This won't make you happy: Gas is still too cheap

[pepe]

Charlie Crist scored a political coup with his plan for a gas-tax holiday. It landed him on the front page of The New York Times, where the governor said his job is to "respond to the people and try to make them happy."

This desire to spread happiness through gas-tax cuts is spreading to other states.

It also takes us in the wrong direction. The historical problem with gasoline is that it has been too cheap, creating a culture of waste that is now crippling the working class and threatening the economy.

It is cathartic to blame Exxon or environmentalists or taxes.

But the real problem is we burn 25 percent of the world's oil while we have only 2 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. So we import 66 percent of our oil. We can drill Alaska until it looks like Swiss cheese, but it won't change that reality to any significant degree.

Meanwhile, people in China and India are buying more and more cars, with their energy demand expected to double by 2030. Then they will import more oil than the U.S. and Japan combined, according to the International Energy Agency. More and more of that oil will come from increasingly unstable OPEC countries, which contain 80 percent of the world's remaining reserves.

This is a recipe for more oil wars and price shocks.

Making matters considerably worse is the approach of "Peak Oil," that time when worldwide oil production no longer can meet demand.

If the world is not prepared, the result will be a global financial crisis, with the United States particularly vulnerable because of its energy appetite. This is all outlined in a February 2007 report by the Government Accountability Office that warns we need to develop an energy strategy now or pay dearly later.

Any effective strategy depends on high prices. Nothing else reduces demand, changes lifestyles and spurs alternative energy sources.

The high price of oil makes offshore drilling in deep waters profitable. It makes extraction of oil from old wells or tar sands profitable. It encourages people to ride mass transportation and buy smaller cars.

Europe has lived for years with gas prices far in excess of what we are paying. It adapted long ago. Now it's our turn.

Unfortunately, politicians won't be honest about all this. They saw what happened to Jimmy Carter when he was, and they want no part of that. So they seek villains to blame.

President Bush blamed Democrats for high gas prices because they won't let us drill for oil, particularly in Alaska. Every drop we've taken out of Alaska to date has been wasted because it has been used to drive down prices and ultimately make us even more dependent on foreign oil.

I would support more drilling in Alaska if that oil were employed as a transitional source to use while we wean ourselves off it. The same goes for drilling off the Florida coast.

In fact, tapping into these reserves is becoming more and more a matter of national security. That Florida blocks offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while burning an increasing share of the nation's oil and natural gas is beyond irresponsible.

So was the Legislature's rejection of a commuter-rail plan in Central Florida. Here we are looking at oil prices hitting $150 a barrel by the end of the year, meaning gas around $4.50 a gallon, and politicians kill a mass-transit plan at the behest of the trial-lawyer lobby. Simply amazing.

Gas prices are so painful now because we have been so irresponsible up to now. Making people happy is not the solution.

Orlando Sentinel

[leobold1]

I thought that "Peak Oil" happened in 1989. So much for that myth.

I would support more drilling in Alaska if that oil were employed as a transitional source to use while we wean ourselves off it. The same goes for drilling off the Florida coast.

Definately. But we're not looking into other sources, and the sources we are looking into aren't being developed in a broad sense. Chevy is coming out with a Hybrid that runs on Hydrogen, but very little exists to help fuel the vehicle. Battery power is dependent on weather, charge time, distance to travel, and vehicle/cargo size. Solar is dependent on weather, distance to travel, and lack of power.

And that's just for vehicles.

We're not looking into nuclear power (thank you Democrats), wind power is advocated by many hiporcrits (Kennedy wants it, just not on his shoreline), solar power is too bulky to be an option, coal is "evil", geothermal has barely been studied, and Natural Gas is getting to the same point as oil.

We're not looking at anything that would take us off oil, but the only way to do so is to make oil scarce.

This would also make the major oil drilling countries go into economic shock. The Middle East isn't looking at anything except oil, and when its gone, they're going to go back to the Dark Ages and no one is going to care about them anymore.

[BrianK]

When oil is gone the world will pretty much return to the dark ages. Home heating and some [very few] things can be replaced by coal & or other resources. There is a reality that isn't being addressed. Gasoline is only a small part of what oil plays in our lives.

Everything from plastics to components in some medicines are derived from oil. Once it's gone what will the population of earth rely on? That is another reality. The population keeps growing and medical research keeps extending the lives of people. That can translate to a few billion more people when it's all gone.

But that would bother people to have to think about that. The trend is to educate people to believe that gov. will solve all lifes problems. Everything is warm & fuzzy and oil companies are the bad guys that only care about profits. Meanwhile there is some overweight person driving a 12 mpg. vehicle to run out to buy beer cheering the news on the radio that the democrats are proposing a summer vacation on federal taxes on gasoline. Yep those greedy corporations are making life miserable for that fat guy.

[john mclaughlin]

I would pay anything for a gallon of gas about right now