The Oil Drum | Plateau update

211 comments on Plateau update

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 2:51am

I missed this comment of Lou's:

there's no reason why the US couldn't reduce its gasoline consumption by 10% without resorting to drastic measures or causing harm to the overall economy.

He means 10% in one year. That is completely implausible. Year-on-year gasoline consumption in the US has never dropped by anything like 10%, and drops in driving of only 2% have only come in the past with significant economic pain. Recall this graph:

Also, while US auto sales have started to shift, there's no sign of impact on overall fuel efficiency so far:

<small>
Vehicle miles traveled per gallon of supplied gasoline in the US. Source EIA and FHWA.
</small>

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Luis de Sousa on April 4, 2006 - 2:54am

The guy didn't read the Hirsch Report.

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louGrinzo on April 4, 2006 - 9:26am

If by "the guy" you mean me, you're wrong. I have read the Hirsch report, and I think it took a very shortsighted view of the transportation situation.

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liaozhi123 on April 27, 2006 - 3:57am

I don't agree with you!

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Richard on April 4, 2006 - 3:11am

Hold on, Stuart, you go too fast.

Did the drop in GDP cause the VMT to drop or the other way around?

There is some sort of relation between VMT and GDP increase, but unclear who does what, I would say.

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 3:22am

The big drops in the seventies were caused by oil shocks.

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odograph on April 4, 2006 - 10:28am

As opposed to "oil shocks" in our short-term future?

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Fletcher on April 4, 2006 - 5:54pm

Found the attached link at MotleyFool and the survey confirms my suspicions that driving behavior is more hard-wired that might even have been the case thirty years ago. The survey finds that %15 percent would not reduce their driving no matter the price of fuel; another thirty or more percent would not reduce driving substantially if the price were $6.50. I do not know the details of the survey, which, of course, are important and significant

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2006/mft06040403.htm?logvisit=y?logvisit=y&source=estmarhln001999&a mp;npu=y

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Calorie on April 4, 2006 - 6:55pm

I wonder how many people are switching to a lower grade of gasoline, i.e. from Super/Premium to Regular. Last summer, after the hurricanes, a spate of newspaper articles came out suggesting that that could be done, in most cases, without any adverse consequences to your vehicle. Anecdotally, I easily convinced a couple of friends to switch to Regular for their Audis and BMWs.

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Halfin on April 4, 2006 - 7:45pm

These kinds of surveys are all BS in my opinion. Talk is cheap. Who knows what people would actually do.

The other problem is, they only ask how much less they would drive if gas cost more. People always say they wouldn't drive less. But they never ask how much more people would drive if gas cost less. I'll bet people would say they'd drive quite a bit more if gas were a lot cheaper.

In this survey, people said they wouldn't drive less no matter how much gas cost. So we should ask, would you drive more if gas were free? And I'm sure the answer would be, yes, a lot more.

The first answer makes it sound like demand is inelastic, the second answer makes it sound like demand is elastic. It can't really be both. They should ask the question both ways and average the results, to get a better estimate of true elasticity.

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GliderGuider on April 4, 2006 - 9:02pm

Here's a thought that might bear exploring in an open thread, but since the topic has been raised I'll start here.

I read a lot of discussion about the elasticity of demand for gasoline, but it's all couched in terms of the economic driver. That is, the only factor that is assumed to influence VMT or vehicle choice wrt to fuel efficiency is fuel price.

My interest, and one that seems very relevant to PO, is the role education plays in modifying demand elasticity. I'm a case in point. I could drive pretty much any car I wanted, within reason, and not worry about fuel consumption. Even quintupling the price would be more of a financial irritant than an impediment. However, education about either PO or GW seems to make people much less elastic in this regard, to the point that some of us stop driving for those reasons alone, not just the price. This same mindset seems to be working in a number of my acquaintances.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the validity of this observation, and does anyone know if any research has been done on these sorts of factors?

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jokuhl on April 4, 2006 - 9:32pm

Good question.

I'd say to that, look who's buying the Hybrids, who's putting PV up on their roof.. it might help them financially, and it might not, but it seems to be essentially done for prinicple at this point. ( I think it will bear out economically, as prices rise ) For people to change their driving habits means a huge leap of faith. I drive our daughter to a daycare 6-7 miles away. Not much, but it's frustrating since I used to walk her 1 mile, at a different age. But it's the right place for her right now. Which part of her future do I sacrifice for another part of her future?

