59 comments on Now We're Talkin'...(or, "Transit Panel Urges Federal Gas Tax Increase")
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
59 comments on Now We're Talkin'...(or, "Transit Panel Urges Federal Gas Tax Increase")
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
- Thanksgiving Open Campfire Thread
- How Relocalization Worked
- How to Set Up and Run a Bicycle Repair Company
TOD:Europe
- Unique Times -- and the Future
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Friday 27th November 2009
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”
—Mark Twain
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
How is it any less arrogant to think that our problems are not solvable and our roads will be used mostly by horse and buggy at some date that you don't reveal to us?
Our best alternative today is electricity.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/01/13/the-extreme-plug-in-hybrid-no-brea...
Between now and a few years when plug-ins are really rolling we have hybrids and conservation.
Whether the problem can be solved or not, I don't know. I don't think any of us knows which is why I object to government force being used to institute their or their constituents' view of which alternative should be attempted. We all have our views about what might work, just as you have expressed the view that electricity is the answer. If that is so, then you need do nothing but invest in that directly such as with solar panels or in companies that implement the electric solution you see as appropriate; the free market; all we need is government get out of the way and stop the plunder and control so we actually have some wealth left to direct into the solution we see. The arrogance comes in when individuals or groups insist that government fund theses "solutions" at the public expense thus depriving the public of those funds which they could have used to fund what they judge as more likely to work.
My conclusion about horses and buggies is based on the simple facts that after world wide peak, oil imports to the USA (imports equal 60% of what we use) will disappear over a period of probably a single decade, domestic production has been declining for decades and will continue to do so baring some miracle, and EROEI relentlessly declines at about 3.5% annually. The net result of this is that 10 to 15 years after peak, the USA could easily have only 25% of the oil available to use that it had at peak. So if you want a time frame, and rely on the likely date of 2010 as worldwide peak for oil from all sources, then somewhere between 2020 and 2025 we would be down to 25%, a loss of 75% of our oil energy in the USA. That is just 13 to 18 years away. Actually I probably spoke out of turn to say horse and buggy because there are probably not sufficient horses and buggies around to use many of the roads. Rather I should more accurately have described them as wide footpaths. This is my best estimate, but I allow for the possibility that we will soon enter a financial collapse of much greater magnitude than the great depression of the 1930's which would reduce oil consumption and accelerate the human suffering to an earlier date, thusly delaying the peak oil date a few years. But then in no case am I asking government to impose my view of the next few decades, since this is an expression of my thoughts and not a recommendation.
You seem to put your full faith in a 'free market'. The corporations, just like our government, will look at short term returns on their investments, rather than to long term benefit for our society, humanity, or our ecosystem.
in the car market the Prius outsold the Ford Explorer. take that doomers!
Take what? The Prius isn't going to save anything. At "best", if you can even call it that, it may allow our insane car-crazy infrastructure to continue a bit longer. And with America already sunk in debt in a downward spiral economy, increasingly not able to buy $25,000 cars, it's going to be a wee bit.
All of the green smoke car manufacturers have been blowing up our collective ass is simply astounding, though not as astounding as the amount we've bought into it. "Buy this car, and help the environment!" Any 3,000-lb. machine built using copius amounts of energy - the vast majority non-renewable - isn't "green", even if it is never ever used. The portrayals of these "green" cars is completely ridiculous. I have a brochure for a Prius that depicts green leaves coming out of the exhaust! "The more you drive it, the more you help the environment!" Bullshit. A more accurate description might be that you're hurting the environment less. That's it. You aren't "helping" shit, and I will even go so far as to say you are helping to avert real progress from being made. My favorite thus far was an SUV video ad showing a guy mountain biking, with the captions paraphrased as: "Driving this SUV will help preserve our environment. It also also give you the power to help enjoy it." I can't believe people are this stupid. I have a better idea: use a bike and skip the SUV altogether, and save what, 99% of your money? If this is the best we can do - pretending that hybrid cars are going to save us - we are doomed.
It's time to get over the obsession with cars. It should be obvious by now that it's been a terrible idea to design everything and anything around them here in the USA. Unfortunately, almost everyone seems obsessed with pouring absoltely all of our resources into keeping them going, all the while bitching about $x gas and unwilling to use any of their own energy to walk or bike around. The few of us who know better - those who can see past tomorrow - forsee what a terrible mistake that is going to be.
Personally, I can't wait until gas hits $5, and especially $10, that is - if our shitty economy will allow it. And before any of you jump all over me, consider this:
I own a Prius.
The difference is, I don't pretend that I'm going to save anything with it.
(emphasis added) Didn't you just vitiate your own point?
At least corporations, however odious Marxists and other social parasites looking for handouts may consider them to be, have the virtue of being numerous. So there is some chance that between them they will try out numerous mostly stupid ideas, and maybe a few of those will work. There is only one government - it is a monopoly by definition - and it is spending somebody else's money, which makes it extra-careless, so it will at most try just a very few stupid ideas, and probably put most of the taxpayers' money into one grandly stupid but lusciously corrupt idea, for instance corn ethanol.
