Seeing that middle income families make up the biggest part of the population, it’s them who will have to exert the political pressure. But before they will do that, they will have to experience rough patches, because face it, the masses are lazy and it takes a lot to get them moving.
We need two things to produce alternative energy 1 more money, and 2 more time. Yes it should have happened earlier, but we still need time. And this isnt 4 or five years, this is more like 30 or 40 years till we can make large jumps in tech. and distribution. A large increase in price wouldn’t decrease aggregate demand that much. We all need cars to go places, granted we would cut back majorly, there are hundreds of other industry that need oil for production.
See, 30 or 40 years is way too long. We’ll have mass poverty or a three revolutions in 30 or 40 years. And using oil to bridge the gap isn’t such a great idea. I really think reasonably equipped electric cars can be mass-produced inside of 5 years and if we get the electricity through atomic or solar energy, that should be sufficient to bridge the gap until fusion becomes available or solar energy can take over completely.
In my circles it isn’t strange at all, though I do resent that as soon as we have the money to get a car, the cars we like become popular. In my area there is more than half a year wait for a hybrid, and new smaller cars are cheaper than used ones in decent condition.
Given Boxy’s revelation as… a libertarian :eek: … I’ll just note that I remember most of the debaters when I was in HS (in the late '90s) thought that being libertarian was cool. But as they grew up, they realized that it wasn’t a realistic way of viewing the world. The market is biased, and do you see it resolving issues of social justice any time soon? (I use debaters as my example because they were the only large group that had any political opinion at all)
No worries, I’m pretty sure they listen to my phone calls. Especially with sis in Europe and in-laws in S. America… (or I might give them too much credit to pick up on my saying “Bush is an idiot, can you believe he said/did X?” and actually caring)
Agreed. I’m an urbanite, and seeing all of those SUVs driving around that had obviously never been used for their designed purposes just made me angry. I was spitting mad when I saw Hummer dealers. Because realistically, what civilian needs a Hummer?! Really!?
I’m proud to use public transportation. And I agree about people needing to have got into this earlier. I remember being made fun of when I was younger for worrying about things like this… oh, how times have changed. It’s kind of like thinking that invading Iraq was a bad idea, back in 2002 and 2003. Speaking of oil…
#4 is really important too. We can’t just say, hey rest of the world! You aren’t allowed to attain our standards of living, because we’ve decided that the Earth can’t handle it, so you’re stuck walking or with buses while we decide the greenest way to continue our consumerist lifestyles. Not to mention that these attitudes have a lot to do with racist legacies as well as colonialist legacies… I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I think a step in the right direction would be to actually take responsibility for our own output while negotiating in such a way as to raise living standards worldwide. That’s probably unrealistic, but I still think it would be a good thing.
Here I have to disagree. The futures market is part of it, but it’s not the only cause. Consider that oil is a finite resource, where those resources are located, and the increasing demand. Add in the general crappiness of the economic situation of most places, inflation, etc, and you have a recipe for unhappiness.
If all one were to care about would be the price of oil… but there are those of us who think that drilling and destroying more natural habitats is a bad thing. I’m also curious as to what figures you’re working with, because most of what I’ve seen - admittedly ideologically skewed towards environmentalists, peak oil, etc, though also from not as skewed places like a certain British newsmagazine - has calculated the the time and costs (purely economic here, not taking into account the destruction of the surrounding environment) of that development, and it wouldn’t be worthwhile.
The policies of the last eight years have pretty much pushed us in that direction… but I think your question is unfair, given that no one would actually say that they want people to fail. Pure rhetoric, not policy.
Sorry, what I meant was what kind of hybrid fuel we’re talking about. Petroleum Gas or LPG (Liquified Propane Gas) or electricity? I’m curious because my parents recently ordered a new car but didn’t want a hybrid but went for a straight LPG car instead, which makes sense over here, seeing that the price for LPG is almost 1€ lower than for gasoline.
Even if we started drilling NOW in these places, we wouldn’t see returns on that investment for ten years, at least, by which point the world supply of oil will have run even lower and prices will have risen even higher, thus negating the whole point of offshore/Alaskan drilling in the first place. Unless you like your planet a few degrees warmer.
The “futures market” in oil probably has little to do with the price of oil today. It seems prefectly obvious to me that it’s a question of a limited and rapidly dwindling (depending on who you ask the oil supply has either spiked and is already in decline or will be spiking and declining by 2050) supply of oil versus rapidly growing demand from highly populated developing nations like China and India.
Originally Posted by Boxytheboxed
What? You want middle income families to fail?
Seeing that middle income families make up the biggest part of the population, it’s them who will have to exert the political pressure. But before they will do that, they will have to experience rough patches, because face it, the masses are lazy and it takes a lot to get them moving.
As I said, what the U.S. needs is a good, old fashioned proletariat revolution.
Well thanks. Why in particular? And what’s wrong with my hair? :eek:
They’ve known about the shale oil for decades. It’s never been economically viable until the prices went so high. Anyone who’s interested in tapping that source of petroleum would want to keep the price of oil elevated, otherwise the expenditure would be greater than the profit. The same logic goes for the Canadian oil sands, which by some estimates have more untapped oil than the entire Middle East. Until recently though, it wasn’t feasible to get at it (meaning, again, the price goes down, they stop tapping it). This is all ignoring the environmental damage that tapping these alternate sources would cause, of course. It’s the ultimate in short-term thinking to get maybe 10-15 years of oil out of places that currently support viable ecosystems and in the process devastate those ecosystems for centuries to come.