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Agric on April 4, 2006 - 10:00pm

Demand elasticity will vary by person. There are many ways it may take effect:

car sharing
reduced shopping trip frequency
reduced leisure travel
substitution of public transport
walking
etc

Education does help, as does facilitation of substitution, but price is the most effective driver (sic). If you can afford a Ferrari then the price of gas is a trivial consideration, but what proportion of drivers can afford Ferraris? Extrapolate.

When does gas price pain hit you? $5, $10, $20? How about a shortage or rationing? Do they change your mindset?

Now imagine your wage is halved, or you lose you job, or your mortgage payment doubles.

Nah, don't be so silly, Agric, these things can't happen

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strandk on April 4, 2006 - 6:23pm

I think that the correlation between GDP and VMT is secondary rather than primary. In 1974 when the first oil shock happened, high oil price initiated stagflation by high commodity prices while high oil price discourages people from using motor vehicles much. The similar phenomenon can be found in 1979 & 80 when the second oil shock happened. Except for these two occasions, both GDP and VMT have increased at more or less constant paces in the last twenty years. If you note figures of GDP and VMT change in 1982, GDP decreased while VMT increased.

The definition of GDP has changed over the year because the government has changed the rules of GDP calculation to show rosy GDP figures to voters. Also in the last thirty years the component of GDP has changed very dramatically. In other words the financial economy has increased very rapidly in USA. I would assume that most of financial economy depends on the activity of traders and bankers. I don't think that their activity is very dependent on motor vehicle transportation.

Once I tried to do the same analysis for Japanese data. However, I soon found out that this analysis is meaningless for Japanese GDP and VMT. Japanese GDP increase had stagnated between 1991 and 2004. However, the number of motor vehicles has rapidly increased since the late 1980's. Therefore in this period VMT increased very rapidly while GDP either increased slowly or even decreased a little bit. Japanese saving rate is high. And deflation had kept their wealth intact. Therefore Japanese could buy nice cars without much economic activity increase. Therefore the correlation between GDP and VMT in USA data is not fundamental bur rather specifically for the situation of USA.

I remember that about 70-75% of oil is consumed for motor vehicles in USA while about 35-40% is in Japan. Since Japanese have more options for transportation than Americans, it would be easier for Japanese to reduce VMT without affecting economic activity than for Americans. However, the difference between USA and Japan is relative rather than absolute. I am sure that there is some room for US economy to decouple with motor vehicle usage.

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LevinK on April 4, 2006 - 1:58pm

Obviously it is a two-way relation. There are 4 scenariuos and only the more VMT -> more GDP causual direction does not make a lot sense.

IMO the correct word will be requires - a certain level of GDP requires a certain number of VMT. If GDP rises you need more VMT to support it, if you cut VMT (oil shock) you will get less GDP. If you cut GDP you will also get less VMT.

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Halfin on April 4, 2006 - 3:16am

If you extend that graph to January 06 though it should be up quite a bit, although obviously there's considerable noise from month to month.

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 3:26am

You're probably right, but it's not clear it's meaningful given the weather anomaly in January. Numerous commenters (when I originally posted that graph) pointed out that fuel economy is quite temperature dependent which probably explains most of the seasonal effects. To be sure an improvement is meaningful, we'd need to see a trend for at least a few months.

I don't doubt that fuel economy will improve in response to the high gas prices. I'm just pointing out that it hasn't really got going yet.

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 4:54am

Here it is: January is on the upside, but not to the point of being outside the noise.

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The Interloafer on April 4, 2006 - 2:42pm

January VMT declined in '04 and again in '05, only to surge back in '06 probably because of the warm winter. Interesting. I wonder how the rest of the year will fare.

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Halfin on April 4, 2006 - 4:54pm

Another thing I notice which is somewhat obscured by this graph is the year over year trend. The 2005 curve is above the 2003 curve in most places. So I assume that if you plotted this data on a yearly (rather than monthly) basis that we would have seen at least a small increase from 2003-2005 (not clear where 2004 would fit in). It would also be interesting to see the previous few years to see if there is a trend.

