Thanks to Wikicommons.

Gas prices are on the way up. In fact they are getting so high that even the suppliers are worried!

It appears President Obama should also be worried. As gas prices go up  his poll number go down.

At least this increase should reduce demand for oil, RIGHT? Maybe encourage a shift to better sources of energy?

Don’t hold your breath… Kevin Drum has some rain for our parade. In a blog for Mother Jones he notes that demand for oil is inelastic (meaning it changes little with shifts in price). Thus

Even in the rich world, it apparently takes massive price increases to significantly reduce the demand for oil, even over a 20-year horizon. In the developing world, forget it. As long as incomes are going up, demand will go up.

This is bad news for the price at the pump.

This may not be the full truth… there is still hope. Jim Manzi agrees that taxes may have little effect

because the current price elasticity of oil is so low. The work of engineers and physical scientists, however, is likely to be determinative.

In other words change won’t come from economists in their ivory towers but rather from scientists in the laboratory.

A future free of oil is starting to become the present. Reporting from the Shell Eco-Marathon, Wired’s Chuck Squatriglia reports that the winners

built one of the most fuel-efficient cars on the planet, a slick three-wheeler that gets an amazing 2,564.8 mpg.

Currently this is just a science project but who knows maybe tomorrow we fill our car up once a year. Either way here’s hoping the scientists continue to make our lives better.