Gas prices possibly heading soon to $6-$7 a gallon

[RuMR]

you drive a big ol' pickuhp, don'tcha, bubbles? prolly got big ol' dualies in the back...yeeehmuthafuckin'ha!

[murraysovereign]

Not the same report I cited earlier, but it includes some of the same data regarding vehicle use

[kevbone]

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: May 28, 2008

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?

 

 

Allowing the Government to take MORE of people's hard-earned money, thus removing it from the marketplace? Price controls? Sounds like the first step towards Maxine Waters's dream of a nationalized oil industry. No thanks.

 

I dont know.....alot of that I agree with.....at least the part about the candidate that tells it how it is.....That would be cool.

[olyclimber]

kevbone, are you conjuring Louis Ferdinand Celine?

[glassgowkiss]

8 bucks/gal in europe- blah, blah, blah. first of all the distances are much much smaller. second- they developed for years a public transit system, as the matter of fact a car is a rather pain in the ass in the majority of the cities. in fact you don't really need a car in majority of the cases. let's look at seattle- well bfd with light rail going from the airport to u district.like where the fuck are you supposed to park in u district? also in europe diesel is much, much more popular, also natural gas conversion. us has a hummer.....

on the other hand it's hard not to suspect market manipulation. supply and demand is a complete horseshit. yeah, yeah, china, india- that's a load of shit. if you look at the numbers they did not increase their demand by 400% in this decade. on the other hand this administration is so in bed with saudis that they don't even suspect a solid buttfuck from their so called friends.

[Dechristo]

kevbone, are you conjuring Louis Ferdinand Celine?

 

He's channeling him.

 

 

Sadly, his consciousness is hung-up in his lower channel.

[Dechristo]

8 bucks/gal in europe- blah, blah, blah. first of all the distances are much much smaller. second- they developed for years a public transit system, as the matter of fact a car is a rather pain in the ass in the majority of the cities. in fact you don't really need a car in majority of the cases. let's look at seattle- well bfd with light rail going from the airport to u district.like where the fuck are you supposed to park in u district? also in europe diesel is much, much more popular, also natural gas conversion. us has a hummer.....

on the other hand it's hard not to suspect market manipulation. supply and demand is a complete horseshit. yeah, yeah, china, india- that's a load of shit. if you look at the numbers they did not increase their demand by 400% in this decade.

You don't seem to have a good grasp of things. You might seek a chiropractor/message therapist to treat that right hand.

 

 

on the other hand this administration is so in bed with saudis that they don't even suspect a solid buttfuck from their so called friends.

Don't be coy.

 

It's reported, among your friends, it's not something you "suspect", but encourage.

 

 

[JayB]

Total energy consumption, per-capita:

 

[STP]

Somethings smells like Soros.

 

 

George Soros: rocketing oil price is a bubble

[whirlwind]

ok but that proves nothing, you could do the same thing with temp and have 80 degrees be your >4 and most the world would be the same color, it be intresting to see what countries are 5 or 6 or what ever, ie broke down farther

[SemoreJugs]

If Obama took the next step and proposed $4 minimum controls on gas he would lose the election in a landslide. People vote with their dollars before they do with their hearts; except right wingers who lack any heart.

 

Thats something Obama should wait to enact until he can prove his leadership abilities (as long as he had good approval ratings and the economy was actually growing). Otherwise, he will be blocked harshly by Congress and will lose all confidence. The good news is that it could help pay for universal healthcare!

 

Face it, the American people no longer know how to sacrifice (at least the ones that vote) in the short term to protect the long term. That ended after WWII. Look at our borrowing/debt practices as proof.

[AlpineK]

I'd agree that all the big elections these days come down to short term monetary gain.

 

My dad grew up in the depression. Back then and through WW 2 everybody got gas coupons for fuel. If you ran through your coupons then you were walking till you got the next batch of coupons given to you. Those rules made you think long and hard about when you actually need to drive.

 

Those kinds of rules would never get enacted these days, but they were put in place back then to preserve resources that were in short supply and needed for something that citizens agreed was in our national interest.

[STP]

Britain and Australia as bellwethers for coming changes here? Good thing, bad thing?

 

Every adult in Britain should be forced to carry 'carbon ration cards', say MPs

 

Take the test: Planet Slayer--Prof Schpinkee's Greenhouse Calculator

[scott_harpell]

I'd agree that all the big elections these days come down to short term monetary gain.

 

My dad grew up in the depression. Back then and through WW 2 everybody got gas coupons for fuel. If you ran through your coupons then you were walking till you got the next batch of coupons given to you. Those rules made you think long and hard about when you actually need to drive.

 

Those kinds of rules would never get enacted these days, but they were put in place back then to preserve resources that were in short supply and needed for something that citizens agreed was in our national interest.

 

good perspective there.

[MarkMcJizzy]

Back then and through WW 2 everybody got gas coupons for fuel.

 

Not quite true. Gasoline was not rationed until the entrance of the USA into WWII. There was no need to ration gas in the depression

 

but they were put in place back then to preserve resources that were in short supply and needed for something that citizen agreed was in our national interest.

 

There is some thought that the rationing was never needed, or that it continued far longer than was needed. It is plausible that by continuing rationing longer than necessary, people are kept to the immediacy of war. A modern example of this would be the tailing of Washington State Ferries by heavily armed USCG Zodiacs.