“Drive Less!” Campaign is Working

Lynne Kiesling

Tongue in cheek, Tim Haab claims some credit for helping to bring about the shift in consumer behavior documented in a recently-released Cambridge Energy Research Associates study on gasoline. Punch line:

America’s “love affair with the automobile” is being transformed — but not broken up — by forces that are redrawing the global gasoline and oil market, including higher gasoline prices, tightening environmental requirements, changing demographics, growing world oil demand and expanding fuel options, according to the new 2007 edition of Gasoline and the American People, by Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

They note a more persistent than transitory decrease in the demand for larger vehicles, an increase in refinery capacity, and the low share of the increasing household budget that gasoline expenditures claim.