Slashdot Mirror
The Specter of Gasoline At $5 a Gallon
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that gas prices are already at record highs for the winter months — averaging $4.32 in California and $3.73 a gallon nationally. As summer approaches, demand for gasoline rises, typically pushing prices up around 20 cents a gallon. But gas prices could rise another 50 cents a gallon or more, analysts say, if the diplomatic and economic standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions escalates into military conflict or there is some other major supply disruption. 'If we get some kind of explosion — like an Israeli attack or some local Iranian revolutionary guard decides to take matters in his own hands and attacks a tanker — than we'd see oil prices push up 20 to 25 percent higher and another 50 cents a gallon at the pump,' says Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research. A sharp rise in the prices of oil and gas would crimp the nation's budding economic recovery would cause big political problems at home for President Obama, who is already being attacked by Republican presidential candidates over gas prices and his overall energy policies. On the other hand, environmentalists see high gas prices as a helpful step toward the development of alternative energy. Secretary Treasury Steven Chu notably said in 2008 'we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe' to make Americans trade in their 'love affair with the automobile' for a marriage to mass transit. In the meantime President Obama is in a bind because any success in tightening sanctions on Iran could squeeze global oil supplies, pushing up prices and causing serious economic repercussions at home and abroad."
we already top that in the UK:(
who where what when now?
Gas prices are already approaching € 2 / liter in Western Europe. What are you guys complaining about ? Get a life !
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
In Europe we already pay around €1.60 per litre, which is almost $9 per gallon. Get over yourselves America. You are 4% of the world population using 25% of it's oil. There's your problem right there.
The idea of spurring development of clean alternatives such as solar-charged fuel cells and the like is very appealing, but these technologies are simply not up to speed yet and likely won't be for at least several years.
Meanwhile, U.S. firms are busily building infrastructure to extract oil and gas from shale deposits estimated to hold 1.5 trillion barrels, or about 5 times the current Saudi reserves of 300 bbls. There's an additional 60 bbls in the Gulf of Mexico and another 30 in Alaska. Fully exploiting these deposits would cause the U.S. to become an energy exporting giant in about ten years, even as the Middle East oil supplies begin to wane, leading to a dramatic shift in global geopolitical priorities.
Environmentalists like Treasury Sec. Chu obviously won't approve of this trend, but the hard reality is that fossil fuels are not going away soon, thanks to technological advances such as "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing using horizontally injected water).
I really don't think it's a good idea for the Treasurer of the U.S. to advocate high gasoline prices. For gasoline to rise above $5 may make sense from the point of view of encouraging conservation and alternative systems like hybrid electric and plug-in electric cars, but in the short term it would cause tremendous hardship to the people. As transportation costs rise, so does the cost of basic necessities such as food, clothing, and daily commutes. Airlines would suffer as well. The economy will probably sink back into recession, and you can just picture Mr. Obama calling the Secretary into his office: "What were you thinking, Steve? It's election year!"
Personally speaking, as a solar buff, I would love to see a massive conversion to cleaner and more efficient methods of transportation and heating/electricity. It would also be nice to encourage more use of bicycles (and even walking) as an alternative to the almighty automobile in the U.S. From that point of view, high gas prices are great.
But when it comes to jobs in an already shaky economy, it's going to be disastrous, and may in fact change the electoral outcome this November.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
One problem is the disingenuous "all of the above" stuff you hear them spouting in the media. Wind and solar are not anywhere near being able to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Rather than massively investing in building out wind and solar we should be spending all that money researching ways to make it viable instead of a gimmick designed to enrich campaign donors and their startups' poor business plans.
It's the same with ethanol - it's not viable as an energy source, but it's quite profitable as a political source.
Yet another point of dishonestly is even using the phrase "reduce our dependence on *foreign* oil" when really they mean any oil. This is not bad in itself, but it's also weasel wording to imply they'd like to leverage more domestic oil sources when really, they want nothing of the sort.
We're never going to get anywhere on energy policy until we make honest efforts and have honest discussion.
trade in their 'love affair with the automobile' for a marriage to mass transit.
Mass transit is great until they go on strike.
I took the bus for a long time. It was always a miserable experience (crowded busses, never on time, routes that made no sense, etc..), and this strike was the final straw. Went out an bought a gas guzzling car.. and will probably never use the bus system again.
(Just felt like venting that...)
Oh wow... 5$/gallon? There are europen countries where tha gasoline is already at over 9 $/gallon....
Here in the tax-scourged Lombardy gasoline is at 1,812€/lt * 3,785 lt/gal * 1,3293 $/€ = 9,116 US$/gallon.
Stop fucking complaining! Your Californian average is way way cheaper than what the rest of the developed work pays for fuel!
This is what economic recovery looks like.
George orwell was wrong in that any new words and language patterns were needed. We need no doublespeak. We just define salvation as a pretty word, such as "economic recovery" "lowering unemployment" and then repeat that everything is going as intended towards salvation, time and time and time again. Of course a lot of independent people will put out graphs, essays and arguments that state the opposite. But you're the goverment or some other big, powerfull and connected, so you ignore everything, and paint your own rosy picture. If someone wants a graph, why use real numbers? just fabricate the shit as some kind of bullshit weighted numbers, and repeat the bullshit mantra; salvation is coming, everything is going as planned, our internvetions are effective.
$5 gallon gas prices? claim it's a myth, deny it as far as you can, then blame it on terrorists, speculators and iran. Just never admit that the retards and their friends in charge fucked up severely, at every single point they could.
1) stop the massive systemic subsidies to petro-firms (including tax breaks and hidden subsidies like free/cheap land use fees, etc.)
2) apply a DIRECT user-tax to vehicles, based on their mileage at registration (ie you buy your annual tabs, report your mileage, pay a tax). This would be based on road maintenance costs.
3) tax gas like any other sale.
I drive 100 miles a day, I don't mind paying a user tax on those miles, because I'm using the shared resource of roads. But it's bullshit that they can apply a gas tax (ostensibly for highway maintenance) and then steal that money for other purposes in government, then come back saying the tax isn't high enough.
With a tax code that (depending on who you talk to) is 50k pages and 5 million words long, we really need to stop social engineering in our tax code. It's a crazy idea, but maybe taxes could just be about, oh, covering the cost of government, and not about incentives or disincentives decided by some dude in an office somewhere.
I know, crazy ideas.
-Styopa
Let's stop the influx of "get over it" comments from Europe by removing the taxes from the price discussion. Then we can all equally complain about the cost of refined petrol instead of how much our governments like to add to the fees.
-Xen
Unlike the tiny countries in Europe, the US is a huge place. How would you like to have to drive 150 miles round trip just to see a doctor? Well, there are lots of people here in the states that have to do exactly that. They can't get on a bus or a train, they have no choice but to drive. Again, our country is huge, so expensive fuel has a large impact on everything we purchase because it all needs to be transported around this big country.
Americans should stop complaining and start switching to cars with smaller engine displacement. The average maximum allowed speed in the US is around 100kmph anyway, so there is no point to burn that much gas per mile. AFAIR it's around 47% SUVs and comparable right now. BTW, where I like (EU country known for cheap gas prices, regionally) the last time I've seen gas at $3.73 per gallon was in late 90'ties. At $4.32 it was around 2005 - and that's nominal values, with inflation (ca 3-4% yearly) it'd be even less! Right now the average is about $7.5 per gallon...
Current UK petrol/gasoline prices are around $9.76 per gallon, or about £1.35 per litre as us Britishers know it.
Diesel is about £1.42 per litre, or about £10.33 per gallon.
Like it or not, your fuel price is going one way. Suck it up while you still can lol.
AG
+1
What's really mind-blowing is the GOP candidates (except Paul) attacking Obama for both
1) not being tough enough with Iran
2) and for high gas prices (!)
In what universe do they live in where they don't realize pressuring an oil-producing country is going to raise oil prices (and hence gas prices, it doesn't fall from the sky)?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I've already seen some of my Facebook friends grousing about how speculators are gouging them. They have a hard time understanding how much the world has changed in a decade. Most of it is due to static oil supply meeting rapidly rising oil demand, coupled with extremely inelastic demand for gas. Within a few years we have another billion or so people competing with us for the same barrel of oil.
It's actually hard to speculate in oil, simply because there's no place to store enough to make a huge difference. Most "speculators" are sovereign countries, who are wagering that oil left in the ground today would be more expensive tomorrow.
Iran produces about 5% of the world's oil. If Israel and Iran go at it, the price of oil would go through the ceiling. The price of oil is set by the cost of extracting the last barrel of oil, and tapping those deep-sea oil wells and Canadian oil sands for that last barrel of oil is extremely expensive. If it costs $100 to produce that last barrel of Canadian oil, why would Saudi Arabia sell their oil for $20 instead of $100 too? They'd be leaving money on the table. That's why the last barrel sets the price.
And if a country expects a barrel of oil to shoot up $50 in the event of war, it makes sense to either charge more for pumping it today, or leave it in the ground until the price goes up naturally.
To put this in Slashdot terms, supposed you had a complete set of Babylon 5 collector plates that were worth $100 today, and you expected them to be worth $1000 next year from now, would you sell them now or wait? The smart thing to do is either wait until next year, or require the buyer to pay you a premium today above the $100 asking price. Expectations affect the price. And if you wait until next year, you have reduced the global supply of collector plates on sale, so the price goes up a bit to compensate. Supply and demand also affect the price.
If you're really worried about speculators, buy a Prius, Leaf, or Volt. Last time I checked, no one's been able to form a cartel on sunshine and wind. And if you drive a big SUV, stop whining about how speculators, government, Democrats, or "The Man" is screwing you, and take a long, hard look at how you are screwing yourself.
If you think that's expensive.... we are paying around US$5.13/Gallon here in the Australia.. (converted from AUD/L price of 1.45).. that's a reasonable city price, if you head into the country the price goes up from there.
So just relax in the knowledge you're getting a bargain - that's your 1 trillion dollar a year military doing its part to guarantee cheap US fuel supplies as part of the US energy strategy...
Mass Transportation in America won't have the amazing effect that people expect that it will. It makes sense in the cities (and in our cities we definitely need more / better public transportation), but the vast amount of Ameicans don't live in cities. We live outside of them, spread across a truly massive country, in smaller towns and villages. Mass transportation simply isn't economically viable on our scale.
It's a similar reason as to why cellular phone prices here are much higher than Europe. You can cover an entire country in Europe fairly easily, so it isn't as expensive to support. Thus, it's cheaper for the consumer. But in the US, it costs a fortune to plop down enough towers to cover even half of the country.
Love sees no species.
Now maybe more people will ride the bus.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I hope you'll understand what I'm gonna say but I just can't understand how this industry works with responsibility. It's like they don't have any responsibility at all and they don't want it. Usually, when your company fucks up bad, you clean it up and your company pays for it, not your customer. You don't want your customer to go off because of that. A real world example is if a building blows up in flames and you have to build another store, well your not going to rise the prices in your store because of that incident. In other words and tellling that again, if you fuck up, mistake or not, you don't pass that "responsibility" or whatever you want to call it on your customers.
But for the petrol industry, each time there's an incident, it effects the prices. OK I might exagerate on my next example but these things happened and have been reported on the news like if an oil silo blows up or something major happens, the prices are affected. WTF ? If someone breaks a nail, the prices might increase 5 cents lol.
You are a liar, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita shows the US at around 10 or lower. But then, you quote Reagan, I suspect facts and figures just enrage you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That thing that used to cost less COSTS MORE NOW.
That thing that is easily manipulated and a political football GETS PRESS ATTENTION IN AN ELECTION YEAR.
I would have been disappoint if it were not so.
I hope you all recognise that the prices of gas are being moved up by inflation, not by any increase in demand (demand in US is lower than 5 years ago), not by any decrease in supply (supply is greater now, with the demand being lower, and shale oil came online, there is more output).
It has nothing to do with any speculation on oil prices - speculators only discover the price that the economy sets for the underlying asset in whatever currency that is being speculated in. There are always 2 sides in every speculative action - some bet that prices go up and some bet that prices go down, you don't see politicians come out and blame speculators for LOWER prices, politicians like to take credit for lowering prices themselves, but speculators are always blamed by the politicians for higher prices.
In totalitarian nations (like former USSR), speculators were actually sent to prison, if not worse, all while government was printing billions of worthless paper and fixing prices, which always creates black markets and causes prices in the devalued currency to spike.
USA will not see lower prices as long as the Fed keeps printing, and the Fed will keep printing to prevent interest rates from spiking during T-bill and bond auctions, Feds promise to keep interest rates down for years, and this is done by buying up the Treasury debt with fake money.
I had a funny thread going on here, the guy can't understand basic inflation and that his house price is falling in terms of real money and in terms of his purchasing power, he expects the value of his house to go up, believe it or not.