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louGrinzo on April 4, 2006 - 9:25am

First of all, I said "over a year or more", not "a year".

Second, I said "gasoline consumption", not "VMT". Some conservation from reduced VMT would surely play a part over time, but simply drving less aggressively would save most or all of the 10%.

Third, as for their being no change in the effective MPG so far: What would the fuel consumption and MPG have been had SUV sales not fallen off a cliff? What will the effective MPG be as this buying trend continues? As with VMT changes, a turnover in vehicles will clearly improve MPG over time, but in the short run a change in driving habits will provide a much bigger kicker.

Will people make these changes? Push up gasoline prices enough, and they will. Doomers (and I don't mean you, Stuart) keep telling us how PO will be an unprecedented event in human history, triggering economic and social armageddon, etc., but they never assume that people will take unprecedented steps in response. My view is that PO is very, very serious, but that the actions, both collective and individual, we can and will take to mitigate the effects of PO and peak NG are just as formidable.

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TJ on April 4, 2006 - 9:58am

If the required steps are truly unprecedented, then why would anyone assume they'll be taken? I look at the response to Katrina, and the state New Orleans is in, and I have to go with the doomers. As far as I can see, the response to a smaller challenge than peak oil is that the wealthy get richer and everyone else gets screwed big time.

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Robert Rapier on April 4, 2006 - 11:12am

I believe you are exactly correct (although some people will certainly resist making changes - demanding that the government save them from high prices). In fact, I am working on a blog essay along these lines. There will be pain, and probably an unprecedented hit to the economy, but I believe we will make it through. I think it is great that prices are increasing before the peak, because it gives everyone additional time to change their behaviors before change is forced on them.

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BrianT on April 4, 2006 - 12:15pm

Everybody is focusing on the USA. USA oil consumption has increased at a compounded rate of .42% a year since 1978. Essentially flat. China's continued growth in oil consumption is the 500 pound gorilla no one is discussing. China will determine oil prices down the road (and oil depletion), not the USA.

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Robert Rapier on April 4, 2006 - 12:47pm

Oh, China (and India) are both being discussed. They are a huge factor right now in the supply/demand imbalance. But my point is that since the U.S. uses so much more energy per capita, we certainly have the potential to cut worldwide demand by making changes as prices start to affect budgets. China and India will do the same. Just because they have aspiration to drive cars doesn't mean they will be able to afford it as prices escalate.

Make no mistake, I agree that we are in for some very difficult times. I just don't believe we are doomed. The current supply/demand imbalance, leading to higher prices, will push the peak further out.

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bombayduck on April 5, 2006 - 11:32am

Just a few points as my first post here.

Fantastic site. Keep up the good work.
My id shows you where I am and how I feel (Sitting Duck!!)
The price of petrol here in Bombay is about USD4.50 per gallon (Rs,50.00 per litre) Been this way for about six /eight months.
Our current economic growth does not seem to have been impacted with petrol at these rates.
we are putting about 1 million cars per annum
last moth saw the highest growth in sales of cars in the country. (will try and find a link)
I would not be unwilling to pay 2 ot 3 times the current price of petrol. (drive about 1500 km / month)
All our Rickshaws, Taxis and buses in Bomay, are run on CNG only. It is mandatory here.
I would really like to see a live chart of the world petrol /gas prices color coded for rate of recent rise. This would help us to see where the prices are going. If all of us provide the info for our own areas it would be possible to keep a good record of the rises as they hit. It will also reveal stress points in the systems.
I am now investigating ways to reduce my carbon footprint.

Just my 2 bits ;0)

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Stuart Staniford on April 5, 2006 - 8:01pm

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Cherenkov on April 4, 2006 - 12:00pm

It is a push-me pull-you world out there.

Many people do not have the luxury, at least short-term, to reduce driving much, but should they somehow manage to decrease driving enough to promulgate a significant percentage reduction in usage, then, given the nature of fungible markets, the supply will go elsewhere and the price will not be mitigated, particularly in a world where population continues to grow. In effect, that new population means a defacto increase in consumption, requiring new conservation. The cycle trends down from there. So far so good. Conservation is the goal.

