Mankind's compulsion to whinge, and to believe the grass is greener elsewhere, is wonderful for journalists. It's the endless spring from which so many stories flow. No matter what governments do, we can find opponents. No matter how much most people's wealth or health improves, we can find exceptions, or those who say the improvements are too little. Sometimes, these perspectives are crucial: it's our job to scrutinise and even to distrust those with power over others. At other times, it can be rather pointless.
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This week, I was asked to report, as all journalists do on occasion, on a bountiful source of pure whinge, untainted by evidence: petrol prices. We seemingly love to believe that oil companies, service stations and governments cheat us, that we pay more than anyone else, and that fuel prices rise far more quickly than the costs of finding, extracting, refining and selling it. The truth is comparatively dull. Canberrans pay, and always have paid, a little more for fuel than those in the bigger cities and a little less than those in smaller cities - precisely what any economist would predict. And the price? I remember first reporting on this whinge almost seven years ago, when we were paying a touch over $1.40 a litre, just a little less than we pay now. In July 2008, the average price in Canberra was $1.65.
Yet it's in our nature to notice what harms us and to forget what helps us. Many of us complain that service stations raise prices on a particular day, ignoring the fact that many drivers take advantage of low prices on other days. We also pay far less than motorists in most developed countries, thanks to our relatively tiny fuel excise. Indeed, the graph above shows that the non-tax component of petrol prices is much the same worldwide; a sign that the market is likely to be competitive and free from excessive price-gouging.
Yet while we remain preoccupied with daily price fluctuations, real and imagined, a genuine crisis is unfolding. Just over five years ago, global oil production plateaued. The industry now increasingly relies on oil from sources such as deep ocean wells, which are far more costly to access. We're running out of the cheap stuff.
I spoke this week with transport researcher Michelle Zeibots, of the Institute for Sustainable Futures, who spends much of her time studying how we'll cope with this trend. ''If demand shrinks because of economic decline in Europe and America, global prices may come down a bit. But if growth in China and India remains strong, prices won't drop dramatically. Prices will continue to head north from now into the conceivable future.'' Her fear is that, despite our enthusiasm for talking about petrol, we're almost entirely unready for what we're about to face. ''At the moment, there are no specific plans for making the transition from oil-dependent to sustainable transport technologies … We leave ourselves vulnerable to oil shocks and the slow pain of economic decline while that oversight continues.''
Pretty soon, we'll finally have something real to whinge about.
Markus Mannheim edits the Public Sector Informant. Send your confidential tips to aps6@canberratimes.com.au
