Anchorage Daily News

Americans deserve $4 per gallon gasoline, and more.

There, I've gone and said it.

Yes, escalating fuel prices are going to make those midnight 105-mile runs to the Russian River to fish for red salmon painfully expensive this summer, but we've had this coming for a long time.

Decades as a runner and a cyclist have provided ample opportunity to see how wastefully Americans treat that nonrenewable resource called petroleum.

Cars idle it away by the hour in winter parking lots because drivers don't want to be bothered to pull on a coat.

Trucks rocket away from stoplights with gas sometimes almost visibly pouring from their tailpipes, so the drivers can race to the next stoplight and slam on the brakes, somehow thinking this is faster than pursuing a slower, more fuel-efficient acceleration timed to the changing of the lights.

Cyclists load their bicycles onto cars to drive to the Coastal Trail or Chugach State Park and enjoy their recreation.

Why not ride the bike there?

Because we're Americans, and real Americans drive.

Sometimes, I confess, I'm as guilty as anyone.

It's hard to avoid the ease, comfort and freedom of the automobile. Even if you want to do so, it's hard.

Backed by a small legion of NIMBYs, city planners have in many cases zoned the motor vehicle into necessity.

It's not that walking several miles to the nearest grocery store is that bad. But backpacking home a few days of groceries is more than most people are willing to undertake.

For better or worse, that has left many of us wed to the internal combustion engine. And for more than 50 years, this relationship has been shaping American lives in ways both big and small.

America has become a drive-through world.

The automobile is the mainstay of the urban environment, and its many spinoffs -- the off-road vehicle, the four-wheeler, the snowmachine, the recreational vehicle -- have become the cornerstones for American recreation and relaxation.

Driving for pleasure has long been the No. 1 form of outdoor recreation in this state, though if you get real objective about this, you must wonder how it qualifies as "outdoors'' recreation.

The seat in my pickup is every bit as comfortable as any chair in the house, the environment equally climate controlled. Does a seat in that snug cocoon really qualify as anything "outdoors"?

Really, when you get down to it, how much difference is there between sitting in the easy chair in the living room watching a travelogue on the wide-screen, flat-panel TV, and sitting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and watching the same scene unfold across a wide-screen windshield?

And let's not even contemplate those people driving around in RVs bigger than some cabins in Bush Alaska.

I've driven one of these RVs on the Alaska Highway. It is a truly pleasurable experience, but is it really a form of outdoors recreation?

Better question: Are these internal combustion engines merely our tools, or have we become in some ways their hostages?

Can anyone still cut firewood without a gasoline-powered chain saw?

Do more than a few still hunt on foot instead of using a four-wheeler?

Is it still possible to put in a winter trail with snowshoes and a dog team instead of a snowmachine?

Can anyone still go 50 to 100 miles on the bike and think it a pleasant day's ride instead of an exercise in suffering?

The internal combustion engine has made our lives better in uncountable ways. No doubt about it.

But it has stolen things too.

Americans are today further removed from nature than ever, and they are measurably fatter than at any time in the country's history.

Whether this is because they are lazier is debatable, but judging from how little most of them are willing to walk -- let alone run or bicycle -- it certainly looks that way.

Most of us are addicts, and it's been obvious a long time.

We should have started trying to shake the habit after the 1973 oil embargo, but we couldn't. There was a lot of talk about public transit, alternative energy and better urban design to make cities friendly to bikes and pedestrians.

It all went away when the supply of oil went back up. Thirty-five years later, with worldwide demand growing, we're again paying the price.

Four-dollar-per-gallon gasoline is a pain in the pocketbook, but it's not like we couldn't have seen this coming.

It's the simple law of supply and demand. If the supply is fixed and the demand keeps going up, so will the price.

Ask those commercial halibut fishermen now pocketing the big bucks on a limited Alaska resource.

The halibut makes gasoline look cheap.

Even at today's prices, a pound of gasoline costs only about 70 cents. A pound of halibut, well, that goes for upwards of $15.

The good news is that markets have a way of correcting themselves.

Because of cost, I haven't eaten a commercially caught halibut in a long time. Because of cost, the Norwegians are starting to farm halibut too; farmed halibut will inevitably force down the price of wild halibut.

Rising gas prices are even forcing some people to drive less.

American gas consumption has dipped a little. Motorists are once again shopping for fuel efficient cars -- no stupid, pointless, government mileage regulations required.

I'm trying to do my part too. I'm on the bike most of the time, though admittedly that's more of a selfish act.

I save money, I enjoy the ride and it's good for body and mind.

You'd think motorists would appreciate one less gas-guzzling car on the road too, and try to be a little more accommodating. But often as not, they still either don't see the bike or they try to run it off the pavement.

On those occasions, I can't help wondering if maybe it wouldn't be even better if gas went to $10 a gallon.

Looked at in one way, it would still be only a fraction of the cost of halibut.

Find Outdoors editor and opinion columnist Craig Medred at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.

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