But Americans may suffer disproportionally due to our enormous deficit and a world awash in our fiat excesses. Many countries, particulary in the far east, are waking up to this reality and they are already taking steps to multilaterally ease their pain.

I guess my main point is, there will be suffering no matter how you look at it. I am a doomer because I feel that the human propensity to cooperate is about as reliable as Microsoft Windows and because physics does not care what we do. A world defined by global warming is a system with mega-mega-mega tonnages of extra energy boiling up monster hurricanes and 351 tornadoes in a record tornado season that has barely started. That is some eight times the last highest number for this early in the season. The Ghawar's water cut keeps increasing and it is only a matter of time, a very short time, that the field collapses like the Yibal field did in Yemen. (Both fields have been using the same advanced water sweep and bottle-brush technologies for about the same period.)

I too wish that we could all just get along and hold hands and sing kumbaya and gently, gently lower the American behemoth of an economy into a swell post-oil paradise, but that is the kind of thinking that will cause the really intense pain. The belief that if we all stand on tippy-toe on the thin branch of human intent we can keep ourselves safe is a special belief often advocated by those who are heavily leveraged into the American dream -- too much to lose and not enough incentive to make the hard decisions.

What is it that Upton Sinclair said? I paraphrase at best: It is difficult to convince a man of a truth when his livelihood depends on his not understanding.

Happy talk, such as you might expect from George Babbit, is only cheerleading, not bread nor oil. We know where we want to get: a system that is stable and sustainable. Why not shoot for that right from the start? Why not use our fabulous intelligence and go-get-'em attitude to make it happen? That is the question that nags me. Everyone seems to agree that we live on a finite planet, but the arguments belie that fact. Technology is a product of cheap energy. Cheap energy is NOT a product of technology. So why do we think that building more widgets will magically slake the cheap energy thirst of an ever-growing population?

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odograph on April 4, 2006 - 12:24pm

I am a doomer because I feel that the human propensity to cooperate is about as reliable as Microsoft Windows and because physics does not care what we do.

LOL, I wonder how this breaks down by platform.

(moderate, Linux user)

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Leanan on April 4, 2006 - 12:31pm

Last week, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief technical officer, was quoted by the NYT as saying "Complexity kills." Peak oilers are already using it for a sig.

(The full quote is, "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges and it causes end-user and administrator frustration." Talking about why Vista is late, I think.)

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PhilRelig on April 4, 2006 - 12:47pm

That is precisely why I would have been perfectly content to use WordPerfect 5.1, which I essentially mastered 15 years ago while writing my Master's thesis, until the day I die. Instead, I get relentlessly pushed along by the inexorable "progress" of increasingly, yet largely uselessly complex Microsoft programs.

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mkc on April 4, 2006 - 4:27pm

I mastered GNU emacs 20 years ago (also during grad school), and I still use it every day. There are some new features, but everything I could do with it then, I can still do now.

Free Software rocks!

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ET on April 4, 2006 - 11:25pm

That's what Joseph Tainter says about civilizations.

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bjj on April 4, 2006 - 12:46pm

Moderate.

Believe:

Alternatives are a cruel hoax (for business-as-usual).
TPTB are keeping PO card close to the vest.
It's gonna be an 'interesting' (painful, etc.) decade going forward.
We will see a wide range of unexpected and effective responses to dwindling BTU/day.

Open source kinda guy.

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 1:16pm

A nice summary - that's more or less what I think too.

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DuncanK on April 4, 2006 - 6:55pm

Yup, that's pretty much "me too".

Our family has done a fair bit over the last year to reduce our energy footprint.

If there is a widespread collapse of mankind (which I doubt), I will be fighting tooth-and-nail to try and keep my family and myself alive.

Anyway, good to have the moderates speak up for a change!

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ryvr on April 4, 2006 - 7:39pm

We know where we want to get: a system that is stable and sustainable. Why not shoot for that right from the start? Why not use our fabulous intelligence and go-get-'em attitude to make it happen? That is the question that nags me.

I think that honestly we cannot proceed with these fixes because so very, very few people are willing to acknowledge that capitalism is a completely failed experiment. I have no doubt that they will when millions in the U.S. who were recently middle class are suddenly starving.

