The Peak Oil Crisis: Rationing

By Tom Whipple
Falls Church News-Press
July 14 - July 20, 2005 VOL. XV NO. 19
http://www.fcnp.com/519/peakoil.htm

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It has to come sooner or later. As oil becomes scarcer and scarcer and price rises higher and higher, pressures will grow for a formal allocation system. Rationing will come, if only to calm the havoc at the gas lines and the social upheavals that are bound to occur as long as rationing is only by price.

America's most recent experience with rationing goes back to World War II. You have to be nearly 70 to remember the little square "A", "B", and "C" stickers affixed to the windshields of ever car. These stickers, when accompanied by a sheet of rationing stamps, allowed one to buy gas. Everybody got an "A" sticker (a whole 4 gallons a month just for the asking). To get a "B" or "C" sticker, one had to appear before a rationing board and make the case their mobility was vital to the war effort or at least the well-being of their fellow citizens.

If one ponders for a few minutes on how a modern rationing system might be structured, it is soon apparent nearly any scheme is full of inequities and would be subject to massive and, no doubt, ingenious fraud- especially when an American's ability to drive his beloved car is at stake. Do you allocate fuel by vehicle? Buy a yard full of clunkers and drive to your heart's content or until you run out of money. Or allocate gasoline by person, by licensed driver, by commute distance, by adjusted gross income? Problems abound everywhere.

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