of slick marketing. Our unquenchable need to compete with those around us for bigger and better.

If high oil prices can scale this back, who am I to complain?

If high oil prices mean that it is cheaper to eat the tomato from my back yard than to eat the one “drenched in diesel fuel” (Michael Pollan) from Mexico, then I cannot complain. If high oil prices mean that neighborhood stores close to our homes outpace the big boxes on the fringes of our towns? Then order more fives and sixes for gas station signs. If the price of crude necessitates higher bike sales, a new pair of walking shoes, and re-imagined urban planning, then I’ll pay through the nose. If Exxon-Mobil’s record profits mean that I must become creative in my choices—choices about food, work, shopping, schooling—then keep those stock quotes high. If the life of the futures market means that I must think about what I do instead of taking for granted the ability of my car (and its wake carbon gasses) to take me anywhere I need to go on a moment’s notice for a marginal sum of money, then may some trader get even richer. If expensive oil is what it takes to make us whole again, perhaps we should all be breathing a sigh of relief, rather than plunging drills into our oceans to find a reason for a rollback.

When we live in an unsustainable way, on the foundation of an unsustainable resource, then there will eventually be a correction in our lifestyle. There will inevitably be a difficult time of transition when we are forced to rethink how we do life, because our fundamental assumptions about access and transportation are being questioned. That seems like it’s not so bad.