I believe that a wonderful human culture can live a fantastic life for many centuries to come in a sustainable system. However, capitalism **IS PREDICATED ON GROWTH**. Trying to keep the capitalism means having to keep the growth which means unsustainability, and extremely painful collapse.

I'm glad to see sustainability growing in support and familiarity to a broader range of people. Unfortunately, it is just a word if they cannot see that it is antithetical to capitalism.

We do have excellent options for economic systems based on cooperation and sharing (as opposed to competition and private ownership) that would make sustainability happen almost automatically.

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 7:53pm

"We do have excellent options for economic systems based on cooperation and sharing (as opposed to competition and private ownership) that would make sustainability happen almost automatically."

Errr - would you care to mention one such that's received a large scale trial?

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ryvr on April 4, 2006 - 8:01pm

I do wish I could. To work wonderfully, it would obviously take very intelligent and *compassionate* leaders and communities, which Stalin was not.

What has been tried honestly is capitalism, which is having the result of nearly destroying the planet's capacity to support human life. It is now time to honestly try a form of Marxism, which, as you point out, has not been tried.

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Agric on April 4, 2006 - 10:13pm

Agree your assessment of capitalism. But I have doubts on 'real marxism' being an appropriate solution, I think change needs to be more fundamental. Marxism is based on collective ownership of means of production and in free markets it has been shown to be less efficient than competitive capitalist systems. My guess is a shift in more innate human values is needed. I'm not exactly sure what that would be but it will mean the overthrow of current economic reality (which is doomed, anyway).

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Cherenkov on April 4, 2006 - 11:10pm

The Andalusian anarchists were a good example. They "ruled" the south of Spain from 1868 to 1903.

Cooperative societies were also common in American Indian tribes, in all of the Americas, and I'm sure I could find other examples like the Amana religious community, the Amish, Mennonites, Quakers and many buddhist communities.

Most people are completely ignorant of the many alternative governing methods that have graced this earth because they have never been spoon-fed that particular history. The job of the public school system is to confirm the legitimacy of the current government and not to point out its flaws and the success of alternate systems.

A brief foray into history will quickly convince anyone with an open mind that our history is the history of the victors. Should Hilter have won, our school books would be touting his politics. If Soviet style communism had overcome our consumer blandishments, then we would be getting their version of history.

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 1:10pm

Well, I agree with that comment, I just don't think 10% gasoline savings is likely without pretty noticeable economic impacts. Neither miles traveled or effective fuel efficiency has ever changed by more than a few percent in a year, and the large changes were always in the context of a big recession.

I'm of the view that it will take a pretty good-style recession to make people serious about conservation again.

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odograph on April 4, 2006 - 10:38am

He means 10% in one year. That is completely implausible. Year-on-year gasoline consumption in the US has never dropped by anything like 10%, and drops in driving of only 2% have only come in the past with significant economic pain. Recall this graph ...

Whenever anyone says something like "completely implausable" I'm reminded of that line form The Princess Bride ... you just think that because no one has ever done it before ;-)

Let's see ...

U.S. Finished Motor Gasoline Product Supplied (Thousand Barrels)

1978 - 2,705,308
1979 - 2,567,573 (-5%)

That's just one year, stretching it out ...

1978 - 2,705,308
1982 - 2,386,824 (-12%)

So we've never done 10% in one year, it's taken 5 years ... ah well, what's the point here, that we do it in one or that we do it?

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 1:19pm

Exactly. I totally agree it could be done in five years. Presumably the economic pain would be more-or-less similar to that in the period of 1978-1982.

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odograph on April 4, 2006 - 1:45pm

It could be done in any time frame, actually. What you are doing is assigning a probability based on past performance. FWIW, I generalize the market saying that "past behavior does not guarantee future performance" to include things like this.

I agree totally with those who question why a unique change (peak oil) should behave like past markets.

Here's the odd subtly though. I might join you in making a specific prediction, as the best possible projection from available data ... I just differ in the confidence I apply to that prediction.

In something as wide open as peak oil it is quite possible that the "best prediction" is still a "low probability event."

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Halfin on April 4, 2006 - 5:02pm

FWIW, I generalize the market saying that "past behavior does not guarantee future performance" to include things like this.

That's a great line. You could, in fact, build an entire philosophy of life around this principle.

