JEC, Tim body slammed you on this one. Your under the delusion Oil pricing is actually free market. Good luck. We’ve been milked as a nation to the tune of, as Tim, vis-a-vis T Boone states, $8.4 billion poorer as a nation. Everytime alternatives to oil come up, the Oil Barons of the Middle-East simply set the price a wee bit below the alternative till it dries up. Get with the program – drop your Adam Smith rhetoric in a very un-Adam Smith world.

My entire life (40 yrs) I’ve been pushing all who I encounter to buy efficient cars. I have yet to own a gas guzzler in comparison to what has been offered at the time. My current car is an 04 Civic Hybrid. I get well over the 48 stated on the sticker. In fact I get up near 60 just driving the speed limit. This is better than those I know with a Prius. If we don’t stop worrying about the almighty dollar and more about the environment, it won’t matter how much money you have in your bank account. After all, how much stuff does one need. How many times does one need to go out to eat. Spend some quality time at home instead of your cash at Starbucks.

The evidence is out there and always has been. As an environmental scientist I’ve realized that people have been brainwashed by the media and lobbyists to think the problem won’t effect them. Welcome to the new world. The world will survive, but I fear we won’t.

#131: For the economy, you hit it dead on.

Good luck to you all when food becomes too expensive to buy because we cannot grow it due to the fluctuating weather.

If we could eliminate the $700 billion we spend annually on foriegn oil for 12 years we would have saved $8.4 Trillion dollars. (per T. Boone Pickens)

That is enough money to replace 240 million american cars at $35,000 each. If we went to the Volt we could possibly eliminate some of our domestic oil as well.

Imagine what kind of stimulus it would be to our economy to build and replace 240 Million cars. And it could all be financed with deferred middle east oil revenues.

As well we could begin to bridge this major changeover by many means. For instance starting a massive retrofit program of existing U.S. cars with hybrid or electric technology, financed by monthly fuel savings.

This would put net after tax savings in the pockets of all americans, create a financing vehicle for decimated financial institutions, after the sub-prime fraud and create an ongoing stimulus package, financed again by foriegn oil.

Both candidates proposals are woefully inadequate given the magnitude of the problem, but Barrack’s is a larger step in the right direction.

Tim

To #32 kent beuchert
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/taxes.asp

That’s what you get from people who get their news from chain e-mails.

To those who think the tax credits for these vehicles is a bad idea, consider a few things. Yes, the Prius is selling very well without a tax break currently, but it did have a large tax credit included in its early years when the price of the vehicle was significantly higher and the economies of scale had not developed yet.

But the bottom line is that we subsidize the cost of every gallon of gas with the enormous amounts of dollars that get poured into our military to patrol areas of the world that are useless save for their oil reserves. With a dramatic drop in our need for foreign oil and a more sane foreign policy, the investment in alternative vehicles through tax credits would pay for itself many times over.

I read this blog everyday but do not post very often. I am usually in complete agreement with you, however, you have to realize that the offshore drilling that is proposed right now is not to lower the cost of gasoline. I don’t think they could get it out of the ground fast enough for that. It’s mainly just to keep it from rising any more. I’m in full support of drilling on the continental shelf. There are 86 billion barrels of proven reserves there, which with Americas rate of consumption of 20 million barrels of oil per day, that equals 4300 days (11.7 years) of our current total consumption levels or 7166 days (19.63 years) worth of imported oil (at current levels of 60% imports). That’s not enough to free us of our problem. But it is surely enough to make the transition to EV’s more comfortable, and actually, quicker. The price of oil effects everything, and if everything is cheaper people will have more money to buy EV’s.

Besides, as much as we want to see the US completely off of oil, it realistically can’t happen. Not completely. Planes won’t fly on biodiesel, and long haul trucks can’t use a 40 mile range EV. They need 1000 miles in 36 hours. EV’s won’t be able to do that for a loooong time, if ever.

China and other countries have already expressed interest in drilling in the Continental shelf region anyway. It would be kind of silly if other countries had their rigs off our coastline, but we didn’t have any of our own.