$50 a barrel? I say BRING IT ON!

[malatesta1137]

As an environmentalist, I love high gas prices. The higher the prices, the better, less driving, less pollution in the air.

Last April, for financial (insurance) reasons, I had to stop driving. I live in the NY suburbs and thought my life was going to end. How was I going to do everything, ANYTHING, without my car? Four months later, not only have I survived, but I also lost a lot of weight with all the walking I've been doing. I am also very happy that I am being kind to the environment.

Living without a car in the suburbs is not impossible. I know these high prices are very hard on poor families with kids and all, but even they could try to be not as dependent on their cars.

[Lucky Luciano]

1. It affects more than your ability to drive.

Anything that needs to be transported will have their prices go up as well - and most things need to be transported....

[gasperc]

16. the big companies need cheap oil

and are forcing US through the government to subsidize it. They need it cheap, so people will keep buying large gas guzzling cars, so that shipping costs from China and other "cheap labor markets" remain low, the US economy needs energy and wayyyyyyy more than we can produce ourselves so we extract this wealth from underdeveloped countries, well the citizens of these countries have caught on and they are pissed that they can't even make enough money to put food on the table. While, we Americans, are blessed with a stunning amount of wealth. This isn't hating America, this is pointing out why their is resentment and hatred TOWARDS us.

[arcos]

2. I (more or less) agree...

I'm not American, but here gas prices have gone up 22% this year... and you know what? There are far less traffic jams, and I notice less pollution too.

Luckily, I think I'll be able to afford gas even though it will become more expensive... but it is positive, since most of us will start using it in a more rational way, only when needed.

It will also make people aware of how urgent alternative fuels are needed. I'm also aware it causes the prices of everything to rise, and it will be very hard on poor people, so I hope it won't get MUCH higher than $50 or $55... but high prices make people realize how dependent we are on oil, and how we should try to fix that.

[JohnnyRingo]

3. Fine with me too

I snicker everytime I pass a new Hummer.
Egotistic Ahnold wanna-bees...I'll bet they cry the loudest.

I'm a motorhead, but even my summer car gets 27 MPG.

(1971 Triumph TR6)

[tinanator]

19. Hey I just saw a TR6 two nights ago

Didnt realize the lady I knew had owned it for 18 years. Neat ride.
Prince of darkness and all.

[Bo]

31. I have not seen a TR6 since the 80s

very nice ride you got.

[Baltimoreboy]

4. It's a tax on the poor

Who can ill afford it. The wealthy don't care.

Ah so superior, even the poor could try to be not as dependent on cars. Sure, when there's no good mass transit or none at all.

[KharmaTrain]

5. We Still Haven't Really Paid For The Last Price Run-Up

It takes about 4 months for a gas price ripple to work its way through the economy. From the higher costs of manufacturing or growing where oil is used, to the transport and "finishing" and then bringing it to market. This isn't just paying more to fill up your SUV.

These price rises have been the equivelent of a tax hike on everyone...especially the lower classes as this tax is leveled equally on all...and hurts the poorer more as it hits the virtually every major expense they have...transportation, food, heating and housing.

This regime is trying hard to keep a lid on the inflation dragon, that is all but ready to go on a rampage ala 70's style. All the elements for this are in place...a sluggish economy, rising oil prices, a growing debt and the need for the rich to get richer however they can.

Yes, I laugh at the asshole in the Hummer who has to pay $100 to fill up that ugly pollution machine, but it's still his right. And the regime will use this price run up to their advantage...(ala Crashcart)...blaming Democrats for the high prices and telling them the only answer to their need to be gluttons is more cholestorol and gluttony. Maybe they'll all have cardiacs together.

[anarchy1999]

6. I appreciate your sacrifice, but just try doing it in the South West.

Dallas specifically. No family can do even partly well without a car. Sorry, it it just a sad fact of life here, there is no transit system to speak of.

[ReaderSushi]

7. I heart NY

Excellent public transit system: subway, buses, rail, and ferry.
It's such a luxury to be green without having to make the sacrifices.
We seriously need to invest in a system of high speed rail to replace Amtrak. It would be energy efficient and could compete with airplanes on a regional level.

[MercutioATC]

8. I agree!

We're great innovators, but we only innovate when it's profitable to do so. Energy in the U.S. is too inexpensive to encourage innovation.

Let gas hit $4-$5/gallon and I'll bet we start to figure out better ways to use it. We'll also start looking more seriously at alternative energy sources.

[ReaderSushi]

9. We don't even have to innovate.

Much of the technology and techniques already exist.
The french and japanese have excellent bullet train tech.
The danes have done well with wind power.
We already know the benefits of green building, the concepts should be mandatory for all future architects if it isn't already.

[MercutioATC]

12. True, but I was thinking of more advanced concepts...

...ones that don't require the massive infrastructure spending.

