This is my second gas crunch. The first was back in the ’70s when OPEC shut off the spigot. We were not a net-surplus energy producing country and no amount of price made up for not having gasoline. The economics of price-demand fell apart.

We probably should have learned a couple of lessons since then, but I am never sure to what degree we decided to do something about gas crunches. This crunch comes partly because we produce more crude but refine less gas, anticipating the arrival of electric-vehicle world. It feels backward.

One thing we have done, with a shove from the governments, is to be more efficient. Back in the early ’70s, we had half the population and half as many cars. Today the number hovers over 100-million cars. Apparently, we use less gas per car but that savings is offset by the massive doubling of the number of cars on the road. We might need to admit upfront that the U.S. is a big country, so we can’t do things in a small way, even if we wanted to.

Despite all the good intentions of saving gasoline, we continue to burn it at a prodigious rate. If somehow we could each save a half-gallon of gas per car per year, it would mean 50 million gallons of gasoline not pumped into the atmosphere. Fifty-million gallons didn’t get distilled. Fifty-million gallons of gas (in the form of oil) stayed in the ground. Less fracking. Less pollution. In 10 years that is a savings of half-a-billion gallons. Not a small number.

One of the first economics books I read suggested it was good idea to remind yourself, in line at the fast-food drive-in, that the little haze coming out of the tailpipe in front of you is a) inhaled by you b) is gasoline wasted and c) you are doing the same thing. The book may have been “The Money Game” by George Goodman, but it’s been a long time since I read it.

But where to start? Each of us wants the other guy to take the first crack. The EV and hybrid owners have already staked out their part of the solution and are probably laughing all the way to the bank. Most of us just whine about it. Everyone has to take a first step almost at the same time.

In the ’70s, no one wanted to take the first step to using less gas. It was a U.S. government call. The price-market concepts of gasoline prices that should have driven us to drive less just didn’t work then. And I don’t think they are working now. With money to spend, we spend it in spite of perhaps knowing better. It’s a condition caused by centuries of fleeting wealth and consumerism. And a classic example of another failure of American capitalism. The condition might be expressed as too much money chasing too little gasoline.

The bookshelves are full of critiques of the American consumer-driven economy that misplaces short-term satisfactions with long-term problems. We certainly liked our $1,400 handout, but hindsight suggests maybe we’d been wiser to bank it. Fear of dying from COVID certainly had a way of sparking a live-for-the-moment thinking. But, then so does the thinking of buy-today because tomorrow the price will go up, which eats away at our rational thinking. Combined with random shortages of labor and product, inflation is a starved lion waiting to pounce. The lion has pounced, and he has us by the throat.

We are notorious for being the most frivolous, greedy and corrupt country. Maybe so. Maybe not. Power corrupts and money is power. We know that much. Just ask any politician.

Cleaning out the trunk of each vehicle will save some gas. Actually, instead of worrying about the 25 pounds in the trunk it would better if the adults lost 25 pounds each. I wrote once in a previous column about how many millions of pounds of blubber Tennesseans transport daily. It was informative but scary. If the governor is serious about using less gasoline, a weight-loss program across the state might not only save a lot of fuel but also take us off the bottom the most unhealthy states list.

The consumer holds the upper hand. In our country, once we begin to move, however sluggishly, in any direction, we do make changes.

So, who’s first at the treadmill?

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