Inter arma enim leges silent, all the moreso when it’s a war against a nebulous concept.
Even those who advocate it say that such projects won’t see results for at least 20 years. And even then, at best they’ll meet less than 10% of our current demand (which is still increasing, BTW).
It hasn’t been covered all that well in the American press, but there have already been food riots throughout the world in the past few months. As global warming and limited fuel resources get more dire (particularly with increased demand in China and India), that’s only going to get more frequent.
Gas prices are only the tip of the iceberg. “Peak oil” is coming or may have already happened. Supply and demand are still fairly well balanced; even if the prices are high, there is more oil than needed. Once demand outstrips supply, however, there just won’t be enough to go around. Needless to say, the price will skyrocket when that happens. “Have not” countries just won’t get any at all. If you think the threat of terrorism is bad now, wait until an industrialized country has to go without its “oil fix” while America and Europe consume the remainder of the world’s swiftly dwindling supply. And if one of these countries is nuclear-capable…
That is the nature of the beast, though. The political will for change is based around promising the public relief for the high costs of gas (such as the suggestion of removing the taxes on gasoline), even if those promises will not have any real world impact. It’s treating a symptom instead of the disease. In fact, in most ways, it only serves to make the disease worse…
We’ve had time. Scientists predicted global warming and peak oil in the '50s and '60s, but there had been virtually no movement on either front until the last few years. Now the problems have gone so far it’s questionable whether it’s even possible to make changes for the better, much less that those changes will be quick and pain-free. Technology wasn’t needed to make a difference decades ago; all that was needed was keeping demand low.
One of the reasons we love our cars so much…
See, 30 or 40 years is way too long. We’ll have mass poverty or a three revolutions in 30 or 40 years. And using oil to bridge the gap isn’t such a great idea. I really think reasonably equipped electric cars can be mass-produced inside of 5 years and if we get the electricity through atomic or solar energy, that should be sufficient to bridge the gap until fusion becomes available or solar energy can take over completely.
Solar is still years away from even making a sizeable dent in energy demand. And atomic energy has too many drawbacks. Its long-term environmental impact is worse than the overuse of petroleum could ever be.
I had similar experiences in college. Libertarianism is necessarily short-sighted, since it puts virtually all the responsibility on the individual. People already do what they believe will be best for themselves; it doesn’t leave a lot of room for “big picture” improvements if that self-interest is institutionalized.
I’m proud to use public transportation. And I agree about people needing to have got into this earlier. I remember being made fun of when I was younger for worrying about things like this… oh, how times have changed. It’s kind of like thinking that invading Iraq was a bad idea, back in 2002 and 2003.
Arguably, it was probably an even worse idea to invade Iraq in 1990…
Speaking of oil…
#4 is really important too. We can’t just say, hey rest of the world! You aren’t allowed to attain our standards of living, because we’ve decided that the Earth can’t handle it, so you’re stuck walking or with buses while we decide the greenest way to continue our consumerist lifestyles. Not to mention that these attitudes have a lot to do with racist legacies as well as colonialist legacies… I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I think a step in the right direction would be to actually take responsibility for our own output while negotiating in such a way as to raise living standards worldwide. That’s probably unrealistic, but I still think it would be a good thing.
All the more reason that it’ll never happen. Not without a fairly tumultuous upheaval of the status quo, because the status is NOT quo.
I think you’re conflating two separate ideas here.
Hybrid vehicles are essentially electricity-powered, but they use standard chemical fuels to charge batteries instead of “plugging in”. For the end user, it’s basically a regular car that gets much better gas mileage.
What you’re calling “hybrid fuels” are what’s known as “flex fuel” vehicles. At their best, they can use a variety of fuels, including straight gasoline, ethanol, or any combination thereof.
It’s possible that both technologies could exist in the same vehicle, as well, although I can’t say for sure whether that’s happened yet or not.
Yep, that’ll do it…
That’s what you get for single-handedly destroying the global economy and dooming the entire planet.
You need the truck use it. Hopefully they will make them with better engines so you get the best of both worlds.
I can not buy a car so any new fuel will have to work in my car until they pay teachers better.
I went Through a gas shortage in the late 1970s. We lined up and only could buy a few gallons. You would have thought we would have learned from that.
The biggest problem is that no one cares until it hits their little place on earth. If we started using the tech we had in the 1980s we would be better off today.
Wow, Prettyhair did I do OK on the large multiquotes? Now onto page 10.
I see them also and we do not have much need for them in Florida.
The people that sell the oil know it also. That is why the prices are going up.
There are other ways such as using other bio products to make fuel.
The Govener of Florida suggested taking the ban off of drilling closer to the coast to help lower fuel costs. He forgot to tell everyone that it will take more than 10 years to even start drilling and that the companies do not even use all the area they have.
Sorry my friend, but wrong. the futures market, according to the Economist controlls roughly 70% of oil prices. The price form futres would siginificantly reduce b/c they would be confident we have enough shale/other sources to last us till were off oil.
I’d respond, but its Summer
I usually don’t keep track of where everything is from because I read so much, but its all saved, and backed up between a large network of debate team computers. The truth is noone can give a proven number for how much oil we have, and how much longer it will last.
Yes, Libertarian…god I hate income tax. I really don’t like big government, and government spending. Granted I don’t support it all realistically, some just ideologically.
- has calculated the the time and costs (purely economic here, not taking into account the destruction of the surrounding environment) of that development, and it wouldn’t be worthwhile.
