I am a big believer in the "
Invisible Hand." One of my first posts to this blog was regarding gas price which was then at the scary level of (shock) $3.00 a gallon. More for diesel, and I was driving at that time a diesel F350.
The Denver Post.
"When Jessica Newman filled up her Subaru right after Memorial Day, she decided she couldn't take the $50-per- week gasoline bill anymore."
So she drove her car through the gas station window, tore off her shirt and ran topless down main street shouting "*&@#^* Bush! I'm not going to take it anymore! Barack will save me! Down with Cheney!" Right? Well she still may see it as a "Bush Blame" situation, but let's look at her immediate economic behavior. She protested. By...
(E-mailing) "three colleagues who live in her Highland neighborhood and formed a carpool to their Louisville offices last week.
'One of my fellow riders calculated it and said he saves $10 in gas per day,' Newman said. 'I haven't had to fill up my gas tank since a week ago last Saturday, which is not normal for me.'"
All those things that Radical Liberals and Greenies have been trying to force us to do, she does. Why? Price is an exacting master. It requires of us to make decisions. Jessica Newman made a decision. That decision multiplied has interesting effects. Less of a carbon footprint (for those of you who worry about that), less traffic, more social interaction, less time at the pump, less wear and tear on the car, etc, etc. Jessica might still engage in the misguided vote for Obama, thinking he's going to "Change" things, but what really changed things was, price.
Some more of the solutions being employed, which sound like a laundry list of shrill greenie whiny rants, suddenly an eco-dream come true;
"The national average price for gas hit $4.02 a gallon Monday. With the statewide average at $3.94, many drivers are looking for ways to cut costs.
Javier Izquierdo, an intensive-care unit nurse at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center, said he has turned to bicycling 4 miles to work. A recent survey of 1,000 drivers commissioned by Access America, a travel-insurance provider, showed that 74 percent of respondents said rising gas prices would prompt them to change their driving habits.
Twenty-six percent of respondents said they would cut recreational and travel driving first; 21 percent said they would consolidate or reduce errands.
'I can't say I've gone to the extreme of taking the bus, but I'm a little better on doing more of my errands at once,' Shannon Loo said as she filled her Acura on Monday.
Only 7 percent of Access America's respondents listed carpooling as a first step, 6 percent would turn to walking or biking, 4 percent would use more public transportation, and 3 percent would buy a more fuel-efficient or hybrid car."
So they're not all car pooling, but some are. All are making decisions based on the price of gas that reduce gas consumption. Voila. Conservation. (glares at spell checker, thanks "toes")
I live near the border of Canada and the United States.
Canadians, from whom we import more oil than we import from Saudi Arabia or the middle east, come down HERE to buy gas. Because it's cheaper.
Missoula.com Magazine.
"It doesn't hurt, of course, that in Canada a gallon of gas runs about $4.35. It feels expensive here, but gas at $3.50 a gallon is still a bargain for most of the world."
We in fact export oil TO Canada and don't even get all our petroleum products from Canada in the form of OIL,
we get them in the form of Gasoline, because we've chosen to export refining capacity to other countries. Building more refineries in and of itself is problematic since we probably couldn't easily build and staff refineries in this country without importing labor from the same countries to whom we export the refineries. We are, like it or not, in a more or less full employment economy. This would bring up another whole question of the futility of birth control which I won't deal with now.
I've also written on the
futility of the Green Cause and it's relationship to gas consumption. Indians (that's over there, not Native Americans) are buying more cars and more gas and so are the Chinese. They neither care or give a fig about your global green priorities. They want to ride with pride and they do it more every day. Either nuke them 'til they glow or realize that they control the price of gasoline (a lot) far more than President Bush does (not at all).
The point, if it is not manifestly obvious by now, is that we will do what we need to do to lessen the impact of Gas Prices on our lives. Other nations with far less disposable income pay higher gas prices and not only survive economically, their economies are accelerating. We will simply change or find more oil and make more gas or some combination of all three. Oil companies cannot charge ever more expensive prices for gas without consumption of that gas so it will never get too high. Sorry to burst your bubble but gas price can never be too high. If you know anything about "stall" and airplanes, look at it that way. The world economy (the airplane) has to keep flying. If the rate of increase of climb in gas prices gets to high, you stall. Go watch "The Right Stuff" and see what happens to Chuck Yeager when he climbs too far too fast.
You might elect someone this fall because you think he or she will "do something about gas prices." Every night on the news I have to listen to an idiot rant at me about high prices as if something COULD be done beyond the solutions shown above that private people undertake in their daily lives. Does that blathering talking head not know that I see my checkbook balance and I see the price of gas every time I go to fill up? I need THEM to tell me the price of gas is up? The only energy solution is more energy. There are more of us, that's why. Price will take care of itself. Price will help make more energy in actual fact. If you change your vote based on gas prices, vote for the candidate that says "make more." The rest of the solutions offered haven't a prayer of working.
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