Thermal depolymerization on a single-family scale would be a great start, I think.

http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/features/footnmouth/zwaste2.html

[MadHound]

10. Nice short term thinking there friend

While you and others might be forced into conserving due to high gas prices, higher fuel prices has a huge impact on our economy. Fuel prices and transport prices are the second largest expenditure for any business. You want to deal with milk at twenty dollars a gallon? Lettuce at ten dollars a head?

While this may pinch the surburbanites until it hurts, for many many people such prices are literally a matter of life and death. What about your parents, or the millions of other senior citizens? How are they supposed to afford both food and medicine on a limited income? Are you going to pick up the slack?

Reveling in the short term effects that high gas prices bring about might be fun for a bit, but it is also best to remember the long term effects. If you want to bring about even more change, start creating a demand for biodiesel. Or force you local city council to invest in renewable resources. Or put a windmill up in the neighborhood. These are the type of changes that will make our transition from fossil fuels easier and less painful. For before we go off of oil and gas, there has to be an energy alternative, otherwise people will die.

So while you are gas free, go out and create some alternatives so that people can join you.

[MercutioATC]

14. Actually, malatesta1137 is thinking long-term.

Considering immediate repercussions (like higher transportation costs) is "short-term" thinking. What malatesta1137 is proposing could very encourage new innovation that would solve long-term problems.

[MadHound]

21. Yes, it could encourage new innovative thinking,

But that would come at the expense of a wrecked economy, along with human suffering and death.

Instead of letting the markets solely decide what our energy future is going to be, bring in the government and private corporations to start encouraging renewable energy alternatives in order to alleviate our dependence on oil. Carter's tax credits for homeowners' use of alternative energy was an effective first step, and was encouraging the use of renewable resources. Sadly, Reagan discontinued this practice. We should renew this program as a first step, and then go from there with various other tax and market incentives.

If you simply let the invisible hand of the market decide this, then you are going to condemn millions of people, both nation and world wide to life of poverty, suffering and death. Too much of our infrastructure is tied up in oil dependence to let the market make such corrections. The price of virtually everything would sky-rocket, and certain critical items, such as food, would become too expensive to bear for most people.

While there is a certain sense of schadenfreude in watching gas guzzling, SUV driving suburbanite getting hit hard at the pump, the real tragedy is taking place in the inner cities and rural areas. The SUV crowd can generally afford to pay the higher price at the pump, while those in the inner city generally get hit much harder for the lesser amount of energy they consume, while the rural folks are hit in their livelihood, farming.

[MercutioATC]

22. That's been tried, with very limited success.

People experience short-term "suffering" whenever a major technological change occurrs. The end result is usually positive, however...for everybody.

I'd love for innovation to happen without profit as its major motivating force, but that just doesn't seem to be the case.

[MadHound]

23. So you are willing to throw millions of people into poverty, suffering ,

And death simply to allow lasse faire economics take care of our energy transition? Not very compassionate friend, and a hard sell to the American public. Think about it, oil is in everything, from the fertilizer we put on our crops to the plastic keyboard your typing on, to the medical instruments and devices keeping people alive. Allowing the energy prices skyrocket until market innovation occurs guarantees that oil will hit $100.00/barrel before anything is done. After all, such prices would be a windfall for the energy companies, don't you think they would be a little reluctant to kill the goose laying the golden egg?

Instead, offering a carrot is a more effective, less traumatic means of bringing about change. For example, Carter's tax credit plan for home owners resulted in 600,000 homes being outfitted with alternative energy production in the six years it was in existence, along with countless others taking advantage of the credits to do much needed conservation project like weatherization and insulating. The tax credit for ethanol production stimulated a whole industry to come into being, which now produces billions of gallons of fuel, and has saved many family farms.

It isn't that we should wipe out market incentives completly, that would be foolish. But market forces should be paired with effective governmental carrots to promote innovation without crashing the economy and society as a whole.

[MercutioATC]

24. I think the "death" part is a little extreme...

at least if you're talking about millions of people.

It's not a "hard sell" because it won't be a "sell" at all. If oil prices continue to rise, it'll be a reality.

I'm not denying the short-term negative impact. I just believe that the long-term effect would be very positive.

[MadHound]

25. Not extreme at all friend, consider the following

Any urban area is three days away from major riots at any given time. Why? Because urban areas only have aprox. three days worth of a food supply inside their stores, restraunts, etc. Run out of food, and people are out for major, violent food riots. If you jack up the price of oil to $50.00/barrel or more, farmers are not going to be able to afford fertilizer, weed killer, or gas for their farm machinery. Major drop in food supply, thus an increase in food riots.

Also, with the rising costs of transportation, you are going to be forcing a lot of people, especially those on fixed incomes, into some major life or death decisions. Do I pay exhorbitant prices for heating during the winter, or the drastically increased prices for food? Do I pay the radically more expensive electric bill to survive those killer summer months, or the drastically hiked price of my life saving, petrol based prescription? With the intwinement of oil into virtually every critical decision we make, literally thousands of these type of questions will have to be asked every day by millions of people. And some of these questions will not be life or death, merely die quickly or die slowly.

