Marketwatch columnist Chris Plummer makes several arguments as to why high gasoline prices are good for the US. It’s one of the more lucid articles on the subject.

As oil prices climb, we’ve seen politicians call for a moratorium on the gasoline tax. In Europe, they’re calling for a lowering of the high benzine tax, too. Truck drivers and fishermen have gone on strike and set up blockades to pressure politicians to DO SOMETHING. Unfortunately, there’s not much any one country can do, even the United States, because the price of oil is determined by a variety of factors, most of which are out of the control of any one country. But people don’t want to change their lifestyle unless forced to and this is the time to make a very good case for changing one’s lifestyle. More people are open to it these days especially now that they see the terrible effects of our addiction to oil.

Plummer says that the high price of oil will do several things:

• kill the internal combustion engine: we don’t realize that this is ancient technology, artificially kept alive by the historically low price of oil;

• reduce the clout of the Middle East as well as oil-producing countries run by a dictator: the US and Europe (as well as China, Japan and India) won’t have to meddle in their internal affairs anymore;

• develop mass transit: far more efficient People Mover; and

• lead to better urban planning.

I would add another reason: high gas prices will force people to change their toxic lifestyles. This business of sitting in a car for a hour commute to and from work is not healthy for anybody. It’s stressful and wasteful. Hopping onto an airplane for a two-hour meeting is also wasteful but people don’t think about it, until now. Why can’t they use online video conferencing from Sightspeed or Skype? I have worked in a number of tech companies and for all their techiness and love of technology, tech executives will be the first ones to jump on an airplane for a two-hour meeting in London. They won’t use video. Again, why?

Europe has fallen in love with the automobile despite the high price of gas. In the Netherlands, I’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of SUVs just the in past five years. The traffic jams on the motorways are getting worse every year and the Ministry of Transportation’s response is to lay down more concrete. Not smart in a tiny, densely populated country that consistently violates EU norms for air pollution. In a place like the Netherlands, public transport is a perfect way to move people and by US standards, the public transport system here is excellent. But it needs to be improved: the trains need to run more efficiently and on time, the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-The Hague region should be treated as one metro area with ONE transport system, like the Paris Metro-RER. The government needs to stop delaying high-speed rail projects like the TGV (Thalys). The TGV has to slow down once it reaches the Dutch border (with Belgium) because of supposed problems with safety. Why is it in Belgium it’s been running at peak speeds for several years now? The Dutch and the Germans need to come together to build a high-speed rail network between Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Stuttgart, Munich. Right now, Deutsche Bahn has excellent high-speed rail service, but in Germany. When the trains come to the Netherlands, they crawl.