Having it both ways
 

Anybody watching the Congressional nonsense over gas prices? Rebates price caps etc... How about this, let the prices soar and get off freaking oil! It is so amusing to listen to congresscritters complain about global warming, overseas military disasters, and expanding suburbia but when the market starts to address these problems they don't want any part of it.

Governments love to fret about gas prices. The higher they go, the more they contribute to inflation, the higher inflation goes, the less chance thegovernment has of getting re-elected. As long as they can give the illusion of intervening without actually doing anything, everyone stays happy.
Gas prices are soaring, most of the developed world pays far more for its gas than the States. Places like Britain extract hefty taxes on every drop of fuel purchased, and yet still the motoring public open their wallets with a mixture of resignation and gratitude.

Let's be honest, most of us will at some stage have to change our present habits to accomodate the rocketing price of fuel. Since there appears to be a sellers' market, with no sign of a fall in consumption, the price can only go up. The days of the 30 minute commute to work will end, and public transport will have a resurgence in popularity. The value of your nice little country cottage will decline as future generations struggle to find the money to travel long distances to work every day.Air travel has passed the point of lowest cost in real terms, and is starting to get more expensive.

No amount of giovernment meddling can alter this, the only way forward is to develop alternative fuel technologies and modify our autromobile-centred lifestyles.By tinkering on the fringes, governments the world over are simply scraping the bottom of the barrel with a view to passing the problem on to the next generation. The first country to successfully divorce itself from oil consumption will be the next great superpower.

I took a screenshot of MSNBC's site the other night...it had a reference to the rebate idea. It'll probably be today's Manifesto...it's a hoot!

My car gets about 25 mpg overall...maybe more. I have an '03 Chevy Malibu, and I sit in traffic frequently. I'll have to test it again this week.

Maybe you did not notice. But gasoline prices only went back to early 1970s prices. And just like in the 1970s, when price of gasoline doubled, sale of gas guzzlers continued unabated. Meanwhile a president was losing a foreign war that had no purpose, and lying constantly. Country was leaching money everywhere with government debts skyrocketing. Inflation and stagflation would then result many years later. Does history repeat itself?

Meanwhile, draft was reinstated because the military could not recruit enough volunteers for a war based in presidental lies.

Scary thought, huh?

I've read $4.50 is the minimum to affect SUV sales appreciably.

OK, everyone agrees that cutting our oil consumption and foreign dependence is a good thing. Preaching hasn't worked. Rationing is a hot potato(e);) that nobody will touch. More tax is political suicide. It's clear that higher prices is the only way...but how?

The oil men in the White house look at each other and giggle. The answer is clear.....and very profitable. But golly gee, will big oil go along with it? The giggles turn to laughing and howling until the tears flow. Then someone suggests the oil executives be given a Freedom Medal for their national service. Now the laughter becomes a complete breakdown in decorum and the meeting must adjourn.

Now, you know I made that all up. That couldn't really happen...could it.....

I dunno... an oil company is really an energy company. They could be going into nuclear power, even, were they to take the wider view. They? It would only take one doing it to galvanize the others, and they'd do well by doing good. And I'm letting nuclear (even if George Bush and about a third of Congress, both houses, don't pronounce it right) stand for all the other energy alternatives.

I don't hold a lot of hope for any of this, though. The alternatives are so spread out, so unconcentrated, that gathering and concentrating the energy they develop is uneconomic, or else the pollution problems they pose are not easily made tractable. (ka-ching!)

Maybe if we could convert gamma radiation and alpha and beta decay directly into alternating current instead of having to wait for it to decay down to heat and boil water with it...

Gas is like, 75 cents in Thailand right now, and people are freaking out about rising gas prices there too.

It's all relative, eh?

Why does the government of a capitalist society need to get involved with this issue? It's all about supply and demand. The oil producing countries have the supply and we have the demand. Let prices rise until demand falls.

Supply and demand, yes. But the supply is effected by things like competition which is fast becoming extinct as the oil companies merge or are gobbled up. Less oil companies means less chance of anyone breaking ranks. :eyebrow:

Gas is 12 cents a gallon in Venzuela.