Yes, market forces will quickly and efficiently change our energy policy, but the cost for such efficiency will be death and destruction. Rather than opt for the quickest, cruelest method of change, instead why not be a bit slower, and more compassionate about it, and spare us, both individually and collectively, the pain, suffering and death that such an abrubt change would bring. Instead, phase oil out through a series of both market price increase and tax incentive payoffs. After all, like any addiction, we took years to acquire this one, it will take years to get off of it.

[SOS]

26. This dark scenario

would be the fault of American oil companies and the Republican Party.

From an interview with RFK Jr.:

"President Carter passed CAFE standards in response to the second oil crisis in 1979. Those standards were directed towards getting our country up from 20 to 40 miles per gallon by 1990. Within six years, we had raised average fuel economy by seven-and-a-half miles per gallon. That efficiency caused an oil glut in this country, collapsing the price of gasoline to the lowest levels in decades. Oil companies went to the Reagan administration and persuaded them to roll back CAFE standards. The Gingrich Congress subsequently made it illegal for the government to pass them. In 1986 we doubled imports from the Persian Gulf and they've been going up ever since. If Reagan hadn't done that we would not have imported one drop of Gulf oil into this country after 1986."

If the Carter standards had not been gutted by Big Oil and the Republicans, the US would have been free of ALL imported oil by 1991.

[MadHound]

27. Hear, hear!

In addition, we would have been getting much, if not most of our other energy needs from renewable resources also. I remember in high school we were debating the energy issue, and there were several credible sources stating that with the technology we had then, within twenty five years we could be supplying fifty percent of our energy needs with renewable resources.

Instead, big business and their governmental enablers have allowed big oil to increase it's stranglehold on the American people. Just goes to show you what happens when you leave energy policy in the hands of big corporations and the "free" market.

[malatesta1137]

29. Being mindful of the environment

is not a short-term deal with me, madhound. High gas prices might be bad for the economy in general, but are still good for the environment.

As for senior citizens and poor families (and everyone), I didn't suggest they should stop driving, but make intelligent and considerate driving decisions. Instead of driving 2 or 3 times a weeks to the grocery store, they should start doing it 2 or 3 times a month.

Let's cut the profit of oil companies a bit, and let's save ourselves some cash.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/184303_oiled.html

[MadHound]

30. Nor is it a short term deal with me either friend

But to jack up oil prices suddenly in an effort to cut oil consumption is a foolish idea. It would wreck the economy, and cause much suffering and some death. What would work better is a sound, long term plan to wean America off of oil within a decade. Promote the use of biodiesel, solar, wind and other renewable energy resources with carrots such as tax credits, etc. Also use market forces to promote the use of such clean fuel as biodiesel.

This sort of plan was started by Carter in the late seventies, and was pretty effective, at least until the Reagan adminsitration shut it down. If we start it again, we can wean ourselves off of this national oil addiction. And that is what it is, an addiction. And like any many other addictions, cold turkey is not the way to kick it.

Until we get a national program going, it is going to be up to us as individuals to wean our own selves off of oil. I'm in the latter QC stages of making my own biodiesel, I'm going to be installing a windmill and solar panels within three years, and should be energy self sufficient within five. Other than not driving(which is a commendable step), what are you doing to reduce your energy consumption?

[Pepperbelly]

11. A word to the wise ... Putting yourself in this position politically is ..

a stone loser.

What on earth would cause liberal people to put themselves so four-squarely against the interests of the poor and the working poor? You might think it's a good idea in general but what do you say to working poor who MUST travel to work and the price of gasoline has eaten into their budget for food?

I simply cannot be on the same side of anyone who thinks that poor people should be even more afflicted by the impediments to survival than they already are.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

13. Walking to work...

I would love to walk to work but there's no work (that pays anything)within walking distance.I commute 33 miles(X4)Mon-Fri.

I wonder how long it would take??

:kick:

[Kolesar]

15. We get two meters of snow per year where I live

I have met two people in Cleveland who get by without a car. That does not include old people who have quit driving.

[ASanders84]

17. They could really use it in Southern California

Smog central.

[thatgemguy]

18. How about a little compassion

for us folks in the Northeast who heat our homes with oil???

[CaTeacher]

20. well- I would artificially raise

the price even more--by taxing the hell out of gasoline at the pump. Seriously--if it cost about five dollars per gallon when people went to fill their tank--well that would put a serious enough hurt on their pocket book to make them THINK about their energy use. And the money could be put to use for lots of great social programs.

[mrboba1]

28. But the price of milk has gone up

about 20 percent too. I don't think they should try to be less dependent on food...

[Protected]

32. I love paying more money for stuff at the store,

don't you? My income is so high right now and it's just so good to spend more money on stuff thanks to the higher fuel prices.

[Goldmund]

33. It impacts the _entire_ economy

And especially food production, as well as electricity prices, and it has a domino effect on the entire economic system, and therefore the global stability in the most general terms possible. It's not a good thing. I dig what you're saying, and I'm all for energy regulation -- but this isn't good news by any stretch.