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I know that there is one thing all of us can agree on. Gas prices are too high! The option to stop driving is to unrealistic for some of us but it's becoming more of a realistic doom some of us may face down the road. Believe me I am all about capitalism and having a free market but where the problem lies for me is that gas prices are putting a limit on many aspects of my life. I'd like to hear your ideas on what we should do as a community to solve this issue. Or what your alternative ways to save money have been.
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May. 27, 2008 at 08:12:11 PM
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| I wonder if these same left wing loonies will hold George W Bama responsible for everything as well.
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May. 27, 2008 at 08:16:48 PM
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[This is a reply to comment by orbiter on May. 27, 2008 at 08:12:11 PM]
orbiter
May. 27, 2008 at 08:12:11 PM I wonder if these same left wing loonies will hold George W Bama responsible for everything as... View this Comment What does George W. Bama mean? |
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May. 27, 2008 at 08:17:34 PM
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| There are no short term solutions. When a problem has been brewing for decades, it can't be fixed overnight. What we were unable to do voluntarily with conservation and investment in alternative energy when the crisis was not at hand, we will now do mandatorily in response to enormous fuel prices. The long term fix will be to stop digging the hole deeper, and aggressively pursue energy self-sufficiency (independence) through clean renewable energy investments. We are now going to pay the price for the last generation's inaction; maybe the next generation won't have to pay that price if we do what we need to do now. |
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May. 27, 2008 at 09:33:35 PM
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[This is a reply to comment by Phaedrus on May. 27, 2008 at 07:46:39 PM]
Phaedrus
May. 27, 2008 at 07:46:39 PM Stop devaluing the dollar, stop the Fed, stop Bush, and stop the Republicans from ruining the dollar's value. Of the difference of 1.30 -1.40 for gas in 2000, to the 3.60- 3.75 today, 80 %of the price increase is the loss of value of the... View this Comment Has the Euro been devalued too, because they had a huge protest in London today by the truck drivers there. Perhaps if we were not so dependent on others oil and pumped more of our own it would help. But the best thing we can do is scream to high heaven, shut down commerce and get it in the international news. That may well make the Saudis and others worry about how much more the people of America can take before they decide the government should attack another oil rich country, perhaps even theirs, and they open the valve on the oil while we start drilling or at least re-opening our idle wells off shore. then ban environmental idiots and get them back to stopping whalers like the good old days. |
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May. 27, 2008 at 09:38:55 PM
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[This is a reply to comment by Average American on May. 27, 2008 at 09:33:35 PM]
Average American
May. 27, 2008 at 09:33:35 PM Has the Euro been devalued too, because they had a huge protest in London today by the truck drivers there. Perhaps if we were not so dependent on others oil and pumped more of our own it would help. But the best thing we can do is scream to high heaven,... View this Comment In Europe, the prices of oil is up 20-25%. Because of taxes, the price of gas is up 50% - there gas taxes are a % of the price, but in the US, we charge a flat $0.18 per gallon for tax. So, yes, there prices are up big time, but still not on the same magnitude as ours. |
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May. 28, 2008 at 07:01:30 AM
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| Don't you think that we could make a push to advance renewable energy to the standard? Similar to how we spent so much money on going to the moon or developing the atom bomb? I believe that if the people in power were as much concerned about it as the average American then we could have a reliable solution in the next ten years. I understand that Europe has much higher gas prices but I'm talking about the United States, I'm not really concerned about Europe because I don't live there.
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May. 28, 2008 at 02:39:18 PM
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| What is funny is that there has been a lot of research done, and some of it perfected, that would take oil out of the equation. Most of the problems that I have seen is that it is cost prohibitive to mass produce some of these alternatives at this time. If this Country, both the private sector and the government would make a concerted effort to address this, we may have a way out. It is ironic the the Rockefeller's tried to make a move at the Exxon Board of Directors meeting to get alternative energy as part of their R&D, but the board rejected it. Big Oil still wants to take piece of the pie and fails to look into the future. MIC is right, this problem has been here for many decades and no one took it seriously. Now we are faced with a real dilemma with no solid choices but to pay the price until something better comes along. Kind of a sad state. Phaedrus is also correct in that the taxes on gas over in Europe are a percentage of the price. When they see prices jump, it really jumps! AA, the Euro has not devalued that much, but when the standard is the dollar, it effects all. Logic would seem to say that when the base currency goes down that the price of all valued on that currency would fall in relationship to your given currency, but that has not been the case. There is one other thing that no one has mentioned and that is the commodity markets. There are stories out there where some of these commodity brokers are really making a play on the market taking positions on the options where they make money even if the prices go down. It is something to watch! |
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May. 28, 2008 at 05:24:31 PM
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[This is a reply to comment by Free Thinker on May. 28, 2008 at 02:39:18 PM]
Free Thinker
