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Topic: Crude oil still on it's way up, up, up!
| Author | Message |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 4/26/2008 12:04:41 AM | show profile notpriveleged, when Bush took office oil was selling for less than $30 a barrel. Now it's about four times that. Nice work Bush (even though I'm actually pro high gas prices because I'm pro earth). I'm a progressive (liberal) democrat, but everytime I hear someone talk about releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve I just wince. The oil in the SPR is but a drop in the bucket. It will solve nothing to release it now just because it costs a lot. It is there for a very specific purpose and can help serve that purpose well, but as a way to bring prices down? Forget it. It might do it for a couple of months but that's it. We really really really really need that oil in the SPR as a cushion for major oil or fuel supply disruptions (as in foreign embargos, major terrorist attacks, major and massive hurrican damage, etc.). It can be helpful for that but absolutely not going to do anything for long-term oil or fuel prices and gets rid of that little protection we have (just in case OPEC for instance gets pissed off at us). The SPR can do nothing to help bring down oil prices that are high because oil if a finite product and if we're not already past global peak production we are probably pretty near it; the value of the dollar has been falling due to mismanagement of the federal budget. We just need to get off our oil habit. My preference would be to double the price through taxes and use those taxes for a good purpose but I know that isn't going to happen. |
| HyancinthGirl | Posted – 4/26/2008 12:23:39 AM | show profile UGoGirl, I respect your opinion about doubling, tripling the taxes or even the price of gas, because that would surely break the habit. But how do you propose people get to work, etc.? The problem remains that the infrastructure is not there. There aren't buses, trains, or bikes to get to work. And heck, what do we do in winter? Riding a bike just won't do if I have to meet with clients. I'm welcome to suggestions. |
| Queen Kong | Posted – 4/26/2008 12:31:10 AM | show profile > We just need to get off our oil habit. < Never going to happen. Some of the many products made from petroleum: heart valves, anesthetics, dentures, contact lens, artificial limbs, aspirin, eyeglasses, rubbing alcohol, vitamin capsules, bandages, telephones, deodorants, soap, sun glasses, cleaning solvents, tires, upholstery, helmets, shoes, skis, ballpoint pens, umbrellas, speakers, nylon rope, combs, antifreeze, hand lotion, enamel, refrigerators, dishwashers, film, crayons, CDs, DVDs, tape, luggage, toilet seats, surf boards, microwave oven, plastic food containers. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 4/26/2008 12:34:41 PM | show profile HGirl, we here in the US like to think of the EU as being heaven on earth in terms of transit, etc. It probably is,compard to the US, but even there people still drive for about 70 to 90 percent of trips. Gas is much higher there, and yet people still do drive quite a bit (definitely not as much as here, but they do drive). And some people even work there too. Here's what you would do. You would keep driving to work, because you have to, and you would cut down on other driving trips. Maybe you'd vacation closer to home. Maybe instead of making three trips to the store each week you'd make one. Maybe you'd tell your kids that they can't participate in 3 sports now because you can't drive them all over town. You might even carpool to work if really desperate. Over time, you or others with more options, would choose to live closer to where you work and shop, and choose to use more fuel efficient cars. And walk more and bike more. Over time. It took us 50+ years since the end of WWII to get us into this situation of acting as if energy would always be cheap and plentiful, and we're not going to redesign our world and lifestyle in a matter of months. |
| HyancinthGirl | Posted – 4/26/2008 12:54:29 PM | show profile NP, I think journalism is at an all-time low because we aren't objective anymore. How can we be when there are too many restrictions on what we can publish. You know, how can you diss the boss or publish a sweeping expose about company corruption when your job is bought and sold by the company (or one of its many, many susidiaries)? |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 4/26/2008 8:05:22 PM | show profile SPR is not the answer Below is a link to a good article in the CSM on taking oil out of the SPR to alleviate high prices. We really aren't in an oil emergency now; high prices doesn't count. We absolutely need to have the security of a little supply on hand. Without it, we are literally toast in a week or so. Everything is just-in-time delivery, and basically food stops coming to the shelves. Perhaps even more important is a deterrant to an organization like OPEC who may want to screw us over for a while. If they know we've got a couple of months of oil supply, we can feel like they will see that we can hold out longer than they can (they will need to sell their oil at some point although they could probably stop selling for a few weeks if they really wanted to). http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0424/p01s06-usec.html?page=1 |
| chucho | Posted – 4/27/2008 6:39:04 AM | show profile Queen: In a way you are right. People tend to forget how much of our world is made of plastics, and that plastics are a good thing in many different ways. I was listening to Leonard Lopate interview some chemists talking about the problem with plastics: they're too cheap to produce so they get little respect and are tossed in landfills when most can be recycled. But this had little to do with our oil addiction. The problem is not the use of petroleum for the production of plastics (which, among other things has made cars lighter and therefore more fuel efficient) but rather the inefficiencies of our car-and-coal based industrial world. The way I cop is that I resolved to never be critically dependent on cheap fuel. I don't care how far it goes up because I'm on the right side the bell curve -- I don't commute 50 miles a day to work and I've managed to live with a car for 10 of the past 12 years. High gas prices is good because it's going to force us to come up with lifestyle changes that we would never do otherwise. Unfortunately, instead of being able to tax the crap out of fuel and then use those funds for entitlements (like Europe has done) we lost out and now are going to pay high prices anyway -- except the proceeds will end up in the pockets of the oil cartels (private and governmental). And we have yet to see India and China fully emerge as major players. It's kinda scary to think about, actually. The West is only starting to think green and China and India are already complaining that the West wants to "keep them down" by trying to get them to go green, too. They won't go green anytime soon, which is an ominous situation. |
