Friday, May 23, 2008

What Can We Do About Gas Prices?

Skyrocketing fuel prices are crippling our economy. What can we do about it?

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

A no-brainer...we can get our heads out of environmental butts and get our domestic oil reserves a-pumpin. We have China drilling for oil off the coast of Florida, and when we ask our legislators why WE are not allowed to do the same, they tell us they do not want to do it because it will ruin the tourism in Florida. Not gonna be much tourism in Florida if'n no one can afford to drive there. Duh!

Anonymous said...

Yeah! Screw the environment! I wants me some cheap gas! HOO!HOO!HOO!HOO!HOO!!

Anonymous said...

What was the big boogy man last year? Oh, yeah; bird flu.

What can we do about gas prices? We can try using less gas. That can produce one of two results, however. The one we'd hope for is that in order to get us to buy more gas, the petroleum companies would lower the price. Or, they could raise the price even more in order to make up for lost revenue.

If this is truly a game between Them and Us, then no matter which move we make, they could have a move to counter our move. If we all hang out on blogs and publicly devise and agree upon a plan, then we've probably informed the opposition, too, haven't we?

I think we're just screwed.

I wonder what the next boogy man will be?

Anonymous said...

next boogy man. War in Iran before Bush leaves office so he can cancle the fall elections

Anonymous said...

To the 2nd blogger...we can drill for oil in environmentally safe ways. Hoo!

Anonymous said...

May 24 8:04 am blogger. Did you not get much sleep last night?

Anonymous said...

May 24 8:04 am blogger. Did you not get much sleep last night?

May 24, 2008 8:06 AM

It could happen.

Anonymous said...

I am surprised not more responders to this survey. People must be out burning $4.25 a gallon gasloine and $5.19 a gallon diesel. The only part of this whole high price deal that makes ME happy is the idiots with their huge diesels with modified exhausts that lets you hear them coming from blocks away is that they thought they were being savvy by buying diesels when the price of diesel fuel was less than regular gas. Now that it has to be refined more the price has shot up. I have noticed my neighbor rarely drives his anymore and my neighborhood is quieter.

Anonymous said...

I think the high prices are great and think they should go higher. How else will the American people to forced to cut their consumption - Bush certainly has not taken the lead!

Anonymous said...

look for hho gen you can run youre car on water burning hydrogen put the oil beast to sleep f#$% the new world order!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

can any one tell me where any bank larg or small gets its cash to loan to you for car,house,etc ???

Anonymous said...

the fed reserve can you tell me what branch of gov this is ?? it is not any branch or even a leaf it is privately owned and opporated by time warner,cbs,nbc,msnbc,fox,all media basicly this year we will be told to carry a brand new id card it even comes with its own radio tracking so bush will know how you are doing at all times what a nice guy cooming soon in 08 but that is why the rates keep falling banks can have 9:1 ratio 1 that is real $$$$ paper deposites but 9 they dont need to actually have at all its the loan repay notes they need to not get busted so you need more doe no prob just a few new shady loans presto more cash its not real of corse its just credit moved one place than another no one ever says who did you rob to get this cash well the ansewer is you 18%+ yea the banks are the real robbers charging you extra for something they dont even have and what a crappy exchange they get the cash and forclose on you

Anonymous said...

Most studies have shown that the actual price of gas should be $5.60/gal at a minimum. Google "The true cost of gas," and you will discover that we are not even close to paying what gas actually costs. Why is it that the US pays less for gas than most industrialized contries? In the most basic terms, the "actual" cost of gasoline is not factored into the retail price of gas in the United States. What does it take to pay for US troops in the Middle East responsible for protecting reserves? What is the cost to society of the adverse health effects of burning fossil fuels? These costs are all difficult to quantify but must be factored into the true cost of gas.

Think green and leave the car at home for all trips under three miles that are not an emergency. Use a bicycle equipped with baskets and a bike cart. Or take a pleasant walk to the store with a shopping cart just like people do all over Europe and other countries.

Anonymous said...

Clarification to my comment about leaving the car at home and using a shopping cart. I meant a collapsible (foldable) shopping cart. They range in cost from $8 to $40. I purchased mine at Star market for $18 a few years ago and it is light-weight but very sturdy and easy to pull. Keep your cloth/canvas shopping bags and wicker basket in your shopping cart and you will be the Queen (or King) of Green!

Anonymous said...

Here's the best idea yet:
Make gasoline-only cars illegal

Every gas-powered car has an average street life of seventeen years, which means that the minute you leave the lot, you're signing up for two decades of foreign-oil dependence. The easiest way to change this is to mandate that every vehicle sold in the U.S. is flex-fuel compatible so that it can run on just about any blend of hydrocarbon-based fuels -- gasoline, ethanol, methanol, etc. The technology already exists, and the process is cheap, about a hundred dollars per vehicle. Detroit will cry about 'government interference,' but in fact the mandate would open a vast new free market in alternative-fuel development.