Real values of the houses cannot and should not go up, the Fed is trying to preserve the nominal values, so money supply is inflated, real prices are falling, while nominal prices are staying up pumped by inflation that the Fed creates. This will cause all nominal prices to go up, but real prices are falling because of under-consumption, but not because people are saving. USA is using less energy than before (even less electricity), this is inconsistent with any recovery, it's not a recovery, people cannot afford to spend. But they can't afford to spend because they are not producing anything themselves, and they are not producing anything, because manufacturing left the country and manufacturing left because money is not good, inflation is killing savings and investment and taxes are historic high.
They'll tell you that taxes are very low based on % of GDP, but that's nonsense, GDP has been falling for 2 decades as real inflation is 11-15%, and so the deflater that is applied to the GDP is fake. USA is in a real depression, not a recovery, not a recession even. This is all done with fake money. The banks' earnings are fake, they are moving Fed's money and Treasury debt around, that's all they do. You can't have real investment credit because there are no savings, savers are being wiped out or pushed out of the country, all while the politicians are using every tool in their arsenal to gain popular vote, it's called class warfare and it's being used against you to destroy your economy.
You can't handle the truth.
Then someday it will be at $6, then $7, then $8, then $9, etc, etc.
As if it mattered to the consumer...
A gas price hike alone will probably not change the behavior of Americans significantly, other than driving more slowly, driving less, or driving the smaller vehicle in the household.
To make people bike to school or to work, you need to be able to get there safely. With the current road system you risk your life, at least in the suburban areas that I live and move around in.
I really miss biking everywhere in the Netherlands, where bicyclists often have their own separate bike lane, and the car drivers are used to bicyclists (who by the way obey traffic rules) in traffic with them.
Public transportation is also sorely lacking here in the US, it is not a viable alternative in its current state. Perhaps higher taxes on gasoline could pay for public transportation improvements? ... HAAAAHAHA! There is a great solution, but a political non-starter for ya.
The idea that road and fuel taxes pay for the total cost of road maintenance is a persistent myth. It is totally and completely untrue. The cost of road maintenance, construction alone is far higher, add the costs for emergency services dealing with road/car related issues and it goes even higher. Add policing for safety and the costs skyrockets.
Not that we have a choice, we need roads but we ALL pay for them from our ordinary taxes. Money from fuel tax might go somewhere else but that just means money flows from somewhere else to the roads.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
When you said
if the diplomatic and economic standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions escalates into military conflict
what you meant to say was "if the United States of America start another war."
Escalates into military conflict... Like an accident, it just "happens". Cut the crap.
... I would be fine about talking about the actual *price* of refined petrol instead of talking about the combined price + various taxes. But the fact of the matter is that petroleum companies are benefiting from a market structure where they do not incur large portions of the *costs* of using refined petrol. Until such time as all costs associated with using gasoline are built into the market price, taxes should certainly be included in the discussion.
The US is not Europe. There is greater distance between our population centers and most of our workers commute longer distances.
Increasing fuel costs are not something we can survive. Wise american politicians are taking it seriously... foolish ones are not. The public are fickle... and if irritated will turn on anyone they perceive as guilty. Such is the nature of politics.
Further, high fuel costs make everything more expensive. It makes food more expensive, it makes raw materials more expensive, it makes everything more expensive.
The net result of all that is that we're going to have to charge more for everything. That means the international cost of many goods will go up.
It should be noted that the trigger for the arab spring was rising food prices also related to fuel prices. Because of these fuel prices the cost of grain will keep going up which means we could get some very large famines throughout the third world.
This is not a minor issue. Fuel prices are high in europe mostly because of taxes... not the actual price of the fuel. When the actual price goes up it will force the european system to increase subsidies to industry to offset those costs... or suffer even worse economic problems.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
[QUOTE]and as summer approaches, demand for gasoline rises, typically pushing prices up around 20 cents a gallon[/QUOTE]
Gasoline is sold by volume. It is not sold by density. Fuel warms-up in transit during the summer. So, the gallons you are pumping out have less fuel, by density, in them, and thus less stored energy, which results in fewer MPG. While you are getting less 'bang-for-your-buck' (pun), the gas station is charging even more for the lesser amount of energy they are distributing to you, because they raise the prices during the summer.
[b]You are getting DOUBLE PUMPED by the gas stations![/b]
The problem with mass transit in places other than the coasts is that it just isn't. I live in San Antonio, TX. If it wanted to take the bus to work I would have to walk 20 minutes to the closest bus stop. Take a 45 minute bus ride. Switch buses, take another 25 minute bus ride and then walk 4 blocks to my workplace. Work is 12 miles from my house, but the bus would do 20 miles because of the route. This is not a practical alternative. The other poor thing is that the bus arrives at the final stop at 8:05am which means I would be late for work, so I would have to catch the one that stops at 7:05 am which means I sit for an hour before work, and I would have to get up at like 4am to catch the bus. Very very impractical. Mass transit is not the solution for most cities.
It seems that predicting doom and gloom about the next round number in gas prices has become an American tradition (see $3 gas in 2005, $4 gas in 2008, etc). On the contrary, overall it's been a good thing - it's lead to conservation and fuel-efficient vehicles, just as economics would predict. 10 years ago the notion of getting Americans to use less gasoline year-over-year was crazy talk... now it's reality.
In early 2008 I traded in my old '90s Toyota truck for a Ford Escape hybrid. Many of my friends thought I was crazy. "Gasoline prices will never make it worthwhile, you're wasting your money on hybrid tech, Ford will never be profitable again", etc... Now Ford is more profitable than ever and builds vehicles on par with Toyota/Honda quality (that Escape is at 60,000 miles and hasn't had any service except oil and air filter changes). And gas prices averaging more than $4 over the lifetime of the vehicle did make the purchase worthwhile, especially with the hybrid tax credit.
The other really interesting thing going on right now is that the US "is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency", according to a recent Bloomberg report. Apparently domestic oil output is the highest it's been since 2003, and (even better) the amount of oil we import from the Middle East has fallen to 15% from 23% in 2009. The sooner we're not relying on places like Iran and Saudi Arabia for our day-to-day energy needs, the better.
The effect of the European tax regime has been to encourage efficient vehicles, and both European and Japanese manufacturers benefit. It also pads the effect of fuel cost, since taxes can be adjusted to slow the rate of increase and so reduce economic dislocation.
When the great American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked that taxes were what he paid for civilisation, he was in effect pointing out that all taxes whatever are social engineering. Small Government Republicans always claim that they want to reduce taxes, but somehow it turns out that as soon as the economy has a bit of slack representatives will vote for pork barrel (your bridge in Alaska in exchange for my bioethanol subsidy). Personally I think it is better if people without an axe to grind work out how to use taxes in a socially beneficial way and politicians only get to vote on it.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I just wish American voters would stop voting based on their pocketbooks and vote instead on policies. Regardless of whether the change is for the better or not, dumping the current president just because the economy is in trouble is short-sighted and more than a little superstitious, like killing the high priest when the crops fail. Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush were not responsible for the economic problems during their terms, and shouldn't have been blamed for failing to "fix" them in less than four years. Likewise with Barack Obama.
But thanks (in part) to campaign slogans such as "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" and campaign strategies such as "the economy, stupid", voters who don't have firm convictions about political philosophy, or a good understanding of political issues, are brainwashed to think that the president is in charge of what's really a decentralized market-based economy, and that replacing him with someone else will somehow change everything.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Are the high gas prices because Obama decided not to give more subsidies to gas companies? Is it because Obama has somehow magically started a secret war in Iran that nobody knows about but Republican candidates? Or is Obama literally 51% or more of the oil speculators?
I'm all for making your opponent look bad, but I have a hard time seeing how Obama is to blame for current gas prices. Feel free to enlighten me.
I have not seen such expensive oil prices before! Can we just stop depending on fossil fuel? I've called a few toll free numbers of oil companies they all say nonsense!
the economic argument seems to be the only one that will get people to change their ways on a personal and national policy level in terms of fossil fuel use and the environmental and geopolitical damage it does
i cheer for $8/ gallon gas. let's hit $10/ gallon, please. let's start designing our cities more intelligently, use more mass transit, breathe cleaner air, and care less about the middle east
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He actually WANTS high energy prices (including gasoline). The videos are out there and his energy secretary told Congress as recently as yesterday that they are NOT interested in lower gas prices for us peasants.
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/29/morning-bell-white-house-wants-to-keep-gas-prices-high/
Mass transit can be great in urban areas, but there's still a lot of issues with capacity and availability. I live a little outside DC and use Metro, but over half my commute is spent just getting to the nearest Metro station. During rush hour, they run more (and sometimes longer) trains, but they are still over capacity. The trains are sardine cans and people still get left on the platform sometimes. On the weekends, the trains are often more than 15 mins apart and, if there's an event or two in town, it can be even worse than rush hour. In a few years, the new Silver Line will make its way closer to me, but I don't see that helping the capacity issue.
I've also lived in places with little mass transit to speak of. Sure, they had buses, but it was actually quite rare to see one on the road.
End of line..
The writing's been on the wall for years. If your car gets 35mpg and you live within 15 miles of your job, an increase of $2 a gallon hits you with a whopping $5.80 increase per week -- what's that, a big mac? A latte and a half?
And if you *haven't* got a fuel-efficient car and tried to live where you work or close to transit, given how long we've known that gas prices fluctuate in response to world events, well, you've done it to yourself. Shut up.
Free market, y'all. You asked for it, you got it, and you demanded a house with a lawn and an SUV anyway, and now you've got the nerve to cry about gasoline prices? I believe the french refer to this sort of thing as 'yo problem'.
god is just pretend.
How often do you need to drive from Dundee, Scotland to Poole, England?
646 km seems to be about as far as one can drive in the UK --- that's just 400 miles --- not a terribly long trip by U.S. standards and for me, located in a town which takes advantage of its central location as an argument for businesses to locate here, or do business w/ businesses here, won't get one to more than a small portion of the U.S. (and part of Canada --- New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and most of Ohio, Vermont, and parts of Kentucky and North Carolina --- there are 50 states, and that's not even the original 13 colonies (but includes parts of territories and subsequent additions).
I've hopped in a car and made a solo trip of 900 miles one way in one 18 hour haul (had to finish a shift working, then appear at a conference and there wasn't a convenient airline connection) --- even that wasn't half-way across the country.
When I was stationed in Texas we'd get students in from Europe and the Middle East and they'd have purchased 30-day Greyhound bus passes thinking that they'd be able to see the U.S. on the weekends --- had to explain the reality that if they hopped on a bus Friday at 5:00 p.m., they'd reach the boundaries of Texas just in time to have to turn around to return for class Monday morning (that same 400 mile radius doesn't quite cover all of Texas (but does most of Oklahoma, almost half of New Mexico and small bits of Arkansas and Louisiana (and a portion of Mexico)).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
So, where do Gas cars turn too? The grid.
Where:
“When I was asked earlier about the issue of coalunder my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocketeven regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gasyou name itwhatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations. That will cost moneythey will pass that money on to the consumers.” – Barack Obama, January 2008
--
“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
I know all about how - in relative terms w.r.t. income, distances, necessity, etc. - the $5/gallon is high (I have lots of relatives in the US and I spend also some time there frequently), but I also know that if you'd switch to more reasonable vehicles (to put it mildly), you'd be much better off. Just as an example, my car here in Europe goes ~41 miles/US gallon (gasoline, not diesel) on highway at ~80-87 mph speedyes, that's quite more than 65 mph). If all (or most) US cars would be above 35 miles/g, you'd need much less fuel. But, of course, I couldn't estimate how that would affect the price of gasoline. And even if at %5, you're still paying ~1.5x less than an average European.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Its $9 a gallon here in the UK or pretty close to it - converting to Us gallon from imperial is a bit shaky...
And the average distance seems to be 9miles which takes 45mins
Steven Chu is the Secretary of Energy, not Treasury.
But this time other trends set in motion by the last oil shock that sent gas above $4/gallon may trump all that. If you've been paying attention the last 4 years, nearly every major car company has been working on and rolling out production model hybrids and EVs. Tesla, despite the scoffing ICE fans, has not only survived but is about to release its 3rd generation of vehicles. And what's more, EV delivery vehicles are starting to hit the scene; Ford is rolling out its own. Another smaller one called Mia has another.
The delivery vehicles are a significant one because if you could spend $1.34/60 miles to make your deliveries vs. $20/60 miles paying for gas at $4/gallon, 12mpg, you'd be insane as a business owner to not be all over that. Trucking is an extremely competitive business where fuel costs and the means to shave them are a major concern. And that's the thing, if delivery vans break the ice with commercial use of EVs, then you can bet the long-haul guys won't be far behind clamoring for semi-versions of EVs.
So, on the consumer and commercial fronts the options have developed to give everyone a real window to jump from the ICE ship. 2/3rds of American oil consumption goes to transportation, so if the price spike last time was enough to get people to abandon SUVs, then this time, if the spike is severe enough, especially in a down economy, we might all wake up in 2013 in an America where the oil industry is 1/3 its former size. That is the definition of a sea change.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Check out what the rest of the world pays per litre, look at how far down the US is on the list -- even lower than Canada, which produces the damned stuff.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_gas_pri-energy-gasoline-prices
Now STFU and pay like everyone else -- WITHOUT government subsidies!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Change has to come over time, and while incentives in Europe and elsewhere have encouraged alternatives to long-distance commuting by car, the US until the crash has been continuing to gallop in the opposite direction. Where mass transit is popular and works well, that's been accomplished not entirely by running trains and buses on every thoroughfare. People have also chosen to arrange where they live and work to take advantage of available transit, and developers followed in their decisions of where and how to build. In addition, people might have a different idea about the preciousness of their time. Perhaps the "socialist" meme of shorter work weeks has some advantages over the American "workaholic" archetype that grew from "management by emergency". I used to drive to work and now commute by bus, and I can personally attest that although it does take longer, now I actually look forward to the "down time" at the beginning and end of the day in which I can relax and let someone else worry about the traffic.
GP's point was to take fuel taxes out of the equation: E said to direct-tax drivers for their actual mileage when renewing registration based on actual road costs, and just tax fuel as any other merchandise.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
Gasoline being expensive is no fun, but there are parts of the world where gasoline is expensive now ... and life goes on.
Now if we see a shortage of gasoline where you can't get it at any price that is even more painful ...
But worse yet than that would be a shortage of diesel ... at that point you don't have to worry about going to work you'll be too busy trying not to starve/freeze to death.
See your food is transported to the store by trucks that burn ... Diesel, and it may have been moved by rail by trains that burn ... diesel
The food was harvested and planted and transported by combines, tractors, and trucks that burn ... umm diesel
Ohh what's that you have an electric car? Sorry the power plants burn coal that is delivered by trains that burn diesel that was mined by trucks burning diesel.
So if there is no diesel there is no food and no stable electric grid.
So while it is nice to talk about public transportation .... the light rail does not deliver food to the grocery store, or deliver coal to the power plant.
If you are worried about gasoline prices don't buy an electric car... consider planing a garden, because while biking to work would be annoying being able to eat is a higher priority.
..like alternate energy research and alternate transport systems, you would probably already have your cheap alternatives.
Electric cars, natural gas fueled buses, biodiesel, light rail, electric bicycles (sounds like Europe?), fuels from algae, are all nearly there.
Don't forget that poison your car spits out.
Even the people who don't drive are subsidizing the people that do.
To the poster that suggested they need cheap fuel prices so their kids can go to a good school - your comment made my day! I know you were serious but it seems many of us are in different worlds.
When you say "actual price" it leads me to believe that you really have no grasp on the meaningful economic, social, political and environmental consequences of commerce.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Some folks in other countries just dont get how spread out the USA is. There is no public transportation worth taking to work if its takes 3 hours just to get you there. I dont do anything with my car except go to work now. Quality of life has dropped of the map for some of us. Its not even worth owning a car anymore, but only tied to it out of need to get to work. A vicious cycle.
The trend is towards getting oil from offshore/deeper reserves involving more complex engineering and equipment. The cost of recovering oil is going to increase because of this. You'd be just as well of complaining that people have used up too much oil in the past, it'll get you just as far towards a solution.
Where we have the highest price in the whole north america! The highest taxes too, and a crushed middle-class.
We pay more than $5/gallon for a long time. No matter why in Québec the majority of cars are sub-compact (yaris, rio, accent, fiesta, 2, etc) or compact (corolla, civic, 3, elantra, etc).
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Taking into consideration the exchange rate, with our current price of $1.10/L, we're already paying over $5.00 per US gallon.
Also, it's spelled "spectre".
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu notably said in 2008...
FTFY
The US is not Europe. There is greater distance between our population centers and most of our workers commute longer distances.
Part of the problem.
Increasing fuel costs are not something we can survive. Wise american politicians are taking it seriously... foolish ones are not. The public are fickle... and if irritated will turn on anyone they perceive as guilty. Such is the nature of politics.
Can't survive in your current state.
Further, high fuel costs make everything more expensive. It makes food more expensive, it makes raw materials more expensive, it makes everything more expensive.
Unless you reduce the need for them to be transported long distances
The net result of all that is that we're going to have to charge more for everything. That means the international cost of many goods will go up.
See above
It should be noted that the trigger for the arab spring was rising food prices also related to fuel prices. Because of these fuel prices the cost of grain will keep going up which means we could get some very large famines throughout the third world.
This is not a minor issue. Fuel prices are high in europe mostly because of taxes... not the actual price of the fuel. When the actual price goes up it will force the european system to increase subsidies to industry to offset those costs... or suffer even worse economic problems.
Europe's economic problems are not due to high fuel prices.
I'm an "environmentalist" but the idea of high gas prices being good is crazy to me. The assumption that people will react logically to oil scarcity is so naive. People will actually just fight to hold on to their present lifestyle rather than accept change. Instead of pushing for sustainability or efficiency, what will actually happen is more support for "drill baby drill," oil wars, tar sands development, and the possibility of mass synthetic fuel production.
Living in the suburban hell created during the "greatest generation" when shit hits the fan is going to be no fun. I use sites like walkscore.com to see in my city where the most efficiency can be gained simply by buying a house with significant daily resources in a walk-able distance. What's clear is that the vast majority of my city will be completely ef'd if gas prices double or tripple (real value) and all costs go up substantially. Peak Oil is going to send American cities in the suburbs into a tailspin because all of our cities were built under the pretext of cheap endless oil. I can really only guess what America cities might still function half way, but only guessing any cities that are extremely efficient and have a mass transit culture(NYC/Seattle).
I'm just not seeing any solution to peak oil, I know there are alternatives, but the way our system works in America is that we try every wrong solution first before we even look at the right one. We're going to hit a brick wall and suddenly be out of cheap oil before we seriously look at CNG, E85 (cellulostic, not the corn farce), Coal Oil etc. Even these are fininte resources in themselves (and polluting), but the real issue here is that our society cannot function without cheap private transportation and that system is fueled by one source of energy
It's too late to build smaller cities, more private bike paths, high rise towers. It's over. We have no money, we don't make anything, we spent our wad like a tailor park trash after winning the lotto. We're done. Our cities will not function without private transpiration.
So the question becomes, where on earth is a reasonable place to make a future given the likelihood of sudden oil shortages and price volatility brought on by lack of supply or conflict.
First of all, the reason why gas is at the price it is, is because of Oil companies monopoly control of the market. It has nothing to do about peak oil bull crapola or political issues, beyond the ones of artificially creating shortages.
The energy sector is reknown for creating and building into markets artificial scarcity to jack up prices. It happens all the time. For example, when Enron was around they had people shutting off energy supplies to California to jack up prices. Who cares if little old ladies couldn't afford air conditioning, they got killed outright.
Anyone care? Nope.
Nobody got prosecuted either.
There really is no reason for high gas prices. The earths crust has so much hyrdrocarbons as the Russian's found out, that there is no way we will ever exhaust the supply of hydrocarbons in the form of Oil or Gas.
There is _literally_ oceans of the stuff throughout the entire solar system, so it is abundant and naturally produced.
(No Plants or Dino's required.)
This all has to do with deals made by a few people in the 1950's with the Arab's for Oil. Henry went over and had a discussion with them, and said, "We will not develop the US Oil reserves and we will buy all of our Oil from you. In return, you have to invest some of that money in Federal Reserve notes."
Get it now?
Federal Reserve Notes are valued in Oil. That is how the world works. That is why the US Dollar seems to be almost "Undead" like, because no way in the world, could we wage wars like we are doing in all these different countries and pay for them with a fiat currency.
Secondly the United States has so much Oil, it is almost unimaginable. These evil people have plotted for 50 years to work with environmental groups, government to insure laws are passed so no drilling can happen.
Now ask yourself, why would you not drill on one of the largest Oil reserves known on the planet in your own back yard, yet get the same resource from politically unstable areas? Put it into tankers which are incredibly harmful to the environment if they run aground in the ocean off coastlines, and ship it here?
All when they could be transported much more cost effectively with refineries and local trucking on American soil without gigantic Oil spills every decade off the coastlines from Oil rig platforms or tankers running aground?
Reason: Maximize the value of the Federal Reserve note, and number 2 keep the energy sources away from the people who use them, in a political sense.
(i.e. People complain about the price of Oil, the powers that be are effective insulated because they can say we can't do anything about it, its the middle east you know...blah blah blah.)
What you have is a gigantic transfer of wealth using energy from the masses to the political class with absolutely no accountability.
It is the _perfect_ political system. You get to get screwed, and the politicans and oil companies can set any price they like, and claim it isn't there fault.
No doubt, a war in the middle east just might force them to open drilling in the US. Not for the reasons you are thinking of though. (i.e. political pressure.)
No, you see, by the time they start drilling in the USA, they are going to get probably $8 dollars a gallon for it at the pump.
That would be the ONLY reason why they would open up Oil drilling in the USA.
_GREED_
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
What's really mind-blowing is the GOP candidates (except Paul) attacking Obama for both
1) not being tough enough with Iran [nytimes.com]
2) and for high gas prices [nytimes.com] (!)
In what universe do they live in where they don't realize pressuring an oil-producing country is going to raise oil prices (and hence gas prices, it doesn't fall from the sky)?
For politicians, logical paradoxes are a feature, not a bug.
Because in the political arena, your possible replies to a paradox are:
1) Ignore the attack and rely on the audience's intelligence in rejecting the paradox themselves (Uh Oh).
2) Make the audience to understand the logical paradox (but now you're a smarty-pants "intellectual").
3) Answer using appeals to emotion, authority, or reply using additional nonsense (we're doomed).
I'm a Murican. Gas is now about $4.00 in my area, the northeast. This summer I went to Germany, where gas is $10.00 per gallon, both due to cost and the useless dollar. We rented a BMW 320d, which got a verified 49 mpg on diesel, and still ran hard at autobahn speed that would get me jail time in the US. Most cars in Germany are diesel, 2.0 liter with a manual transmission. We even saw the Chrysler minivans outside a school picking up kids, just like here at home. They all had a diesel. I'd love to buy a modern turbodiesel instead of a Hybrid. There aren't any for sale, save VW/Audi, backordered to 2014, or very expensive MB/BMW. You can get 50 mpg...it can be done...they don't sell those cars here.
According to http://www.petrolprices.com/the-price-of-fuel.html
Price of UK fuel:
With no fees - (UK£ 0.478) per litre = 3.46468209 US$ per Imperial gallon
With retailer/delivery fees - ((UK£ 0.478) + (UK£ 0.05)) per litre = 3.82709653 US$ per Imperial gallon
With regular VAT as well - ((UK£ 0.478) + (UK£ 0.05) + (UK£ 0.2215)) per litre = 5.43259252 US$ per Imperial gallon
And the full price with added fuel tax - ((UK£ 0.478) + (UK£ 0.05) + (UK£ 0.2215) + (UK£ 0.5795)) per litre = 9.63297594 US$ per Imperial gallon
Steven Chu is not the "Secretary Treasury" which is grammatically incorrect at the very least (Secretary OF THE Treasury if TFS was correct) United States Secretary of Energy - Steven Chu. A little google search wasn't that hard now was it?
There Can Be Only One...
Gas prices are already approaching € 2 / liter in Western Europe. What are you guys complaining about ? Get a life !
Trust me, with our current socialist trends, we're on our way to meet you.
the oil co are shutting down refineries to make more $$$ so why build more then you can make more by cut down on the number of them.
as in the last fuel price spike, it was the commodity speculators who caused it. The simple solution is to end the speculation, or nationalize oil production.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
raise the tax .5-1.0/gal NOW, and use that to fund NAT GAS act, algae development, and re-build roads.
646 km seems to be about as far as one can drive in the UK --- that's just 400 miles --- not a terribly long trip by U.S. standards
Not a long trip by European standards either, if you're talking about the whole landmass. Sure, the USA is 50 states, but how often do you actually need to drive from coast to coast? I'd imagine not much more often than I need to visit Portugal or Russia.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
America was made big and strong based on two things, cheap labour and cheap fuel. The Mexicans and African Americans look after the first bit and they are dummy spitting over the second. Welcome to the real world.
It's interesting to look at the exports:
Qatar --- ``main drivers for this rapid growth are attributed to ongoing increases in production and exports of liquefied natural gas, oil, petrochemicals and related industries''
Luxembourg --- ``Services, especially banking and other financial exports, account for the majority of economic output. ''
Singapore --- ``significant electronics, petroleum refining, chemicals, mechanical engineering and biomedical sciences sectors.''
Norway --- ``Continued oil and gas exports''
Brunei --- ``Crude oil and natural gas production account for about 90% of its GDP.''
Hong Kong --- ``Much of Hong Kong's exports consist of re-exports''
UAE --- ``More than 85% of the UAE's economy was based on the exports of natural resources in 2009''
while the United States is, ``third largest exporter'' notably, ``transportation equipment was the country's largest export''
It takes a lot more energy to build a car, or a bus, or a plane than it does to run a server for banking, move some boxes around, or pump oil out of the ground.
Moreover, the U.S. population is 313,104,000, while the 6 countries ahead of it don't even total 1/10th of the U.S. population, and the U.S. GDP is 3 times the size of the next largest. It's interesting to note that the first European country on the GDP list, Germany is 17th on the list per capita, 20% off the U.S. number.
Probably the best number which shows how silly the number being cited is, is that the GDP of the District of Columbia is higher than Qatar's (102,891) at $174,500 and DC produces nothing but hot air.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I live in DC and we have a reasonable metro system. I'm anticipating the day when they finish the station near my office so i can take it to work. However, even at $5 a gallon gas, it's not going to be any cheaper than driving. assuming $5/gal and my 12 mile commute and my 20 mpg car, it would cost me $6 to go to and from work. I don't know what the fare to the new station will be, but the fare to the closest current station from my house is $6. It costs me twice as much to take mass transit as it does to just drive. Even if gas was $8/gal, it would still cost less to drive. I'm pretty sure that if gas were that expensive, it would somehow push metro prices up too.
Things get even worse when i want to go out on the town with my wife. Now we are talking about driving a couple of miles. Assuming we are going someplace that I can park free, it's only going to cost a buck or two to drive the car. Metro in the city for one person is twice that, but we have two people so for us metro becomes 4x as expensive as driving.
I've even spent some time thinking about the money i could save if i had no car (which doesn't really seem to be an option because i like to get away to parks and areas that public transport doesn't get to on the weekends). even considering my parking spot, registration, insurance and maintenence, it's still cheaper for me to have my car than rely on public transportation. Maybe if you factor in the price of the car which i've had for (6 years and don't plan on changing anytime soon) it might be the same.
Approx $1.35 per litre for unleaded in South Africa. I hope that makes you feel better. :-(
That is what folks are paying in Saudi Arabia, by the decree of the king of coarse.
Just complaining....
By actual price I mean the pre-tax open market price of a commodity, good, or service.
If you're paying eight dollars a gallon in Europe then you're not paying the pre tax open market price. While the actual price of the product that pump is what ever the gas station says it is... obviously were you to purchase the same thing on the open market you'd be paying a very different price.
I'm not interested in semantic games with you. You know what I mean.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
400 miles isn't coast-to-coast.
I suspect that I travel 400 miles or more one way much more frequently than you visit Portugal or Russia (two archery tournaments each year, trips to visit in-laws for holidays, annual vacation, family reunion and homecoming at the family church, and two or three educational trips w/ the children each year, plus the odd wedding or funeral).
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe' to make Americans trade in their 'love affair with the automobile' for a marriage to mass transit.
The first thing you have to realize is that we as American's pay more for our precious petrol than pretty much any other western nation. We don't pay for it at the pump but we do pay. We maintain a massive military commitment in the middle east to make sure there is a stable flow of oil out of that region. We pay for cheap gas in income taxes.
As to that make me trade my love affair for the automobile bit, if that is your attitude screw you! Seriously its my planet too and NOBODY living in this nation really has all that small a carbon foot print. Driving your hybrid roller skate just moves that carbon to a generation plant some place else.
I agree we should stop the military miss adventures; the unfairly shift costs on to those who 'don't want oil' if any such people really exist. The moment you tax my gasoline just for it being gasoline, or burden oil producers trying to exploit their own property you are unfairly shifting costs on to me and you haven't the right! I will fight you tooth and nail at every turn, and I will enlist others to do so as well. The result will be the good you might have done improving efficiencies solving problems that everyone wants solved will be wasted bickering with me and others.
No its not for me to back down. Personal freedom is MORE important than anything. We are not human if we don't have that; I don't care what you say. If I had to destroy the plant in order to defend my right destroy my little plot of earth if that is what I want to do with it, I would. Don't think otherwise. I'd rather do neither of course.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
With so many politicians pockets being lined by big oil, the only way this will happen is when the last drop of crude is sucked from the earth.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Your comment is about as tone deaf as marie antoinette's comment about cake... or obama's suggestion that we use algae.
If you don't have a solution for me right now or within the next couple years you have no solution.
its like someone saying they're hungry and you responding "oh, you should build a tractor so you can plow that field"... Fantastic... but I'm hungry now. That comment is in no way helpful. Ideas that might yield a benifit in ten years when you have pressing issues RIGHT NOW are stupid suggestions.
If I tell you I'm thirsty and you respond "oh you should build an aqueduct"... That is in no way a solution to my problem.
The problem is FUEL NOW.
And the administration is frankly indifferent to the fuel prices. They've said as much repeatedly and even bragged about how high they are. So fine. If this is what they want, then they get to take responsibility for it.
Heads are rolling. If the europeans like getting ripped off at the pump, that's your business. I truly don't care. Not my country. In this country, we tend to at least try to not get scammed.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Good, then by the time I retire to the countryside there will be plenty of space.
Good bye city life! I shant miss you, you smelly, dirty thing, you. Green Acres I is there.
Gonna make me a combination gazebo/planetarium and build a 24" Dobsonian reflector.
Crete - Hellas here. Today 95 octane unleaded fuel is sold at about 1.80 Euro/liter. Wolfram Alpha reports this is an equivalent of $9 per gallon.
We have not used that much oil this year for heating oil, due to the mild winter in the NE.
We also have lots of oil coming in domestically...trouble is, fucking oil companies are taking what should server as a bit of a surplus and selling it to China and everywhere else, for more profit, and hence raises OUR prices due to this artificially created shortage.
We should try to mandate that more domestically drawn oil is kept for domestic use!!
In the meantime in addition to looking to generate new resources for energy, for God's sake, start giving out leases for oil in the Gulf again....let the fscking pipeline from Canada go through...start drilling for more oil that is being discovered domestically in the US.
Hell, I've heard rumors that there is oil in the Dakotas and area enough to supply the US with oil for decades....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The price of gas is going up 40% in 1 month, just because it's cheaper than places where other people live doesn't mean it's a good deal!
My hourly wage isn't going up. My food prices are. My commute isn't getting shorter, and moving into the city would offset the savings on gas by raising the price of my house.
And honestly, nobody in America cares what they pay in Germany or UK any more than you care about what we pay here, so why even comment?
Public transit can be expensive. Sometimes driving (gas and insurance) is cheaper than catching the bus. And the bus times may be infeasible.
Solution: Better funding of public transit, hopefully by the federal gov't. Less on war, more on education, transit, etc.
Oh, while I have some people's attention, when the bus is turning back into traffic with the directional light flashing, that is supposed to be the same as a yield sign, at least here in Washington state.
Speculators never get there hands dirty by touching oil - they are thousands of miles away!
I never claimed to have an absolute solution to the problem, I was highlighting some factors that should be taken into account when addressing the issue.
Reducing the amount of fuel needed is surely a great objective for any solution to a FUEL NOW based problem. No amount of aggression on your part will change the fact that you have no birthright to cheap fuel and the tone of your response seems to be that it's the world's fault for not creating a method by which America can continue to consume fuel at a rate that suits its angry internet commentors.
If you're looking for someone to uncork the moon and a load of oil spills down into your fuel tanks, you might be out of luck. Magic solutions do not exist to these continent wide problems and suggesting a reduction in the amount of fuel needed over a period is far more constructive than shouting that I didn't create an immediate cure all for a problem an entire nation walked into. We didn't make your lifestyles unsustainable.
If you think it's costing too much to fuel your big red pickup truck, I'd point you towards current Oil company E+P spends as a justification for price increases and the cost of bunker fuel for the international shipping community for the reason everything else you use is going to go up in price (although nowhere near as big an impact in environmental or cost terms as the price of the fuel in the truck taking that stuff to your local store, unless you live in one of those sensible communities that is close to a reasonable rail or water transport hub, not stuck in the middle of nowhere accessible only by road).
I've noticed car sizes hasn't really been mentioned much up to this point, which makes me wonder how relevant it is. In the UK we tend to drive smaller cars, less pickup trucks etc. and to my mind this seems to be a cultural thing.
When I was on holiday in the US about 5 years ago we hired a Jeep Liberty and found that it had an enormous engine and seemed to get plenty of respect - in fact I have a vague memory of locals cheering as we went past in some little town in the middle of nowhere, but I have no idea what that was about.
On the other hand 2 years ago we went again and this time hired a Ford Focus. The staff at the car hire seemed to think it would be a terrible car to use, small, slow and uncomfortable. We didn't get a huge amount of respect on the road, and the only person who seemed to regard the car in a good light was an old guy who commented on what a nice colour it was.
In my personal opinion both vehicles had their pros and cons but I wouldn't consider the Focus to be much inferior to the Liberty in terms of general sight-seeing.
Maybe this is just my experiences, but it seems to me that Americans like their cars big and fast, with massive engines in comparison to their European counterparts. I can't help wondering how many Americans would agree with this, and if so, why do they consider this better on the assumption that bigger engine = less fuel efficient.
I continue to push for Algae, Electric cars, NAT GAS act, and loads of drilling and fracking esp on-shore and in the deep water.
In addition, I REALLY want to see the republicans continue to push for DROPPING ALL OF THE REGS ON DRILLING.
Now, why you ask?
Because there is ZERO chance that all of that drilling will NOT have a major spill again. If we remove the regs, then it will happen even faster. If you noticed when BP polluted the gulf, Tesla sales jumped and interest in electric cars jumped. The fact is, that CONgress esp. the republicans, have ZERO interest in stopping drilling etc. They are far too attached to with their lips to the front of big oils pants. HOWEVER, when we see the environmental spill, THEN AND ONLY THEN do we see people put their money where their mouth is (so to speak). Even now, the lefties have returned to buying SUVs while screaming about the environment. BUT, when a spill occurs, then they put their money into electric or other means.
No, the best thing is to have loads of alternatives and one good environmental nightmare.
Windbourne (modderating).
We heard this before meanwhile oil companies were making record profits and politicians were lining their pockets.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
$5/gallon is cheap.
We pay $7.5 a gallon NOW.
We are in Europe. In the so called socialist Netherlands.
Your country was designed wrong.
Gas guzzling cars. (still!) Cities with no real transportation infrastructure other than for cars. Large distances, even in cities.
How well will this work when gas hits $8?
Your cities need to be more compact. As do your cars. See the European and Japanese smaller cars. (small: weight is less than 1.5 metric tons)
Consider a diesel!
I am not sure how the buying cars part follows. You really lost me there. I don't understand how increased gasoline consumption would benefit anyone except people who sell oil and gasoline.
I didn't say Americans were immoral. (Well - not any more immoral than anyone else).
What I'm talking about is a lot like what John Scalzi describes in his post Not being able to scrape by with 200k is usually your own fault. The guy he talks about is well within his rights to the life he has - but to complain about it just doesn't generate a lot of sympathy with most others. In many it may even bring out feelings of resentment.
That's how it is when Americans get on the world wide web and gripe about stuff that is worse just about everywhere else. A lot of Americans don't realize this because they aren't exposed to what it is like to live in the rest of the world. So I think it is worth pointing it out. Maybe it will help some people get a bigger picture in their head of what's going on.
I am not claiming moral superiority. I'm not saying it's immoral to want cheaper gas. I'm saying it is stupid to get on a global soap box and gripe about your cheapest gas getting slightly more expensive even while it is still crazy cheap. That's all.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Are really not a big deal for me. I drive a prius, and try and purchase only food products that are on sale or with coupons. You all do realize that gas is only going to go up. We WILL run out of fossil fuels, it's inevitable. The only reason it's been cheap is because we still are finding sources of this resource. Get with the program, go more green, and then you will see "higher gas prices" articles and just not even care, like me. Don't be retarded and wasteful, and you will have no problems.
Gas prices have nothing to do with supply and demand. They have everything to do with deregulating commodities laws on oil and subjecting us to the suits on Wall Street manipulating prices. Hell, they don't even have to warehouse oil, just make a virtual promise to buy in bulk.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
And if you read between the lines, you get what everyone else seems to have missed. Why on earth would you export, when you can sell locally instead?
Because people will pay more for it, including the cost of transporting it, elsewhere. There are also small things like which oil is best for making which type of petroleum product, but the overall conclusion is that gas prices are going up because we are participating in the world economy, where it is more expensive.
Why not sell it to your own countryfolk? Is there a moral obligation to do so? Some say yes, some say no. But it's worth it to export and drive up price.
What kind of pot are you smoking. Toyota is the number one car manufacturer in the world. Thus an increase in auto sales would benefit Japan, not he United States.
I am not sure how the buying cars part follows. You really lost me there. I don't understand how increased gasoline consumption would benefit anyone except people who sell oil and gasoline.
How else are they going to use the gasoline, burn it in open pits?
I8-D
and not the Treasury Secretary as stated in the summary.
It appears that in the USA it really IS "math" since they can only do one sum.
Sigh... the effects of higher prices on ordinary people are not what it going to drive the conversation, so it's rather pointless to debate just what those effects are going to be. What is going to drive the conversation is Republican claims about those effects and the media's craven promulgation of those claims, absent anything regarding fact-checking, throughout info space. By the time anybody bothers to actually find out what the effects on ordinary people have been, the world will have moved on.
First off, we have radically reduced our fuel consumption. US fuel use has gone WAAAAY down. We can't use less then we're using right now. So conservation is no longer useful. Our consumption has gone way down and the prices have just gotten higher.
So our consumption is not linked to the prices nor can we lower our consumption further.
Second, reducing fuel consumption is not a great objective. We have been increasing out efficiency for generations. We do not need politicians intentionally making things worse.
Third, I do have a birthright to cheap fuel actually. My country has lots of untapped petroleum that could be processed into fuel cheaply. So I do have birthright to it.
Fourth, as I live in a democracy, my hostility can very easily be channeled into political action that will get what I want in the near future. So... wrong again.
Fifth, as to magic... not magic... Science. We've got huge oil strikes in the US that rely on new technological developments that are revolutionizing global oil exploration. By some estimates the US has more untapped oil then has been drained out of everywhere in the world combined since the 1920s. Effectively, what we're doing is using offshore drilling technology ONshore. It lets us drill deeper and drill wider with a single drill head.
Sixth, as to cost increases... It's not any one oil company's fault if the price goes up or down. Oil companies don't have control over the price of oil any more then farmers have control over the price of corn. They TAKE prices they do not make them or set them. They put their oil on the market and it sells for a certain price. The only way they can manipulate price is by reducing production. If the US increases production then the price goes down. If the war on oil goes away then the price goes down.
Anyone who intentionally makes everyone's commute to work more expensive is going to have a hard time surviving on election day.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I love how all you hear from those paying much more are saying, 'Welcome to our world, that's what we pay, etc etc' as if US low prices are the problem. Perhaps what they should be doing is looking in the mirror and asking 'Why are we paying such astronomically high prices?' They'll all point to the use of mass transit. I don't really buy it. I've spent plenty of time in France for work and have sat in their 1hr+ traffic jams at rush hour, pulled into a company with it's parking lot full of employee driven cars, put up with the nasty smell of diesel while dining outside in Paris, not to mention my first trip into Paris with some Frenchmen at the wheel ended in a motor scoot side swiping us while cutting the inside going around the Arc de Triomphe, etc. Oh, it's nice PR, and I'm not denying they use mass transit more than the US, but it's not the silver bullet. The reality is however that in general Europe's roads are much better maintained because of the revenue from the high taxes. That being said, I've yet to be able to drive from one place to another because of our 'crappier roads'. Sure you can argue less wear and tear on the cars on nicer roads. But not to the tune of tripling my yearly gas costs. So it's a matter of priorities. And we have different values for them. Each side can argue the plus and minuses until they go blue in the face.
I can think of a number of ways for Europeans to use more gasoline without buying US cars. I do see American cars here, but they are in the minority. Though that entire concept is a little strange anyway. I think one US brand here are actually Korean cars with US badges on them. And then there are all the issues on where the parts come from, where they are assembled, etc.
I see mostly European makes (go figure) and I would think cheaper gas (or just using more gas) wouldn't change that.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Steven Chu is the Secretary of Energy, not of the Treasury as stated in the summary. Oops!
Fuel prices go up. ALL prices go up. Everyone wants more pay so corporate expenses go up so prices go up so the cost of living goes up so everyone wants more pay (repeat ad infinitum)
$5.00/gal is a non-event in the long run. 40 years ago we where whining about 50/gal. 40 years from now we'll be whining about $20/gal. get over it.
What I find REALLY funny is that the people stand outside at the pump and complain about $4.00/gal then go inside an pay the rate of up to $10/gal for coffee, water, soda, etc. $1.20 for 1L of water is $4.50/gal. Remember: this stuff comes out of your faucet for more like $.001/gal.
Shut up, think, make wiser decisions. We'll all be better off.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Even cities like Washington DC with its nice metro system has giant unserved areas.
We get it, you have higher gas prices. You know what else you have? Public Transit.
I honestly wouldn't be driving if I didn't have to. The area I live in has a bus that runs almost nowhere, and an occasional taxi
I either drive or I don't work, because nothing is within 10 miles of each other.
Finite resources increase in value as they become more scarce. I can never understand why every year the specter of higher gas prices makes the news. This is to be expected, has been predicted and graphed. Where is the story?
And the rest of the world would be buying millions and millions more US autos making it our number 1 industrial powerhouse again and pouring money into our coffers at such a booming rate that $10/gal of gas looks super cheap.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
So gas (oil) goes up on speculation of a supply disruption, and said disruption never happens, and prices very slowly come back down, if at all, and oil companies enjoy record profits again.
USA Bad, everywhere-else Good!
Ok, now mod me up.
You can't reject the idea just because it doesn't work for everyone 365 days of the year.
If you run the risk of being fired for not showing up on a day when weather is unsuitable for cycling, you still have to own, fuel, and insure a car.
Steven Chu did say "We have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe". The submitter, Hugh Pickens, added "to make Americans trade in their 'love affair with the automobile' for a marriage to mass transit".
Chu never said that, and the linked article doesn't say that either. Chu wants to reduce fossil fuel consumption, sure, and increased use of mass transit might be one part of that, but he's not advocating taking away Americans' cars and forcing them to ride buses, or whatever hyperbole Pickens is implying.
All the linked article actually states is that "some energy experts" say that increased gas prices will "encourage consumers to buy more efficient vehicles, discourage suburban sprawl, make renewables more competitive and reduce U.S. reliance on imported oil".
To all the people saying “stop your whining!”, I’ve done the math for my own job site. One thing I need to point out is that the U.S. is partially built upon cheap gas. I live in the North East and you have to travel 15-40 some miles round trip to get a good job in my area. Unless you move to a city.
Employees at my job site range from all over the county. The closest is myself at 1 mile away. The farthest employee lives 34 miles away. I will use my own vehicles as a MPG gauge. My current vehicle is a hybrid that gets 42 mpg. My previous vehicle was an SUV that averaged at 16 mpg. So for each distance I’ll be using a Hybrid Standard, H.S., and an SUV standard, S.S. There are five pick-up trucks in the parking lot, a few cars, etc. Hopefully this data range will represent the best and worst case MPG here.
I will also be comparing different price ranges. What I last filled my car at, $3.42/gal. What it currently is in my town, $3.79/gal, the $5/gal stated in the title of this article, and a round $8.50 because between what rate exchange you use and which Anonymous Coward you believe the price of gas in Europe is between $8/gal and $9/gal.
I’m using the following mile ranges, for one way distance:
1 mile – live in town.
7 miles – next closest town
21 miles – second closest town
34 miles – farthest known employee, non-salary.
42 miles – farthest known employee, salary
I’ll use the following formula =2*((“Miles”/”MPG”)*”Gas Price”) to determine the round trip cost to figure out how much it costs to come to work for that day.
Data layout: Miles (1 way) - $3.42 travel cost /$3.79 travel cost /$5 travel cost /$8.50 travel cost
H.S. data, 42 mpg.
1 - $0.16/$0.18/$.24/$0.40
7 - $1.14/$1.26/$1.67/$2.83
21 - $3.42/$3.79/$5.00/$8.50
34 - $5.54/$6.14/$8.10/$13.76
54- $8.47/$9.38/$12.38/$21.05
S.S. data, 16 mpg
1 - $0.43/$0.47/$.63/$1.06
7 - $2.99/$3.32/$4.38/$7.44
21 – $8.98/$9.95/$13.13/$22.31
34 - $14.54/$16.11/$21.25/$36.13
54- $22.23/$24.64/$32.50/$55.25
If prices get too high it is going to hit my company hard in employees. This is before you even take into account transporting ingredients in, products out and that we are a company dependent on fuel industry.
This isn’t hypothetical.
We’ve lost a few employees already because they can’t afford to drive to work. Some took lesser paying more local jobs. We’ve had four employees relocate to other states. I’ve had two job interviews go well until they found out I lived 20 miles away. They were afraid that by time training was done gas prices would be sufficiently high that I would need to quit for a higher paying position or a more local position.
Don’t get me started on how poor my area is. One municipality nearby is so badly off that they axed their police department. They are sending all calls for assistance to the state police. Another local municipality is considering that as well as they can’t afford to pay their police more than $7.25/hour (police wages are 25% their entire budget as is), and their remaining officers aren’t happy defending the municipality at a wage less than the local 7-11. My municipality is trying to meet a middle ground. Every time an officer quits for a new career or higher paying position elsewhere in the state they hire part-time officers instead.
My county can’t be the only one going through this sort of thing where our towns can barely afford to exist as is. Europeans, and other countries who did similar, you did good with public transport. The U.S. hasn’t and won’t any time soon.
The country is heading for a paradigm shift without using the clutch.
2008 oil price - $145/barrel
2008 gas price - $4/gallon
2012 oil price - $105/barrel
2012 gas price - $4/gallon
So if market forces = investor speculation and strategic closures of US refineries, then yes, this is clearly due to market forces. Isn't capitalism great?
I live in Idaho. It's about 600 miles between the University of Idaho and Idaho State University. That drive is a serious bummer if you have to do it very often.
As an example, many US gas engines of around 240HP ratings in cars were rated around 55HP when marinised, since marine engines are rated for continuous duty. Beyond that, after a few hours, distortion due to heat buildup, and lack of lubrication, would set in. The Chrysler hemi head was a comparatively good design because heat expansion of the cylinder head didn't take the valves out of line, while other V8s of the same era had serious valve distortion under sustained high power.
The relatively low speed limits mean that US vehicles hardly ever need to sustain high speeds, whereas acceleration sells. The different design of European roads means that speeds of around 80mph are routinely sustained for long periods, while high acceleration is of little benefit.
The older US engines are uneconomical because (a) they simply have too much moving mass to obtain those peak power ratings, (b) they tend to have inefficient auto gearboxes and (c) they have not been designed for efficiency because it costs more.
Nowadays European designs tend to be small capacity to reduce moving mass and friction, and get high peak power with heavy turbocharge (and even supercharge on some models). Turbocharging is good for efficiency and wasted little energy at low load.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Most of Europe is too spread out too.
USA has MMBA (Miles and Miles of Bugger All), but so does Europe.
One of the biggest cities in the world is American. They are represented highly in the top-10 biggest cities list.
My understanding of the comments so far: (1) This issue is a sharp rise in the cost, rather than the absolute cost. So the fact that others are already paying more is irelevant. If an item of your domestic budget suddenly increases drastically in cost this hurts. This is especially true, when you are limited in trems of how much you can reduce your use of that item. (2) Other countries are also expriencing these price rises, but it is more painful for americans. It is more painful for several reasons including the lesser density of population requiring more travel, but also the long history of cheap energy, which means fewer alternatives to petrol transport have been developed. (3) There are two seperate sources of pressure of petrol costs. The long term issue of finite resources, and the short/mid term pressures of middle east instability. There is a strong political lobby using these price rises as a platform to remind people of the need to consider alternative energy soureces. There is also a realisation in "The West" of our energy dependence on "The East", and this causes tension.
Truckers often have to go coast to coast. To go from Northeastern Maine (Madawasaka) to Southwestern CA (Imperial Beach near San Diego) is almost 3,300 miles and the more-standard NY to LA is about 2,800 miles - not an everyday occurrence, but I know many people who have done it, me included.
General Motors streetcar conspiracy
Economists across the political spectrum- perhaps most notably Greg Mankiw, former chair of Bush's CEA- have long been saying that the US gas tax is at least a dollar lower than would be socially optimal.
Raising the gas tax would of course discourage pollution, but it would do much more than that. It would do a much much more effective job of encouraging manufacturers to make more efficient cars than the silly CAFE etc laws we keep passing. It would encourage the improvement of our nation's (generally subpar) public transit systems.
It would make it so people bear more the costs of road construction and maintenance in proportion to their actual use of the roads and the wear and congestion they cause. Right now everybody in the nation is subsidizing long commutes, traffic jams, moving all freight by road instead of rail, etc etc. Removing this subsidy not only discourages inefficient road use but also allows other taxes which presently discourage efficient behaviors (like payroll and income taxes) to be decreased, encouraging economic growth.
As a bonus, though we'd want to be careful about this kind of intervention, the tax could be temporarily lowered and only gradually reintroduced in the case of major supply shocks, keeping the price of gas more stable and easing the problem of disruptive adjustments. Post-Katrina gas prices were actually lower on average than they are now, but the suddenness of the increase meant a lot of people, especially contractors and small businesses, were in a lot of pain while overall prices and wages adjusted; this could be ameliorated by using a gas tax as a buffer.
You forget one point though: High taxes decouple the consumer price from the market price. In case of extreme spikes government can even temporarily reduce taxes, which has been done. Higher taxes cause the economy to use less which reduces the dependency on oil. Bottom line, Europe is much better prepared for oil price hikes. Actually the oil price spike from Libya, which supplied much oil to Europe, was hardly noticed.
Oil prices will continue to rise since production can't keep up with demand, especially opening new wells compared to the decline of existing ones.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Cheltenham, England to Vladivostok, Russia (Pacific coast). 8000 miles. Admittedly you do have to put your car on the train to drive under the sea for 25 miles between England and France, but other than that... what's your point?
Your scenario seems typical of the small horizons perceived by a nation where hardly anyone owns a passport.
We Brits take our cars abroad. A LOT. We have a 200-mile-an-hour train that takes our cars under the sea. We have a huge fleet of car ferries that take a thousand cars at a time across the world's busiest shipping lane.
900 miles is your longest journey? Is that all? Italy's further than that from here, and that's at 9 dollars a gallon for gas. Man up!
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Improve labor relationships by allowing more flexible work hours and teleworking.
Unless one of your company's major suppliers requires, in the interest of protecting its trade secrets, that all employees on your project work from secure facilities that are not part of a residence. I know of a couple such suppliers.
There is no Mass Transit here in upstate NY. Our buses stop "if they feel the need to" and last time I called a cab for a 20 mile ride home from work, I was told: "I'm not going all the F#$!ing way out there!"
Mass Transit indeed.
Europeans pay much higher gas prices. As a result, they say 'so what?'
You can bitch and moan, but higher gas taxes would decouple the price at the pump from the crude oil price in the US too. As a result, the economy would adapt and become more efficient, use less and be less vulnerable.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
it is the political turmoil in the us actually. being an election year, neither the dems or the repubs have a vested interest in fixing any problems. this provide fodder for later in the campaign year. blah blah blah "they" didnt fix X look at it now. blah blah blah "they" cant fix Y "we can fix Y.
Although when in power, Republicans don't seem to be particularly biased toward free markets, unelected Republicans are normally pretty rabid about it, and characterize Democrats as being not-free-market-enough.
But somehow Republican candidates, and especially before their convention(!) when you'd think they would be exaggerating their right-wing-ness, are complaining that this one market isn't subsidized enough and is too volatile. Poor proletariat folks are getting pinched by high prices, not receiving their fair share of government-planned wealth redistribution in the form of oil subsidies, boo hoo.
If the convention had already happened, I'd understand it if they tried to appeal to moderates by coming out as left-of-Obama on using government's power to micromanage energy prices. But now? WTF? Shouldn't their strategy be to be quiet on this issue? You know, "freedom is messy" and all that?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
Actually, nobody in the US likes our cars either. They all suck, and they're all copies of Japanese designs now (which is ironic considering that Japanese cars were nothing more than knockoffs of European designs). The exception is our muscle cars, which remain popular generation after generation. You'll always sell Ford Mustangs in America.
Now, our trucks? That's a different story. We love our trucks, and increaingly, so does the rest of the world.Our biggest sellers most years are our full size trucks and truck-based SUV's. The F-150 has been Ford's cash cow for decades now. American full sized trucks are being emulated by companies across the world. Toyota and Nissan came up V-8 powered full size trucks because they had nothing that could compete with what Ford, GM, and Dodge were making. When Daimler made their ill-fated purchase of Chrysler in the 90's, part of their rationale was that they had nothing like the Dodge Ram to offer emerging markets, where big trucks are popular.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Just like the Europeans... Oh wait, they're just as dependent on gas as us.
All this does is depress economic growth.
This beyond debate. Anyone that wants to argue this issue the way you people are arguing it will have no representation in government.
So I can only hope your counterparts in our own system are very upfront about these beliefs. It will make crushing them in the general child's play.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm an American, so I can say this with a bit of truth.
We, the citizens of the United States of America, are "arrogant". We live in a country where we are spoiled, and I mean spoiled rotten. We've done it to ourselves. We've allowed lobbyists for the Big Three to push the "a car in every driveway means wealth" mentality so that mass transit is virtually non-existent in states where the auto industry has a foothold. We consume gasoline at an unnatural pace with our unnecessarily massive gas guzzling SUV's. The waste of resources is insane.
We, the citizens of the United States of America, are "entitled". By this, I refer to the fact that children no longer walk or ride a bike to school. Schools will bus children if they live 1 mile or more away from the school. For god sakes, one freaking mile. Tell me this isn't the "entitled" mentality. We want the Hollywood life that we see on TV.
We, the citizens of the United States of America, are "cheap" and "lazy". We refuse to pay money for a natural resource that is limited and will disappear one day from so much consumption, but bitch and complain about the cost of natural resources we can reproduce within our own backyards. We don't want to pay alot for gas, so we can go to the grocery store weekly for those natural foods (fruits and vegies) that we can grow in our own yards. We'll justify $1 per head of lettuce, but bitch about the $.50 or more of gas we consume to pay those top dollars. When working on projects in our homes, we don't plan them out an have to make multiple runs to the same store because we're too lazy to write out lists and make all purchases at once.
We, the citizens of the United States of America, are "greedy". By this I say, we buy things we don't need to survive on a daily basis. We waste dollars on jewelry and clothes and soda and chips and manicures and pedicures and electronic toys all for the self-gratification and it's instant self-gratification at that. We want what we want and we want it now, and we won't wait for save for it.
So when the world we live changes, whether it's a lost job, or a natural disaster hits the community, or a war with other countries, we still spend without regard to what is more important later. We have made Gasoline important. We are expected to pay for it.
Change your lifestyle. Become more self reliant and independent upon the entitlements, and make ends meat for less.
Americans think 100 years is old.
British think 100 miles is far.
Tell me about these "natural" market forces - what "nature" are you speaking of?
Sorry, but I get very suspicious when people invoke "nature" and "natural" as these usually indicate a social constructed reality, where humans have made social choices, rather than some purely physical environment like the wind, waves, seasons, etc. independent of human philosophies or political positions. Nothing "natural" about democracy, totalitarian dictators, US right wing politics, European centrist politics, or any other such stance, they are all human-constructed. Tell me about this "natural" that you refer to.
You're behind on your news, GM back to number 1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2012/01/19/gm-is-back-in-the-auto-sales-drivers-seat/
So, apparently, the pot I'm smoking is better than the pot you're smoking, haha.
I8-D
to that which can be explained by gouging. I've never bothered to look, but I assume the graph of gasoline prices are that of an assymetric sawtooth: rapid rises, but slow reductions.
The US is in deep trouble if it can't withstand $5/gal gas.
The rise of US power is closely tied to our natural wealth of oil. The UK based its global power on steam and coal, the US superseded the UK to global dominance on its oil wealth.
-The US was the first and is the largest oil power in history.
-In total oil extracted combined with known reserves, the US contained more oil than any other nation.
-We are still the third largest oil producing country in the world.
-We consume about 50% of the world oil with only 5% of its population.
-The US hit peak oil in the early 70's, prompting the oil crisis and dependance on foreign oil. We no longer were finding new reserves of oil faster than we extracted them.
As the first country to hit peak oil, the US should have initiated policies to reduce our oil dependance, but as we see today we are still addicted.
Our private and government development since the 70's has largely ignored the impact higher gas prices.
The hypocrisy in the oil price arguments are astounding.
-People believe they have a right to cheap oil, a limited resource.
-It is considered impossible for the US to implement a 50mpg standard even though this is common everywhere else.
-Our country has dismantled large privately operated mass transit systems in cities and towns that existed before 1950, while subsidizing free roads, parking and suburban sprawl.
-We fight fuel saving alternatives such as High Speed Rail and mass transit.
-The highway trust fund is going bankrupt. It is unable to keep up with the demands sprawling development puts on new capitol construction, and has never covered maintenance.
-The cheap fuel and car economy has encouraged suburban and rural growth that would not be possible without cheap fuel. Real estate values in these areas will plummet as fuel prices increase.
-User costs such as parking meters, odometer taxes and vehicle licence fees are fought as excessive taxes while governments at all levels need to divert general funds to build and maintain a car infrastructure.
-Federal gas taxes are fixed per gallon and not as a percentage of cost and are lower than most sales taxes. At 18 cents per gallon the fuel tax is 4.5%, lower than sales tax in many places.
-More efficient Diesel fuel is taxed higher at 24 cents.
Of all the speculation about oil, one thing is certain.
The price will continue to go up.
If we don't choose where and how to live without considering this fact, we will suffer the results.
Our government has gone out of its way to subsidize our car lifestyle with the largest public works projects in US history. Its time to ween americans off these subsidies and allow them to bear the full cost of car use and ownership.
The markets will quickly correct the lack of mass transit and sprawling development that has occurred as a result of these subsidies.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2012/01/19/gm-is-back-in-the-auto-sales-drivers-seat/ - Yeah, GM is number 1, however...
Honda, Toyota, and other foreign automakers make many of their cars in the US. I worked for companies that did exactly that, so they win either way. The only real threat to the US auto industry is China and Korea, imo.
I'd be interested in ways Europeans could use as much gasoline per person as a US citizen without buying a US car other than buying a non-US car that isn't already mostly made in the US.
But see, you said world. Is BMW going to put all those cars into China, India, the Middle East, and South America, and Africa? When you said the rest of the world, I took it as really meaning the rest of the world without the Ameri-Euro centric view. And in that regard, the US with NAFTA is poised better than any other country to take advantage of that... not that I think it'll actually happen, just playing the scenario.
I8-D
Japanese cars are made in the US too. I'm not sure which companies don't have a US as a major piece of their manufacturing base. So, win-win.
And why wouldn't they make them elsewhere? NAFTA for one, which covers free trade over 2 entire continents. As I told someone else, maybe BMW will pick up Africa, lol.
I8-D
You do know the parts are made here, though, right? I worked at a plant that made Honda and Toyota parts.
Same machines making the same parts that go in everyone's cars, assembled and built by the same US workers...
Doesn't matter if it's an F-150 or a Prius, American workers win. But I'll let you in on a secret... Honda quality is not what you think it is. Toyota has FAR higher quality, regardless of what everyone says about how well their Honda's retain value. I'd bet money you're probably 10 times more likely to hit 300,000 without a major repair in a Toyota than a Honda.
I drive a Pontiac Vibe. It was built in by Toyota in the same plant they made the Toyota Matrix in, here in the US. It's a near exact copy, except for branding.
I8-D
Is it any wonder why mass transit is mostly a big fail in the US?
Because we have four to ten-times the distances to travel in The United States of America versus Average-Euro-Nation.
It takes me THREE DAYS by rail to get from Albany NY to Portland OR.
We have four-times the length of rail laid in the U.S. compared to Europe.
And the rest of the world would be buying millions and millions more US autos making it our number 1 industrial powerhouse again and pouring money into our coffers at such a booming rate that $10/gal of gas looks super cheap.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
Really? The only two classes of car that aren't very similar are the extreme ends of the car market ... Pickups/SUVs and Compact/Sub-compact cars. Everything else is practically the same between the two markets, except for the EU preference for diesel. Heck Ford for example is selling the EU Focus & Fiesta in the US and the next Mondeo is essentially the same as the next Fusion.
... while pulling the boat to a lake that might be 4hrs away. Pickups and SUVs are the only things that can do these things here legally. Most vans and cars have their towing limits set crazy low due to our litigious nature. (Sad but true)
... so lots of places are narrow and parking is a nightmare and as such not very Escalade friendly.
... they'd likely buy an F150 or a Tahoe or something similar. Those big comfy vehicles would simply meets their needs in a way that a Ka or Pugeot 20-whatever never could.
In the US people tend to 1) be fatter 2) have more kids and dogs and 3) have more outdoor toys. That means that us 'Merkins have a tendency to buy larger vehicles that we fit in comfortably, that can carry all our kids, the Labrador Retriever and all our stuff
In the EU folks generally aren't as large, I think families are smaller and ownership of outdoor toys is less (or at least ownership of toys that you have to tow to play with is lower). Also cities in the EU are much older and were designed around ox carts and the plague
If you took your average EU citizen and plopped them in the midwest with 3 kids a dog and a boat
What's wrong with different strokes for different folks?
900 miles is the furthest I've travelled in a single hop, in a personal vehicle w/o trading off w/ another driver.
Let's put this into perspective, which was what I was trying to do. If one wished to transit across the U.S., from one country (Canada) to another (Mexico), one would have to travel over 1,000 miles, and cross at a minimum four states (which are pretty much un-inhabited) --- try to draw a line, 1,000 miles long in Europe which only crosses 4 countries.
San Angelo, TX, a rather populous town doesn't have a zoo --- the locals instead travel to San Antonio, since they can get there and back in a single day --- how often does one travel 400 miles round trip as a day road trip in Europe? AFAICT, one can't travel fast enough by road in much of Europe to make this sort of day trip feasible (London to Paris, about the same distance is 7--9 hours, more than twice the travel time).
The U.S. is simply a lot more friendly to travel by personal vehicle, and people in the U.S. spend a lot more time doing it. It would be nice if the U.S. had a rail system like to that which covers much of Europe, but the distances argue against it (and it's my understanding that much of the European rail system was (re)built by the U.S. Military during World War II w/ the rails having been brought over from the States, having been made available by pulling up every narrow gauge track of less than 100 miles length).
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
It only depresses growth if the taxes are increased too quickly so the economy can't adapt or if the taxes are not revenue neutral.
OTOH, rising oil prices at a point when the economy isn't prepared most definitely depress everything.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I've never heard of such a thing - I thought all weather was in a climate.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
OECD data for Germany with it's "superb high speed, world class rail network" shows that less than 10% of passenger miles are by train, for example. ... Like Americans, you will get their cars off of them over Iranians cold dead bodies.
The story of superb European mass transit networks saving the planet from big oil/ greenhouse gases/traffic congestion is nothing more than a childish myth. The networks couldn't cope with a substantial move from the car to mass transit.
Germans like their cars, as do the French, Italians, British
Don't believe me? Go look it up yourself:
http://www.oecd.org/document/0,3746,en_2649_201185_46462759_1_1_1_1,00.html
Lots of handy stats there.
Deleted
They did it because buses were cheaper than cable/overhead electric cars, and shared the road with the AuToMoBiLe!
Cars Rock!
We pay around $US6/Gallon, or about $NZ2.20/litre (2.169 today for 91, about 16c more for 98 octane) Its been that way for around 3 or so years. What's your problem Americans?
> There is greater distance between our population centers and most of our workers commute longer distances.
You're not exactly *wrong*, but that's far from telling the whole truth. The fact is, plenty of Europeans live out in the 'burbs too, once you get away from London and Paris. The difference is that in Europe (and Asia), they'll build a rail line through virgin farmland, then rezone the area around the station to encourage high-density development around each one. So, people who live out in the suburban boonies (so to speak) drive 5-10 miles to the nearest train station, park, walk past the dense quasi-urban development around their own station, and ride the train to another staion 20-50 miles away that's within walking distance of their office.
In the US, we do stupid things like build suburban rail stations, then leave the surrounding area zoned for low-density single family homes and strip malls because our idiot planners don't want to "encourage sprawl" by allowing high-density development in suburbia. So, instead of having high-value concentrated commercial development (and a few fairly expensive residential buildings) within easy walking distance of OUR rail stations, we end up with low-density development oozed across a thousand square miles, and $50-100 million transit stations adjacent to nothing besides a parking lot and single-family homes.
It's not practical to expect most American suburbanites to move, but it's ENTIRELY reasonable to expect new commercial development to cluster around transit lines with a little help from aggressive up-zoning around their stations. It doesn't happen overnight, but it DOES happen within a generation or two (just look at area surrounding many of Miami's Metrorail stations south of downtown, the Washington Metro in Virginia, BART in San Francisco itself, etc).
The problem is, the one model for transit-optimized commercial development that's been shown to work and be viable in the US goes against everything traditional urbanists regard as holy & sacred, because it accepts the fact that most people are going to live 5-10 miles from the nearest rail station & drive there, and settles for putting their DESTINATIONS within convenient walking distance of stations (usually, with the expectation that existing urban areas will just be commercially-abandoned, written off as slums, and replaced by the shiny new commercial hubs built around the new transit stations on former farmland out in the boonies).
There's also the fact that urbanists have a fetish for "downtown" development, as opposed to rubber-stamping dozens and dozens of mini skyscraper clusters and vertical stacks of big-box stores ( like http://www.berkowitzdevelopment.com/dadeland.htm ) every mile or two all the way from downtown out to BFE.
Yes you read that correctly: 1.8 EUR/Litre which amounts to approx $9/gal if I did my math correctly.
So: stop whining and suck it up, it won't get any cheaper ever.
I would like to thank you for financing my lifestyle and very comfortable retirement.
Deleted
you couldn't live how you want, just that you shouldn't be a whiny, self-entitled child when reality does not agree to submit itself to your opinions.
yea;
The ability to work where you want, and live where you want and to take long roadtrips and experience cultures and not to be penned up in a little EU statelet with your own litle language and strange customs... The Auto and the USA Rock!
If/when/? gas gets too expensive to burn we will find something else because we value freedom.
Seriously problem is not high gas prices, the problem is urban sprawl. I don't own a car and I hope I never do (I can rent if I must). I live downtown Toronto and I promise you the best thing in this city is the PATH, 28km (17miles) of underground walking paths. Almost the whole thing is lined with stores and cafeterias. Things connected to the PATH include Union Station (rail & subway links), all the sports stadiums, several downtown malls (esp. Eaton Centre), Opera, Symphony, Live Theatre, and about a dozen subway stations. Very few things in the downtown core are more than a 5min walk from a PATH entry point.
Many people in Toronto take either GO Transit (regional rail), or TTC (subway/bus) to the downtown core, then walk underground to where ever they need to go. And from what I have heard, places like Hong Kong and Tokyo do it even better.
Also the population density thing is nonsense. The Golden Horseshoe has a higher population density than most European counties, and at 8 million people it is also bigger than a few. The BosWash area of the USA even more so at 58 million 360pp/km2! The only reason these areas don't have European style public transit is due to a lack of foresight.
How often do you need to drive from Dundee, Scotland to Poole, England?
646 km seems to be about as far as one can drive in the UK --- that's just 400 miles
Rubbish, you can do 540 miles in England. If you live in Inverness, Scotland you are over 200 miles further North than that, and in a fairly sparsely populated area. If you live right in the North of Scotland, like Durness that is another 120 miles of tiny little roads which will take you about four hours to drive - though not many people do. Of curse most people would fly from Dundee to Pool, just as most people would fly from New York to Houston.
My friend from Venezuela teases me with the fact he fills his tank for about $1.50 us.. Gas there is about 15 cents a gallon. :)
We are NOT petty.
Additionally, "whining" is NOT spelled with a G.
Have a nice day.
No... you're confusing competition with growth.
You're right that within the european economies the high taxes will be competitive because all companies will have to pay them. But that doesn't mean that growth would be the same.
If the company has LESS capital to invest and the consumer has LESS capital to make purchases then you will depress growth.
Period.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Which part of "revenue neutral" did you not understand?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
An interesting side effect of higher fuel taxes in Canada and especially in Europe is that vehicles tend to be smaller and more fuel efficient. That allows for denser parking (since vehicles don't take up as much space) and easier visibility for drivers on the roads, not to mention making our limited supplies of oil last longer.
Which in the end is futile, because the oil runs out anyway. It may run out more slowly under your scheme, thus reducing the buildup of pressure to change, increasing the unsustainable increase in the people-to-available-resources ratio, until it inevitably all comes crashing down in massive and horrible war like it always does in this scenario.
Under the American way of doing things, we're basically burning the stuff as quickly as it comes out of the ground, and we are heavily dependent on it. These recent high gas prices--and yes they are high, because they are much closer to free market pricing than your socialist, highly regulated economy--really hurt. The kick in the ass is what we need to bring the problem quickly to everyone's attention so we can start working on real fixes, rather than trudging along unworried right to our doom.
Oh, and our cars simply kick way more ass than yours. European cars are BLAND, other than German offerings, and well....they're Germans. Only Australia with their offshoots of our car industry (Ford and Holden) and more lax environmental/safety regulations has cooler cars than we do. So enjoy your slow simmering cauldron of doom, while we burn up the gallons in style.
(At least until the Dollar comes crashing down......sigh.)
Now, I might be wrong, because I'm not the OP, but I think it's not so much about moral superiority as being stuck on a desert island with a hamper of food that will run out and a fat twat who is eating it as fast as possible. Causes the rest of us to have a facepalm moment.
The national average the day before Obama was sworn into office was $1.81 per gallon. Today it is $3.73 per gallon. How's that "Hope and Change" working out for you?
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Currently we pay around $6.70USD per gallon in NZ..... i feel so sorry for you poor Americans.... lol!
Let's stop the influx of "get over it" comments from Europe by removing the taxes from the price discussion. Then we can all equally complain about the cost of refined petrol instead of how much our governments like to add to the fees.
Translation: "Let's not talk about the elephant in the living room. These Europeans are embarrassing us by showing us up for the petulant shower of moaning minnies we are and it's making us cry! Waa waa waa!"
Drill baby drill - on Mars
US $3.80/Gal = $1.00/Litre in Canada.
We are now paying $1.30/Litre, with forcasts up to $1.50 by the end of April. That equals $4.94 US Gal that we are paying now, and going to $5.70 US Gal by May 1.
Canada(Eastern) has not had sub-$1.00/L gasoline for years, and we OWN about 20% of it.
For crying out loud, get over it Yanks. Welcome to the real world.
Got the two locales from a quick search for city--city distances --- unfortunately Penzance to Berwick didn't show up. The extra 140 miles doesn't change my argument, and even doubling it doesn't alter it that much (800 miles is still w/in what I've personally done in a day).
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
But why is mileage more important than fuel consumption?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Got the two locales from a quick search for city--city distances --- unfortunately Penzance to Berwick didn't show up. The extra 140 miles doesn't change my argument, and even doubling it doesn't alter it that much (800 miles is still w/in what I've personally done in a day).
The furthest I've done is London to Kyle of lochalsh, which is just under 600 miles. I way underestimated how small the roads in Scotland were - I thought it would be a 12 hour drive but it was nearer 20. This sort of extra long trip doesn't reflect on most people's normal commuter trips though, evidently the average distance to work is 12 miles (one way).
Well I'll post anyway.
Some time ago the US Department of Energy compiled a big report on electric, hybrid and advanced fuel engines. They concluded that the right solution was the hybrid. They then spent some time discussing why they felt the all-electric was a non-starter (pun intended).
However, the argument is interesting: they stated that all-electric vehicles would not pay off their batteries unless wait for it gas reached $4 a gallon.
Wow, The different lifestyle between European apartments and a nice house in suburbia...
You can keep your expensive gas.
Grreen acres is the life for me!
How often do you need to drive from Dundee, Scotland to Poole, England?
You guys have a funny idea of us in the UK and an even funnier idea of public transport.
I have just finished work and have just travelled just short of 200 miles back home. I am now mildly pissed as I have been drinking the whole way in a first class carriage but have covered the distance in just over 2 hours. There is no way I could have driven london to manchester at 100+ mph the whole way and kept my licence if I did it as often as I do.
Invest in a decent transport system and you can actually travel further in less time than using a car. This journey did cost me a bit more than driving but shit it is worth it, especially as I can even work (or drink and post crap to slashot) on the train.
I dont read
Spoken like someone who has never left the USA. The house where I grew up had 4 acres of its own garden and was largely surrounded by farmland. I went to school in the nearest city, my father worked there, and my mother worked in a smaller town. Neither had to drive more than 20 minutes to work each day. Lots of space and short commutes are not mutually exclusive. Now I live near the edge of the centre of a small town. I have a twenty minute walk to the countryside, where I can easily spend a day walking without encountering any habitation in one direction and a 15 minute walk to the city centre on the other. If I don't feel like walking that far, the beach is 10 minutes walk away and a large park is just across the road.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
unlike Japan, there are full of niggers and hobos willing to rob, rape and kill.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
Ok, let's do that:
Current Dutch petrol price: 1.80 euro/L, or 9,07 $/gallon, including 59% fuel and sales tax.
Current Dutch petrol price: 0.74 euro/L, or 3,72 $/gallon, excluding taxes.
3,72 $/gallon is a perfectly normal price, "get over it".
I was reading a shareholder report LAST year talking about gas being planned to hit $5 this summer (next year) and you don't think they won't AIM for that price even if they do not need to do so?? Remember that the last time it spiked Exon made record profits while the world economy tanked and their excuse was that there wasn't enough oil... they just used an excuse to jack up prices; if it was legitimate then they would have made the SAME profit while prices spiked but instead they made the RECORD of all profits in history!
Iran does not have a whole lot to do with it now; there is always some excuse to jack up prices and game the gullible public, officials as well as bribe the other officials.
Approximately 70 cents per gallon is going to the trading markets who claim to be "stabilizing" the market and we all fall for that crap too...
I've been saying $5 since last year because I knew somehow they'd find a reason to do it again because it was planned for in advance.
Obama came in after a HUGE dip in demand after a crash and after they ran off with our money. They jack up prices, make a killing then lower them to keep us from doing anything then wait until they can do it again. It was at an unusually low price for a short period when he came in, for most of the bush years I payed more and I'm in one of the lowest priced places in the nation.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
This has happened about every 5 years since 1973. Someone in the middle east: (gets greedy:gets grumpy:has an accident:makes a declaration of any kind) and the price of oil goes through a 'price shock'. People swear off oil, then go back to it, every time. Now the people in Europe are having financial difficulties. Health care and pensions are a bit too generous and debt accumulates year after year. But what they haven't got (at least not as much) is a huge dependence on oil (or at least not as much). Wind and solar power are the big reasons, although sea-wave electricity is becoming more popular. North America needs to diversify its energy sources (or continue suffering larger and larger price shocks). Fracking is a stop-gap measure. The price of natural gas is low, but its difficult to turn natural gas into gasoline (possible, and there are a number of refineries that do it, but only up to medium grade fuel). Even if the local government has a stake in the local oil industry (hello Texas, hello Oklahoma, hello California, hello Pennsylvania), they will *still* get the world price for oil (they never make cuts to the local folks, oil is always sold at the 'world price'), and the local populace doesn't have to get gouged by the local industry. 500,000 electric cars on the road might make the price of gas go down by a penny or two. 5 million electric cars on the road might make the price go down by 6 or 7 cents. 50 million electric cars on the road might make the price per barrel of oil shift by a few dollars. but well below $10 (instead of being $107 per barrel, it might only be $99 per barrel), and any hiccup in the middle east will send it soaring again.
Will,
greater europe is about the same size as the usa. England is a poor example to be specific about. Frankfurt, for example, is only a major transport hub in Europe because it is central in the way ylu describe. eight hours by ground to much of Europe. It helps there are 300kph trains like the TGV in the area.
Slight problem with this "smoking gun" that keeps getting spammed - name one thing the Obama Administration has actually done to actually increase gas prices. Then, explain why you're ignoring the fact that Obama has approved greatly expanded drilling and is now busy getting the Keystone Pipeline approved.
Not only are they more than close enough, they've been that way for decades. When are energy demands the greatest? On hot, sunny days, and cold, windy nights.
Then there's the massive subsidization that the oil industry receives in the Department of Defense, as most of our military is deployed in and around the world's gas station: the middle east.
You could cut our war budget in half (while still outspending the rest of the world combined) and use the savings to put up solar panels on every public building in America. Half of $1.2 trillion per year buys you a lot of solar panels and wind towers.
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
Today's $5 gallon gasoline is 2000's $4 gallon gasoline.
http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx
Gasoline still cheaper than 2008.
---
Gasoline cost about 31 cents in 1960.
What cost $.31 in 1960 would cost $2.26 in 2010.
$5 is expensive. But for most people, it's only $1,000 per year they lose.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How often do you need to drive from Dundee, Scotland to Poole, England?
646 km seems to be about as far as one can drive in the UK --- that's just 400 miles
Dundee to Poole is an 800km drive. Dundee is a less likely endpoint than Aberdeen, another 100km up the road. Thurso to Penzance is a 1300km drive. Yes, the US is a lot bigger than the UK, but don't just make stuff up. Then there's the rest of the EU to consider...
Music at http://www.ignorantbliss.co.uk/
1 US gallon is $8.45 at current exchange rates where I live in the United Kingdom.
Maybe Americans will drive sensible cars, with decent engines, if fuel prices rise a little. Stop whinging.
how much would it be if it were not subsidized?
Mass Transit in the US cannot work. Why? Because it puts prey (middle class White men and women) next to predators (inner city Blacks and Hispanics, many Mexican nationals).
This is the brutally honest reason why the LA Blue Line, the Green Line, and various subway systems don't work. There are a lot folks who commute into LA's downtown and would like to avoid large daily parking fees. Ever look around at the Blue/Green lines? They are hideous, no-go for Whites Third World hell-holes. Filled with homeless, gang-bangers, various casual criminals. As are the buses that traverse LA. Atlanta's MARTA, the Bay Area BART system, and DC's Metro is the same way.
White middle class people don't like being victimized. Making mass transit safe means lots of racial profiling, summary arrest of Black/Mexican criminals, for things such as public urination, hassling people, shake-down robberies, and carrying weapons.
That is politically impossible: the NAACP, Urban League, La Raza, MALDEF, and a zillion other racial/ethnic interest and lobbying groups won't allow it.
The brutal honest truth is that America buys social peace: Blacks and Hispanics can run riot and embrace criminality (like the 13 year old White boy set on fire by two Black "youths") while the White middle class avoids them by living in distant suburbs and driving private cars to insulate them from the criminal behavior.
America needs cheap gas for social peace. Yeah, that's ugly. Brutal truth -- no one said Diversity did not cost. A lot. America is not the Balkans because Whites can avoid by cheap gas Black/Hispanic criminal victimization.
Yes that's "racist." Ask yourself honestly: would you travel in the ghetto or barrio daily if you could avoid it? This LA Times Article does not show a single White person on the Blue Line. Check it out for yourself.
What, John Shepard buys gasoline? Madness.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The US might not be Europe but it's fairly similar to Australia. Same size as the lower 48. 'Surburban sprawl' type city layouts (in most cases). Huge distances. And it has European-level fuel prices (yes, due to taxes) ... yet has survived just fine (and thrived, in fact - the AU economy is doing very well at the moment).
Higher fuel prices (or change in general) will drive innovation. I don't think it's all doom and gloom for America if fuel prices go up, even substantially. People and businesses will adjust.
New Zealand is USD$7 per old-fashioned US gallon (or 1.85 per litre) and we manage to get by, try to avoid anything that gets fewer than 30 old-fashioned British imperial mile units per old-fashioned US gallon unit.
Have to say that I'm smiling more and more, reading through multiple "the US is so big..." posts, enormous 900 mile drives, states that are 400 miles across, etc.
To give some context, as my fictional countryman Mick Dundee might've said, a 400 mile drive here might get you to your neighbour's house. If you could drive in a dead straight line, north to south, your 900 mile drive would get you about 80% across our largest state. Following the roads, it's about 3,500 miles for the same trip.
BTW, petrol here is give or take $8/gallon at the pump, depending where you are in the country, and our public transport is an overcrowded mess (in the cities) and barely exists (outside of the cities). Somehow we get by...
Let's stop the influx of "get over it" comments from Europe by removing the taxes from the price discussion. Then we can all equally complain about the cost of refined petrol instead of how much our governments like to add to the fees.
Australia buys it's petrol from Singapore, which is based on the Singapore/Malaysian Tapis. This is about $0.20 more expensive then WTI or Brent Crude.
There, I've had my bitch.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The irony here is that I think you genuinely don't realise that all of the cars you desribed would be regarded as "muscle cars" in most of the world, and 20mpg is a terrible average for any car made today.
Here in the UK, a typical family today might have a small family car (what the US industry calls a compact) such as the Ford Focus, Vauxhall Astra or VW Golf, and a smaller runabout like a Ford Fiesta, Vauxhall Corsa or Renault Clio. The trend is very much away from larger cars like saloons (sedans) and estates (station wagons).
Of course there are also larger "executive" cars and specialist vehicles like MPVs (which are increasingly popular with larger families who need to transport more than a couple of kids) and these vehicles are bigger, heavier, and more thirsty. But those are the exception, and most cars you see on the road today are smaller and more fuel efficient.
This trend is partly motivated by ever-rising prices at the pump that increasingly penalise cars with poor fuel efficiency, and by a taxation system that now heavily penalises cars with poor emissions such as large 4x4s (SUVs) and high performance sports cars.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
With all the NON FOSSIL gas and oil in shale worldwide, and the realisation that methane hydrate (clathrate)
are rcoverable we have hydrocarbon reserves for at least 2000 years at (exponential) projected real consumption
no more Peak Oil, ever, no more Wall St. artificial price pumping/shorting and not just under American/Arab feet.
Never has a commodities slump, including gold, happened at a better time and to a nicer bunch of Useful Idiots.
Malthusianism and Green Reusables are dead, worldwide as the populace catches on to crony capitalist Green
Energy lies and Scams, especially in Europe. The Greens will CRASH in Germany.
The good new is November 2012, when Steven Chu will be facing responsibility for heisting the BP mess, and his boss
will be voted out on 5 dollar a gallon gas.
Gould not happen to a nicer bunch of lying, cheating, thieving Lefties! Who said Gaia was on their side?
MFG, omb
The price you pay at the pump doesn't include what you pay in tax dollars for the US military to protect our oil imports, or the terrorism that this breeds.
The price you pay at the pump doesn't include the pollution we all suffer as a result of burning gasoline. There's global warming, for one, which has resulted in the recent spat of horrible weather, record droughts, and poor harvests. Of course Republicans still deny that there's any such thing as pollution, to say nothing of global warming. They think smog is a figment of moonbat tree hugging liberals' imagination...
http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/08/03/whats-the-real-cost-of-gas-in-america/
Actual cost of a gallon of gas = $10.70 to $15.70 / gallon
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Australia hasn't developed it's interior... the US has... they're not comparable. Remove a few big cities from Australia and there is very little there. Remove the same from the US and most of the country is still there.
It's night and day.
In any case, the politicians have made a miscalculation in thinking this would be acceptable. The only people with a chance of holding office are going to be people that say somewhere in their campaign speech "and we'll get gas prices down"...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
At the moment we are paying almost 7$ per gallon and you are complaining? About 4 years ago I'v been to USA and price was about 1$/L (sorry, it is easier to calculate, we don't use gallons) and people were upset, at the same moment we payed over 2$ per L.
With this administrations complete lack of common sense when it comes to energy policy - we will see $10 per gallon before the Obama-buffoon is out of office if he gets elected for another term. This has been the liberal's goal all along - to side step supply and demand which would compensate for increase demand by funding more exploration, but if you can shut down that supply-side economics, then you have a strangle-hold on the people, economy, and capitalism - which is ultimately the goal of all liberals. To bring about a socialist utopia where everyone dies from starvation or freezing...
It's the Invisible Hand of Capitalism!
I mean Demand is LOW, therefore Cost is HIGH...
Every year around this time with refineries changing over to summer gas production there is a shortage and every year there are news stories about it and every year there is pandemonium about speculations what it will do to the economy and every year the thing dies down after a few weeks and...............
Road wear should in some way be proportional to vehicle weight times miles driven, and that's (I think) what (GG)GP was getting at: That you get taxed for road maintenance based on your contribution to the wear.
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
Maybe it's time we all stop buying gas for a week, to send a message to the oil companies that raising the prices any further is just going to hurt their business. The only reason they get away with raising the price is due to supply & demand... if the demand drops, then they will need to drop the price.
I use Mobil 1 Extended Performance oil. It runs $9.19 a quart. I was able to get it on sale but it could easily rise over $12 a quart.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/406981-cold-fusion-a-cure-for-high-gas-prices
I wish there was mass transit in my area, I'm having car troubles at the moment and it would make it so much easier to, you know, leave my house. I live in what I would call a "distinctly suburban" area about halfway between new york and boston, and if I don't have access to mass transit, you can bet your ass that 90% of the poeple who don't live in a city don't have access to mass transit. And I would use the hell out of mass transit, rather than walk the 3 miles one way to the nearest store, but the fact is that america isn't set up for it. we have what you might call "too much space" to effectively end our dependence on cars. anyone who doesn't live in a city, or an urban sprawl suburb needs to get a car, simply because its difficult to run a marathon to get to the grocery store every week.
Coast to coast? Driving 400 miles away from the coast will barely get you out of my coastal state, taking the most direct route. I personally don't drive much, but my parents frequently (2 or 3 times a month) travel a 300 mile round trip to visit their grand kids. Without leaving the state.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Why'd you choose Dundee and Poole? Those are nowhere near the extremes of the country. Try Penzance to Thurso, 823 miles/1324 km.
As an Australian I can't help but laugh at Americans who think Texas is huge and that they pay too much for fuel.
From the state capital city I live in to the other state capital cities:
Adelaide-Darwin: 3000km
Adelaide-Perth: 2700km
Adelaide-Brisbane: 2000km
Adelaide-Sydney: 1400km
Adelaide-Canberra: 1200km
Adelaide-Melbourne: 700km
And we're just the 3rd biggest state. If I were in Queensland, to go from the capital of Brisbane to the northern regional city of Cairns would be a 1700km trip. If I were in the largest state of Western Australia and was to go from the capital of Perth to the northern "frontier" town of Broome that would be a 2200km trip.
And to top it all off we're currently paying about $6.10 a gallon in the cities, based on current exchange rates. If you fill up in the country you could be paying $7.70 or more per gallon. (We have around 2/3rd the population of California in an area roughly the size of the USA with 80% or so living in that above mentioned handful of capital cities)
Come on... no sense of humor today, mods?
Hey guys, it's 8.49$ for a gallon here[1].
I 'got two bikes and I'm buyn' the third, 'spent some money on insulating and termic solar for my house.
I do really enjoy my town more, and I take care to eat food that does not come from far away. Haven't been traveling that much for futile things like going to that pub in that town, snowboarding in that (far) cool spot.
Fuel is running out ok? Not tomorrow: tomorrow it's just when it will become very expensive. To change your abits you won't have to wait that we eventually run out of fuel, price raise will do.
1. Here is Italy if you were wondering, we do have a lot of taxes on fuel right now as we had a clown and the whole circus for prime minister for a while...
Understood, but that just pushes the problem back one more time: why is road wear more important than environmental impact? Both cause use to incur major tax costs.
Slashdot used to be a great place because of the comments. This is still sorta true for technical matters. On subjects like gas prices or anything political, the comments are mostly made by smug know-it-alls who are clueless about anything non-computer related and are wildly mis-informed politically. The dumbing down of America has spread to Slashdot.