Now I don't know what our odds are, but how can the narrow monopoly approach possibly improve them?
Nope, my point wasn't that government was better, but that the free market isn't the silver bullet that will save us. I don't think it has to be exclusively one or the other - probably a healthy mix of the two.
-Fab
I am arguing for the free market because that consists of countless numbers of individuals and businesses, many of them small, acting in their own best interest without the intervention of government force. This corporate fascism that operates in part of the economy where government and special interests get together and rig things for the profit of the few at the expense of the many is not the free market. If you are arguing for government solutions, you are essentially arguing for more of this fascism. Who benefited from ethanol subsidies and how much of our remaining resources were diverted into this government control of private property (fascism) non solution?
So if you are telling me that the free market does not work and then point to all this rigging of the economy as proof, I think you are way off base. The privileged position enjoyed by the banking system, the medical and drug establishment, the war industry, and the "public" utilities to name a few are created and enforced by government with the effect of shifting wealth out of the hands of the many into the hands of the few. What needs to be done is to get the government out of the way, not get them more involved.
When you advocate government solutions to energy problems you are advocating either more of this fascism or outright socialism, both of which will only bring us to a bad end quicker. Again, I put forth the idea that the likely solution, if there is any, will come from individuals making their own preparations to deal with the future they individually see and from the brains of inventive people and free market businesses who might create alternatives that at least mitigate somewhat the damage that will result from the fast approaching end of the oil age.
Taking more of our wealth via an additional gas tax is only going to put more economic power in the hands of the government to be squandered on some creations of the listless minds of bureaucrats and politicians.
Your statements ring of blind religious faith. A series of small self centered actions are somehow going to change the fundamental paradigm that has organized our urban, suburban, exurban and rural forms ? Courtesy of GMs buyout of streetcar lines, the Interstate Highway system, etc.
If you truly believe this, then look at what real estate developers have built for half our population. They are out to make a buck, slap something together and turn over a new subdivision in 18 to 30 months and then walk away forever, leaving former farmland with an unsustainable mess.
If not required to by the central, socialized authority the streets would not even line up with the streets from the subdivision next to them. The streets and sewers would collapse in a decade or so,
There *IS* a solution ! But it can *ONLY* with collective, governmental effort. Look at France, a complete non-Oil Transportation system is largely in place (but still growing after 25+ years of modest level effort).
TGV lines radiating from Paris in all directions (more lines bypassing Paris under way) for intercity travel. Urban Rail in almost all cities and towns of 100,000 and more. And now rent-a-bikes (first half hour free) in many French cities. All collective effort,
Switzerland could not have survived and functioned after a 100% six year oil embargo with a series of small individual efforts.
Best Hopes for Collective Efforts,
Alan
John 15 --
I agree wholeheartedly. Not only is it arrogant to say we will be consigned to horse and buggy, it's deplorably unimaginative.
I also agree that electricity is the best fast track option. For one, it's more efficient than gas so even if all of the energy comes from fossil fuels at first it buys us time. It's also much more diverse. You can generate electricity from any conventional, alternative, or future power source so you can leverage a basket of energy source options. Finally, the distribution infrastructure (the grid) is already in place. So you don't have to spend trillions building it.
With emerging wireless transport of electricity, the 'fuel' becomes even more flexible -- even a possibility for certain aircraft, especially rotary wing aircraft, giving them essentially unlimited range.
There seems to be a backward romance arising in today's society. People don't like civilization, they think lots of people should die and leave the world to the survivors -- whom they envision to be themselves. What these people do not realize is that if civilization were to crash it would be far more brutal and painful than they imagine. It is not something we should ever even accept much less claim is inevitable.
"There seems to be a backward romance arising in today's society."
Yes. those who believe in a "simpler" life that didn't really exist. some detested the noisy and dirty railroads when they came out. I can imagine the telephone and telegraph made people long for the romance of mail.
if you lived along a busy canal I suppose you longed for the days when less people travelled on the water.
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2006/05/305-kunstler-thought-y2k-was...
So how long you going to beat that dead horse?
For as long as people advocate drastic measures to get us to a simpler kind of life we never had and might not even need. if you want to go back to a simpler kind of life go for it, leave us out of it. if events take us there, so be it, but if we force it we may have a huge mess on our hands. don't forget the law of unintended consequences.
Dude, I could not care less if anyone would want to have the simpler lifestyle, and I have no intention of forcing it on anyone. In fact, the LAST thing I want to see is a mad rush to the sticks by a bunch of yuppies and urban types looking for the simple life and in the process ruining mine by bringing their phony culture and excesses. Please, stay in your damn cities with your techno toys.
Don‘t worry, I‘m absolutely certain your view will be in the majority.