(Source: December 2007 Esquire, "Four ways to solve the energy crisis.")

Anonymous said...

burn hydrogen in any car new or old the older the better cars are all good the old fuel is the cause hho is hear and has allways been here water any kind of water shower water salt water put dc current in water you get hydrogen gas 5x more exposive than flex fuel more than gas no more gas stations or gas trucks the cleanest gas find out for youself

Anonymous said...

4ltrs of water @ 1 amp 13.8v will give you over 500+ miles without stoping big rigs buses vans suvs cars trucks convert youre car its not hard you dont store the gas its on demand stops when you turn it off starts when you start the car same as it is now but free to drive ansewers are there all around us

Anonymous said...

alt fuels are another cruch a bandaid when the bone is broken

Anonymous said...

alt fuels are a joke and not free coke(lead base)is good crack(unleaded) is great coming soon heroin (e85,corn oil)and when every one has gone to alt fuels it will run the cost well past 5.50gal HHO is free if you capure shower water (you have paid for)now free to use as fuel 0.00gal just the cost of parts less than 50.00 bucks plates,tube,water tank thats it ask about HHO

Anonymous said...

The Washington Post recently published an article by energy expert James Howard Kunstler entitled "Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster." He tells it like it is, and gives the real scoop on "What Can We Do About Gas Prices?" He writes:

"Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for “solutions.”

This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our “Happy Motoring” utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system ­ or even a fraction of these things ­ in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the “peak oil” story. It’s not about running out of oil. It’s about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

The way we produce food

The way we conduct commerce and trade

The way we travel

The way we occupy the land

The way we acquire and spend capital

And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis. What’s more, the stress induced by the failure of these systems will only increase the wishful thinking across our nation.

And that’s the worst part of our quandary: the American public’s narrow focus on keeping all our cars running at any cost. Even the environmental community is hung up on this. The Rocky Mountain Institute has been pushing for the development of a “Hypercar” for years ­ inadvertently promoting the idea that we really don’t need to change.

Years ago, U.S. negotiators at a U.N. environmental conference told their interlocutors that the American lifestyle is “not up for negotiation.” This stance is, unfortunately, related to two pernicious beliefs that have become common in the United States in recent decades. The first is the idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. (Oprah Winfrey advanced this notion last year with her promotion of a pop book called “The Secret,” which said, in effect, that if you wish hard enough for something, it will come to you. One of the basic differences between a child and an adult is the ability to know the difference between wishing for things and actually making them happen through earnest effort.

The companion belief to “wishing upon a star” is the idea that one can get something for nothing. This derives from America’s new favorite religion: not evangelical Christianity but the worship of unearned riches. (The holy shrine to this tragic belief is Las Vegas.) When you combine these two beliefs, the result is the notion that when you wish upon a star, you’ll get something for nothing. This is what underlies our current fantasy, as well as our inability to respond intelligently to the energy crisis.

These beliefs also explain why the presidential campaign is devoid of meaningful discussion about our energy predicament and its implications. The idea that we can become “energy independent” and maintain our current lifestyle is absurd. So is the gas-tax holiday. (Which politician wants to tell voters on Labor Day that the holiday is over?) The pie-in-the-sky plan to turn grain into fuel came to grief, too, when we saw its disruptive effect on global grain prices and the food shortages around the world, even in the United States. In recent weeks, the rice and cooking-oil shelves in my upstate New York supermarket have been stripped clean.

So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we’ll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We’ll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We’ll have to restore local economic networks ­ the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed ­ made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.

We’ll also have to occupy the landscape differently, in traditional towns, villages and small cities. Our giant metroplexes are not going to make it, and the successful places will be ones that encourage local farming.

Fixing the U.S. passenger railroad system is probably the one project we could undertake right away that would have the greatest impact on the country’s oil consumption. The fact that we’re not talking about it ­ especially in the presidential campaign ­ shows how confused we are. The airline industry is disintegrating under the enormous pressure of fuel costs. Airlines cannot fire any more employees and have already offloaded their pension obligations and outsourced their repairs. At least five small airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past two months. If we don’t get the passenger trains running again, Americans will be going nowhere five years from now.

We don’t have time to be crybabies about this. The talk on the presidential campaign trail about “hope” has its purpose. We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it ­ by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don’t figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works."

Published on Friday, May 30, 2008 by The Washington Post. Originally:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/30/9315/

Anonymous said...

make being a envirmentalist illegal no i am just kidding we should pave the high ways with them that would make them useful thank your local envirmentalist for the clean air act that's done a lot of nothing air is more f@#$ed up than ever thanks