May. 28, 2008 at 02:39:18 PM What is funny is that there has been a lot of research done, and some of it perfected, that would take oil out of the equation. Most of the problems that I have seen is that it is cost prohibitive to mass produce some of these alternatives at this... View this Comment True enough. The cost per kWh for green energy is still greater than oil, gas, and coal . . . if you don't factor the environmental costs into the equation, nor the costs of military conflicts into the future to remain in control of these dwindling resources (not like we are in control of it now, despite 1/2 trillion dollars in up-front costs in Iraq). Solar and wind energy are reaching parity with nuclear costs, but nuclear would not have been possible without heavy subsidization right from the very start, so in reality nuclear is not cheaper than solar, and what cost will we pay as a result of a growing stockpile of nuclear waste? Some say that we should invest heavily in green energy, including nuclear, which is green if you ignore nuclear waste (although an argument can be made for glowing green radioactive waste). Although nuclear may indeed be a bridging technology between fossil fuels and completely clean-renewable energy, I see its role as limited. The same money that would be necessary to build a new-generation, relatively safe nuclear plant could be used more cost-effectively to build a solar installation. So the start-up costs for green energy are big, and it will require a concerted effort of both the private and public sector, but the challenge is not insurmountable, and it is a challenge that has to be faced now. What we will find is that investing in green energy is like an exothermic chemical reaction that requires an enzymatic reagent to get going. If you're not a chemist, what that means is that some chemical reactions that release energy, like the ones that go on inside your body every time you eat food, require an enzyme to be present in the mix in order for the heat-releasing reaction to start. Once the reaction is started, it keeps going and produces heat. Same is true for green energy. The start-up costs are large, but once the solar or wind industry is chugging along, the output far exceeds the initial push it needed to get going. And like most industrial processes obeying an economy of scale, the more you mass-produce, the lower the production costs. I read this op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman in today's New York Times, and if it weren't published the day after my comment above, I would have accused myself of plagiarism. Not only does he state that there is no short term fix, and that we have ignored this problem for way too long, but he makes a convincing argument that gas prices should not be allowed to FALL BELOW $4.00/gallon. [link:www.nytimes.com] May 28, 2008 OP-ED COLUMNIST Truth or Consequences By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Imagine for a minute, just a minute, that someone running for president was able to actually tell the truth, the real truth, to the American people about what would be the best — I mean really the best — energy policy for the long-term economic health and security of our country. I realize this is a fantasy, but play along with me for a minute. What would this mythical, totally imaginary, truth-telling candidate say? For starters, he or she would explain that there is no short-term fix for gasoline prices. Prices are what they are as a result of rising global oil demand from India, China and a rapidly growing Middle East on top of our own increasing consumption, a shortage of “sweet” crude that is used for the diesel fuel that Europe is highly dependent upon and our own neglect of effective energy policy for 30 years. Cynical ideas, like the McCain-Clinton summertime gas-tax holiday, would only make the problem worse, and reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers. I can’t say it better than my friend Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics, did in a Memorial Day essay in The Washington Post: “So Dodge wants to sell you a car you don’t really want to buy, that is not fuel-efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we’re currently fighting. ... The planet be damned, the troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge.” No, our mythical candidate would say the long-term answer is to go exactly the other way: guarantee people a high price of gasoline — forever. This candidate would note that $4-a-gallon gasoline is really starting to impact driving behavior and buying behavior in way that $3-a-gallon gas did not. The first time we got such a strong price signal, after the 1973 oil shock, we responded as a country by demanding and producing more fuel-efficient cars. But as soon as oil prices started falling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we let Detroit get us readdicted to gas guzzlers, and the price steadily crept back up to where it is today. We must not make that mistake again. Therefore, what our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price. To ease the burden on the less well-off, “anyone earning under $80,000 a year would be compensated with a reduction in the payroll taxes,” said Verleger. Or, he suggested, the government could use the gasoline tax to buy back gas guzzlers from the public and “crush them.” But the message going forward to every car buyer and carmaker would be this: The price of gasoline is never going back down. Therefore, if you buy a big gas guzzler today, you are locking yourself into perpetually high gasoline bills. You are buying a pig that will eat you out of house and home. At the same time, if you, a manufacturer, continue building fleets of nonhybrid gas guzzlers, you are condemning yourself, your employees and shareholders to oblivion. What a cruel thing for a candidate to say? I disagree. Every decade we look back and say: “If only we had done the right thing then, we would be in a different position today.” But no politician dared to do so. When gasoline was $2 a gallon, the government never would have imposed a $2 tax. Now that it is $4 a gallon, the government should at least keep it there, since it is really having the right effect. I was visiting my local Toyota dealer in Bethesda, Md., last week to trade in one hybrid car for another. There is now a two-month wait to buy a Prius, which gets close to 50 miles per gallon. The dealer told me I was lucky. My hybrid was going up in value every day, so I didn’t have to worry about waiting a while for my new car. But if it were not a hybrid, he said, he would deduct each day $200 from the trade-in price for every $1-a-barrel increase in the OPEC price of crude oil. When I saw the rows and rows of unsold S.U.V.’s parked in his lot, I understood why. We need to make a structural shift in our energy economy. Ultimately, we need to move our entire fleet to plug-in electric cars. The only way to get from here to there is to start now with a price signal that will force the change. Barack Obama had the courage to tell voters that the McCain-Clinton summer gas-giveaway plan was a fraud. Wouldn’t it be amazing if he took the next step and put the right plan before the American people? Wouldn’t that just be amazing? |
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May. 28, 2008 at 05:57:13 PM
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[This is a reply to comment by www.MoronInCharge.com on May. 28, 2008 at 05:24:31 PM]
www.MoronInCharge.com
May. 28, 2008 at 05:24:31 PM True enough. The cost per kWh for green energy is still greater than oil, gas, and coal . . . if you don't factor the environmental costs into the equation, nor the costs of military conflicts into the future to remain in control of these... View this Comment I hate Tom Friedman. He's a tool. |
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Stop devaluing the dollar, stop the Fed, stop Bush, and stop the Republicans from ruining the dollar's value. Of the difference of 1.30 -1.40 for gas in 2000, to the 3.60- 3.75 today, 80 %of the price increase is the loss of value of the dollar.
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