posted
Personally, I don't think its a big deal. My auto insurance (with no accidents affecting the rate) still costs more than gasoline. And Canadians are working, if my calculations are correct, with 20% higher prices for gasoline, not accounting for the exchange rate which would bump it up a couple extra percent.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
This happens over and over again, and will continue to do so until literally there just isn't enough gasoline to go around, and people are forced to adapt.
edit: Or until somebody brilliant develops an energy source that can power a vehicle cheaply yet as efficiently. It does not have to be cheaper than gas now, just cheaper than what gas will be down the road.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: This happens over and over again, and will continue to do so until literally there just isn't enough gasoline to go around, and people are forced to adapt.
edit: Or until somebody brilliant develops an energy source that can power a vehicle cheaply yet as efficiently. It does not have to be cheaper than gas now, just cheaper than what gas will be down the road.
Or if we actually get the massive amounts of oil that we have in our own country instead of worrying about a little frog or fish that will be affected by it.
I'm down with nuclear powered cars though.
Posts: 1937 | Registered: Nov 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: This happens over and over again, and will continue to do so until literally there just isn't enough gasoline to go around, and people are forced to adapt.
edit: Or until somebody brilliant develops an energy source that can power a vehicle cheaply yet as efficiently. It does not have to be cheaper than gas now, just cheaper than what gas will be down the road.
Or if we actually get the massive amounts of oil that we have in our own country instead of worrying about a little frog or fish that will be affected by it.
I'm down with nuclear powered cars though.
The only oil we have in this country in "massive amounts" is shale oil. The stuff in Alaska and the Gulf is nice, but is dramatically less than is necessary to sate our appetite for oil. Our shale oil deposits, on the other hand, are massive. We're the Saudi Arabia of shale oil. The down side, is that it is extremely expensive to extract, even more expensive to refine, and is incredibly harmful to the surrounding environment even with the expensive measures taken to protect the surrounding areas. Thankfully that's changing a bit as new technologies come online - far less invasive ones. But even so, shale oil only works when oil costs $100+, since it costs almost $90 a barrel to produce.
Most new oil finds, the big ones, are in hyper deep ocean wells, like that big find the Brazilians had a year or two ago that was touted as bigger than a Saudi Super-well. Those, too, are very expensive, and very dangerous to extract.
We're far beyond the low hanging fruit. Everything going forward is extreme oil, and that means it's all expensive, even if there's still quite a bit of it left. Thankfully, American demand for oil is actually dropping year over year, and the trend is starting to hold as Americans buy more and more fuel efficient cars that reduce our long term demand for oil. I give Obama a lot of credit for forcing tougher and tougher CAFE standards on the auto companies. They've come up with some great cars, and especially companies like Ford, have managed to do it while not only NOT going bankrupt, but with the biggest profits they've seen in a decade. They have to move more volume and rely on smaller profits per car, but that's a 21st century reality regardless, and has little to do with Obama.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
quote:Originally posted by Geraine:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: This happens over and over again, and will continue to do so until literally there just isn't enough gasoline to go around, and people are forced to adapt.
edit: Or until somebody brilliant develops an energy source that can power a vehicle cheaply yet as efficiently. It does not have to be cheaper than gas now, just cheaper than what gas will be down the road.
Or if we actually get the massive amounts of oil that we have in our own country instead of worrying about a little frog or fish that will be affected by it.
I'm down with nuclear powered cars though.
Hope you enjoy cancer babies, dirty water, acid rain, etc etc if you push aside environmental protections.
I'm a big fan of nuclear power and electric/hydrogen cars. As nuclear power is arguably cleaner than hydroelectric and vastly cleaner than coal plants by an order of magnitude.
IP: Logged |
quote:Or if we actually get the massive amounts of oil that we have in our own country instead of worrying about a little frog or fish that will be affected by it.
The oil in the US couldn't affect the prices of gas noticeably.
quote:If we're using less gas as a result, I can't help but see the higher prices as a good thing.
Yep. Prices are by far the best way to change our gasoline habits.
quote:This happens over and over again, and will continue to do so until literally there just isn't enough gasoline to go around, and people are forced to adapt.
The nifty thing about undistorted price signals is, everything adjusts automatically.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Indeed. However, the reality is even more people get squeezed even more if you try to stop the adjusting. That doesn't mean that the effects of squeezing can't be reduced, just that trying to do so by stopping the adjusting is a very bad idea.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm sure there are lots of things you think are nifty that are connected somehow to some people not being so well off. All I said was that it was nifty things adjust automatically when price signals are allowed to operate, not that it was nifty certain people became worse off.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Its nifty the same way watching a tornado going through new york city would be nifty.
IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: This happens over and over again, and will continue to do so until literally there just isn't enough gasoline to go around, and people are forced to adapt.
edit: Or until somebody brilliant develops an energy source that can power a vehicle cheaply yet as efficiently. It does not have to be cheaper than gas now, just cheaper than what gas will be down the road.
Or if we actually get the massive amounts of oil that we have in our own country instead of worrying about a little frog or fish that will be affected by it.
I'm down with nuclear powered cars though.
It's not about the "poor little" frogs and fishes. It's more about there having no fishes for people to eat. Or, the soil is too poor to use for crops without the use of fertilizers which require an immense amount of energy to produce.
Read Jared Diamond's Collapse (he also wrote Guns, Germs and Steel), which shows rather directly the correlation between poor environmental decisions and the collapse of many historical civilizations. Our habitats are not too big to screw up.
While we're at it, you should read Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma. The book has a very good description of the way corn subsides have discouraged crop rotation in favor of plastic fertilizers which use an incredible amount of oil to produce, both subsidized by our tax dollars, and the run-off from which is killing the fishing industry inthe Gulf of Mexico (well, before the oil spill torpedoed it).
Printer-friendly view of this topic
