So, what was our energy policy again?

Liz, at Spector Sport, has a post about the effect of higher gas prices that speaks for itself. I've quoted it below, but please go visit Liz's site and read her other stuff. It's good.

I don't know exactly what it is that Liz does for a living, but I gather that it involves traveling around Virginia inspecting grocery stores for some government agency. Anyway, her job puts her in contact with lots of small-business owners, who have interesting stories to tell. This one makes me wonder -- when your party controls the executive and legislative branch, at what point do you have to take responsibility for an energy policy that doesn't address dramatically increasing gas prices?

Not just gas shortages any more

I hear more and more often from the owners of small convenience stores in rural areas that their bread, dairy and/or grocery vendors will no longer drive that far to supply them. The cost of gas and diesel fuel has made it unprofitable to run a refrigerated truck twenty miles out into the boonies to keep a small store stocked.

Some stores simply don't sell bread or milk any more. Some store owners drive to a Costco or Sam's Club once a week and buy at near retail themselves, in order to keep at least a small inventory of dairy products and bread on hand. Others make deals with friends who own stores in larger towns; the friend contracts for enough for both stores, and gets reimbursed by the owner of the more remote store.

One might conclude that buying at a convenience store isn't the wisest way to spend one's money anyway. But many of these stores serve an elderly, poor population that may have no easy way to get into town to the supermarket. Many of them are disabled enough that they couldn't drive even if they could afford a car, and many have no family members living nearby who could help. In some counties, non-emergency transport is available to take people into town to shop, or for doctor's appointments and the like. But this isn't available everywhere, and it often seems as though the most needy areas have the least services of this sort.

So these little convenience stores in the most remote areas provide an important service, and they are having an increasingly difficult time staying stocked. Some of them are just going out of business. I arrived at one store to find that it was closing that same day. The owner had fallen and broken her hip, and while she was more or less ambulatory in terms of taking care of herself, she could no longer drive. Her dairy vendor had long since stopped stocking the store, and her bread vendor had told her the previous month that he couldn't afford to drive out there any more either. She said to me with a pained little laugh, "All these years I've been trying to keep things on hand so the old widows around here could walk to the grocery store. Now I'm just another old widow like them, and I don't know how I'm going to get my food either."

As gas prices continue to rise, I expect to hear more stories like this. Churches and social services will step in to help to some extent, of course, but I worry that the first response will be to move people out of their homes into assisted living, something that costs a whole lot more than keeping a remotely located grocery store stocked.