When my grandmother, in her 80s, finally relinquished her car keys she was notably upset, despite not having driven in months. An independent woman her whole life, those keys represented the freedom she had always had in her life. They made her feel alive.

And she wasn't alone. Americans love their cars. They have always been more to us than a way to get from here to there. That's why we have convertibles. That's why we have drive-in movie theaters. Driving is more than transportation--it's a lifestyle that is actually woven into the fabric of our society's collective memory. We look back fondly on a simpler time when a family would "go for an evening drive" after a home-cooked meal. I am guilty of this. A couple of years ago, I went to a drive-in burger joint in a small town in Wisconsin and felt a wave of nostalgia wash over me--not because I had ever been to one before (I hadn't), but because it made me feel closer to a snapshot of our history. If my car had fins, it would have been picture-perfect.

But with gas prices tipping over $4.00/gallon, driving is losing its sheen and people are voting with their wheels. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that March traffic was down 4.3% from last year.

The reasons for the decline seem clear. A slowing economy may be part
of the story, but the larger part is that more Americans are staying
home when gasoline is over $4 a gallon.

They better pull up a comfortable seat, because they can expect to stay home for awhile. Too bad we didn't calculate (or at least accurately calculate) rising oil prices into infrastructure and development plans. If we had, we might all have shorter commutes, better public transit and more fuel-efficient cars, making us all better prepared to face the increasing prices.

Thomas Friedman wrote a great op-ed this week on how much better off we would be if we had leadership that told the truth about gas--that $4.00 should be the minimum we ever pay for it again.

Imagine for a minute, just a minute, that someone running for president
was able to actually tell the truth, the real truth, to the American
people about what would be the best — I mean really the best — energy
policy for the long-term economic health and security of our country.

A New York Times columnist can dream, right? But here's the line that jumped out to me and caused me to write on this today:

Every decade we look back and say: “If only we had done the right thing then, we would be in a different position today.”

Not only do we do this as a country (and as a world), but we also do this in our individual lives and as professionals in the events industry. We don't change until change is the only option.

Organizations and conference attendees in your industry might not yet be demanding greener options, but they will. If you've already been on top of implementing sustainable practices in your approach, this will be a comfortable transition (if there even is a transition--you may already be there). But if you've been holding on to your old memories of what an event is and what it should be, you can expect to go the way of the gas guzzler (or the way of the CD, if you prefer this author's analogy), losing your value every time one more attendee decides that green events are a priority when selecting an event.

Lucky for us, we still have the time and power to define the caliber of events, meetings and conferences that we want to host, plan and attend. Let's not put this responsibility off until the next decade rolls around.