The obvious downside is, it's Venezuela!

I love how little alternative fuel is discussed during all of it... the white elephant in the room...

I suggest that we convert politicians and oil company execs into gasoline.

Bread and circuses, it's something that pisses people off, thus those we elect to bribe us with our own money feel the heat and the need to do something about it. The electorate doesn't give a damn about market forces & governmental interfering, just how much it costs to fill the H2 this week.

rkzenrage - show me one that's viable, this is something where the market is at work, when oil becomes expensive enough we will see alt. fuels, until then don't hold your breath. Want to know the first one that's getting plenty of cash? Oil Shale.

Define Viable... viable is not "does not interrupt the pampered little babies life in ANY way AT ALL" I hope?

What's the daily US demand of crude oil and petroleum products, then? You make a significant effect when you can offset a significant fraction of roughly 20 million barrels of various petroleum fuels daily, every day, day in, day out.

You need the scale, or no limits upon the possible development of that scale, to do this job.

From The Economist of 20 Apr 2006
Many technologies existed and are now being pioneered or rediscovered only because price of oil is starting to return to the average 20th Century price. Large sections of the North Sea and Bakersfield CA have new oil because more advanced recovery concepts are worth investigating. When does biodiesel become viable? $80 per barrel. Welcome back to the real world. Welcome to what happens when a nation blindly builds a fleet of 1960 technology SUVs rather than doing more with less energy. Now we must spend money, machinery, and labor - massively - for where most of that oil always remained.

So how many were too emotional to think logically; complain gas prices are too high? That same complaint was when gas prices rose from $0.85 per gallon to $1.30. So what did they do? Nothing. Nothing because their complaints were totally based in what adult children do - think emotionally; not logically. SUV sales even increased as gas went to $2/gallon. Still they cried like children - and did nothing.

IOW act like a Rush Limbaugh type instead of first learning facts. Price of oil triples and yet demand is not altered? By my definition, those who complain about price of gasoline are classic examples of anti-Americans. Emotional rather than logical. "I feel he has WMD; therefore he must". No wonder this nation now tortures people over the world - and so many Americans are too anti-American to even speak up. Same nonsense from those who somehow know oil prices are too high.

One final point. Serious problem is not due to a shortage of oil. Those second two trillion barrels will be burned at significantly increasing rates. Serious consequences are from other factors such as massive increases in CO2 emission and other toxic (destructive) compounds. We are only just learning consequences of things that few industrialized people have only just begun to consider AND now the entire world is just beginning to contribute into.

Plenty of oil is available. And there remains nothing in the long term that will provide 'energy per pound' so necessary in oil based fuels. We have plenty of oil. If we want to burn it like there was no tomorrow, costs (prices and other factors) will reflect accordingly. Oil is a wonderful material unrivaled in the products oil can create. And yet we just burn it. Don't worry. Be happy. Consequences of not using oil responsibly will instead fall on our heirs.

viable as in the same price or cheaper than oil.

Exactly... "does not interrupt the pampered little babies life in ANY way AT ALL".

Being able to get to work because your weekly fuel bill is less than half of your salary is not being pampered.

We are going to have to do different things, make concessions, use bikes, smaller vehicles, public transportation.
Get outside of "I have to have it exactly the way it is today. I HAVE to have my big SUV that I drive all by myself".
Oil and our children's future is not just about ourselves and it is being papered if that is what you call what you "need".
There is NO reason for a city of 250,000 not to have a decent, functional, public transit system.
The tax for it should not be up for a vote.

And the citizens who want to leave should be fenced in, and petroleum-burning trucks barred from entry.

Please tell me that is not a different version of the moronic "love it or leave it" mentality?
I have had a lot of respect for you...

It was a sensible followon to the notion that a tax shouldn't be voted on.

Not all taxes are voted on with a popular vote, you know that.

In fact, a vanishingly small number of them are.

All of them are...... indirectly, at the ballot box. :eyebrow: