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Americans Rejoice At Lower Gas Prices
HughPickens.com writes Drivers across America are rejoicing at falling gasoline prices as pumps across the country dip below $3 a gallon. According to Sharon E. Burke while it's nice to get the break at the gas pump and the economic benefits of an energy boom at home, the national security price of oil remains high and the United States should be doing everything it can to diversify global energy suppliers. Ultimately, the only way to solve our long term energy problem is to make a sustained, long-term investment in the alternatives to petroleum. But October saw a 52 percent jump in Jeep SUV sales and a 36 percent rise in Ram trucks while some hybrid and electric vehicle sales fell at the same time. "This is like putting a Big Mac in front of people who need to diet or watch their cholesterol," says Anthony Perl. "Some people might have the willpower to stick with their program, and some people will wait until their first heart attack before committing to a diet—but if we do that at a planetary scale it will be pretty traumatic."
Nicholas St. Fleur writes at The Atlantic that low oil prices may also undermine the message from the UN's climate panel. The price drop comes after the UN declared earlier this week that fossil fuel emissions must drop to zero by the end of the century in order to keep global temperatures in check. "I don't think people will see the urgency of dealing with fossil fuels today," says Perl. Falling oil prices may also deter businesses from switching to energy-saving technology, as a 2006 study in the Energy Journal suggested. Saving several pennies at the pump, Perl says, may tempt Americans away from actions that can lead to a sustainable, post-carbon future.
Nicholas St. Fleur writes at The Atlantic that low oil prices may also undermine the message from the UN's climate panel. The price drop comes after the UN declared earlier this week that fossil fuel emissions must drop to zero by the end of the century in order to keep global temperatures in check. "I don't think people will see the urgency of dealing with fossil fuels today," says Perl. Falling oil prices may also deter businesses from switching to energy-saving technology, as a 2006 study in the Energy Journal suggested. Saving several pennies at the pump, Perl says, may tempt Americans away from actions that can lead to a sustainable, post-carbon future.
"This is like putting a Big Mac in front of people who need to diet or watch their cholesterol," says Anthony Perl. "Some people might have the willpower to stick with their program, and some people will wait until their first heart attack before committing to a diet—but if we do that at a planetary scale it will be pretty traumatic."
Uh...unable to control their "willpower" when buying a car? We now blame Jeeps and SUVs for this horrible affliction? The additional $10 - $15K you'll spend on a larger offroad capable vehicle isn't enough of a deterrent? Fucking seriously? Do you people also "buy" your cars at the casino?
Willpower in car buying...whatever the hell that shit is supposed to mean. I assume that during the next fuel spike we'll see insurance companies start accepting claims for this horrible "disease" like we did with alcohol, right? I mean, an addiction to large overpriced SUVs that never touch dirt or mud is clearly an addiction spiraling out of control that we should probably earmark billions in taxpayer money. After all, someone should think of the children, especially while the oil sheiks take a personal jet to go get their Big Mac...
I miss the good ole' days when Slashdot was about technology, not navel-gazing bullshit about American politics and policy. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The world has gotten a bailout due to trillions spent on military forced stabilization.
I for one am boggled why some think they can change human nature. We consume. Start looking at how to adapt to climate change instead of some fantasy of avoiding it.
The Saudis are bottoming-out the price of oil to punish marginal north American oil producers, and the Russians
Partly. But their main target is Iran. Iran is hurting under the sanctions, and is under a lot of economic pressure to cut a deal on their uranium enrichment. The oil price drop is turning up the pressure big time. Nobody fears a nuclear Iran more than the Saudis, not even the Israelis.
If Iran reaches an agreement with the P5+1 on uranium, then expect the price of oil to rebound quickly as the Saudis shut off the spigot.
Start looking at how to adapt to climate change instead of some fantasy of avoiding it.
The way to adapt is by retiring the internal combustion engine.
Paying attention to Jeep and Ram sales doesn't really say a whole lot. Jeep has the largest number of smaller - yet non-toy - SUVs of any manufacturer right now; some of the other manufacturers have been reducing their line-ups. Similarly while the Ram trucks haven't changed much in the past decade the other manufacturers are changing their trucks which shifts demand around.
You need to look at industry-wide sales stats to have a sense of what the sales numbers are doing. You need to also look at it against annual averages, as a sales uptick in the fall is not unusual when businesses are looking to finish their fiscal years.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Germany is not the United States. Everyone pointing at Europe seems to miss one large difference: there's a whole hell of a lot more room between people and places they need to go in most the United States than in Europe. If you live in Massachusetts, half an hour is a "long drive," but if you live in North Carolina it can easily be how far away Charlotte or Raleigh or Greensboro is. If I want to visit an area with a lot of large shops and restaurants, I'm looking at a 30-mile drive at a minimum; 40 miles if I want to go somewhere that actually has American corporate icons like Barnes & Noble, Starbucks, Best Buy, etc. Taxing fuel at such an astronomical rate will certainly lower the amount of fuel use, but how many businesses will have to shut down because customers can't afford to blow $14 on fuel that they weren't spending before just to patronize those businesses? How much will the cost of items on eBay, Amazon, and other e-commerce sites increase? Someone who lives 30 miles from work because they can't afford housing any closer than that could be paying an extra $70 or more a week in fuel costs just to get to and from their jobs. The worst part is that people who would be considered "poor" are the hardest hit by this sort of feel-good taxation. In a country with a dismal record of low economic upward mobility, the last thing we need is to punch everyone in the financial face while they're already struggling to move up the ladder at all.
How about the effects of such a tax on, say, diesel fuel for the carriers to bring stuff from west coast ports to this side of the country. None of this deals with the serious problems we have in this country with rampant abuse of tax money. $7 per gallon worth of fuel tax that the corrupt politicians get to freely play around with? No thank you. Perhaps if our election cycles were not so widely spaced out so that we could throw the bums out faster, it'd be different.
Not inaccessibly. I lean towards libertarianism and believe in global warming.
The answer is to cut the tax rate and impose a carbon tax. If structured correctly, the average individual wouldn't pay higher taxes. Unless, that is, they decided that they should start conserving energy.
> Perhaps all the morons buying hummers and F-150s
Wven the four-door SuperCab version of the F-150 gets real- world 23.5 in road tests. Do you have a more efficient way to haul things, or are you spouting off without having any idea what you're talking about?
You can base your opinions on facts, or you can base them on what a Comedy Central comedian tells you to think. Your choice.
We had inexpensive energy for a long time and it didn't fix all of society, so it's only one factor. And if every poor person could drive a car, traffic would be so slow that it would be quicker to walk.
Raise the cost or taxes on fuel and use it to build much better mass transit and subsidize the price of fruit & veggies, milk & meat produced domestically.
That will do more for the poor - with universal, single-payer, healthcare than simply having cheap gasoline.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
A fossil fuel tax (assuming it worked as advertised to bring consumption down) would have the added benefit of keeping oil prices down. When you spike consumption in response to lower prices, the prices just go back up. A well-designed ff tax would hold the prices steady at a level high enough to encourage conservation, but hopefully low enough to not be onerous. And the difference between the target price and the actual price is money that could be put to good use - or even simply returned to the public in the form of a rebate if politics dictate that's the only way. The point is to use less fossil fuels, not necessarily to make driving expensive.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
" Questionable technologies like CVT and direct injection, and mis-application of turbocharging made modern cars significantly less reliable than what was produced just 10 years ago." -- holy crap, you got any stats to back that up? Because according to Consumer Reports and the car enthusiast magazines (Road and Track, etc.) cars are better than ever now. I personally own a nine-year old SUV with a CVT (2006 Highlander Hybrid) and a 19 year old car with a turbocharger ('96 Volvo 850 Turbo) and have never had any problems with those components. Do you want to go back to 'reliable' carburetors and point-type ignitions, I guess? Anyone who says older cars were more reliable (like from the good old days of the 50's and 60's) doesn't have much experience owning and working on them. Posting AC because already modded this thread..
So add subsidies for the needy - and use some fucking decent building standards, for fuck's sake.
I've never lived in the UK but I do have many friends who have or grew up there - far too many homes are drafty and leaky beyond description.
Building better homes or patching up the crappy ones would be a great infrastructure project with lots of local employment, something Britain needs.
In civilized countries, you're not allowed to cut off someone's electricity during the winter months.
I'm not opposed to "inexpensive energy" but to subsidize fossil fuels for those who can easily afford it when it's the cause (or major factor) of conflict, pollution, death, and global warming.
There's also the tally of death & suffering, war & political instability that the West has caused in countries that they wouldn't give a flying fuck about, if there wasn't any oil buried under them.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body