As far as your point about predictions vs confidence: One of the nice things about the futures markets is that they not only give predictions, they give the error bars. JDH at Econbrowser showed the market's 95% confidence interval for future oil prices a few months ago:

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2006/02/oil_at_1530_a_b.html

The market is 95% certain that in 2010 oil will be anywhere from $14 to $251 a barrel. Now that's a heck of a prediction. I'll bet the TV shows would just be lining up to hire a pundit who gave predictions like that!

One of the most common human failings is overconfidence. People don't do that badly on predictions, but they're way too confident about being right. One of the great things about markets is that they are structured to overcome this flaw. As the example above shows, oil markets clearly do not suffer from overconfidence in pinning down future oil prices.

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odograph on April 4, 2006 - 5:43pm

It is important to remember that the error bars themselves are based on past performance:

The quarterly value of s is estimated from the 1970-2005 experience to be around 0.16, meaning a forecast of the real oil price a year from now would have a standard deviation of 40.5 x 0.16 = 0.32-- it's not that uncommon for the oil price to change by 32% on a year-to-year basis.

I think the economists writing and reading things like that are taking it with a grain of salt. They are smart enough to know that a projection based on the 1970-2005 experience is only valuable if (insert hocus-pocus) the world continues to behave as it has 1970-2005.

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Halfin on April 4, 2006 - 5:50pm

That's true, JDH estimated the 32% volatility based on the past decade's history. However there is another way to do it. You can measure what the market expects volatility to be in the future by looking at option prices and using a complicated formula, as he discusses at:

http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2005/07/100_a_barrel_wh.html

This comes out to about the same result, a 32% volatility. So the markets apparently believe that volatility going forward won't be much different from the past 10 years (which have actually had quite high volatility, when you consider that the price has gone from 10 to 70 in about six years).

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odograph on April 4, 2006 - 6:08pm

Markets do not have minds, and cannot literally believe anything. The hidden message is what the speaker means when he says "markets believe."

I think the rational observer is using it as slang, with the expectation that if markets believe anything today, they can equally well believe anything else tomorrow.

That doesn't stop people from reading the tea leaves, and applying post hoc explanations to the market's every new "thought."

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Agric on April 4, 2006 - 10:31pm

You are hinting at somethings important but not leaping to their conclusion.

The MSM do portray markets as having rationale, minds, a queer kind of reason. They do it with a purpose: to make the markets a friendly and understandable thing to the naiive. It's 'personification', humans like it, check out their religions ;)

Whenever the various markets do something all sorts of pundits leap out and rationalise the move in a way that suits them. It is mostly post hoc nonsense.

I do believe that the markets move in mysterious ways, sometimes with uncanny awareness of what will come. I also believe that less visible hands are conjouring spells of significant power (money, as in repos, etc) that have fluence. Whatever ability the markets had for prediction has been sorely weakened by the fed-like shamans, you have been warned - the phase shift to reality will probably be sickeningly abrupt when it happens.

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ET on April 4, 2006 - 11:24pm

Halfin,
I notice that you often cite market futures as something of a reliable (more or less) predictor of the actual future. It seems to me that if you check the far-ahead (say 10 year) futures prices of a commodity like crude oil at various times in history that you will find the volatility of that futures price depends greatly on the current volatility of the market. IOW take a period of relative (!) stability in the crude market and you would find the 10 year future price maintaining close to the current price with a fairly narrow band of difference. On the other hand, in today's crude market, volatility seems high and futures predictions are pretty much anybody's guess. Hence the big spread. Altogether, I personally don't think markets predict things very well at all. I think they reflect current perceptions which are based on current volatility.

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Twilight on April 5, 2006 - 10:24am

The future will be just like the present, only more so. Just ask anyone.

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odograph on April 4, 2006 - 1:54pm

An illustration, you and I expect a "crunch" like the 70's as a likely scenario ... what happens to a scenario if true gasoline rationing become politically viable?

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Stuart Staniford on April 4, 2006 - 2:53pm

Then WWII becomes the closest analogue. GDP/mile more than doubled in the space of a year. Not too close, however, since the US is a very different place now than it was then in the morning of the auto-era (like we still had all our street car systems in WWII). However, I'm sure we could accomplish massive changes with a rationing program, if things get bad enough to put that on the political table.

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