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From Arianna Huffington:
George Bush: Foreign Policy from God, Energy Policy from Big Oil

The president may turn to God when it comes to shaping his foreign policy, but his energy policy is strictly courtesy of the Men Upstairs at Big Oil.

Which is why it is beyond comical to watch Moe, Curly, and Larry -- sorry, I mean Bush, Hastert, and Frist -- getting all blue in the face about skyrocketing gas prices, and calling on the Energy and Justice Departments to look into possible market manipulation by oil companies.

It’s the least believable call for an investigation since O.J. set out to find the real killers.

Read the Rest Here.

If the prices get much higher somebody's going to have to think up a reason for America to accept gas rationing, or the worker classes won't be able to get to work. They certainly aren't thinking about putting public transportation in place (at this point, only bus transport could be put in place in most localities - it takes time to build rail lines, and even more time to put in els and subways). If they started right now - which they aren't - to restructure the tax and subsidy codes to "encourage" auto manufacturers to build or redesign the factories to build hybrids, evs, and higher gpm internal combustion vehicles, those gas-savings products wouldn't hit showroom floors for 5 years. minimum - closer to 10. Increases in clean bus production and railroad engines/rolling stock could be put into effect sooner - doubling what's on the road within 3 years - but we'd also have to restructure tax, subsidy, and "royalty reprieve" codes to get Big Oil to put biodiesel into the mix (20% biodiesel would improve the American farm situation, clean the air, and contribute about 7 years to the longevity of the diesel engine (per results of that mix in France), even 5% would help). Ain't gonna happen - not on this guy's watch.

already poor people are having to choose between a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas - and they usually pick gas because they need it to get to work...

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:If the prices get much higher somebody's going to have to think up a reason for America to accept gas rationing, or the worker classes won't be able to get to work.

DAR
I bet you would agree that we have been nannied on cheap gas for too long. For years I have been yearning for $5 gas and the new conservation technologies this would inspire. But it is going to rip the poor a new one and cause a wave of inflation and reality. I go to a lot of churches with my job and I am now, for the first time, regularly seeing poor people showing up at the churches for food.

BARB
They certainly aren't thinking about putting public transportation in place (at this point, only bus transport could be put in place in most localities

DAR
I am thinking getting, to show at a Freethinker meeting, the movie "Taken for a Ride" which documents the careful and planned dismantling of the US public transit, with the assistance of Big Oil and I think the auto manufacturers. Trouble is it's very hard to get, and about $55 just to rent.

BARB
If they started right now - which they aren't - to restructure the tax and subsidy codes to "encourage" auto manufacturers to build or redesign the factories to build hybrids, evs, and higher gpm internal combustion vehicles, those gas-savings products wouldn't hit showroom floors for 5 years. minimum - closer to 10.

DAR
Toyota is running ads right now for a nice small two door "Yaris" that starts for about $11,000 and gets 35-40 mpg.



Japan and Europe have other little high mileage cars that they are sitting on that are going to start to look real attractive over here. And I may be selling little 900 mpg scooters by this summer. But admittedly, they're just scooters.

D.

The way high prices hit the "poor" is why rationing combined with price controls - like in WWII - would be the best way to handle this until the combination of renewable/biofuels, serious gas-sippers (50+ mpg), EVs, and public transit have time to get online. It won't happen, of course.

Oh, and I'd be happy to kick in $5 for a showing of "Taken for a Ride"

Good idea Barbara. We'll ask for a love offering of $5 for the show and I'll pay the difference, or if we make a lot of money at Springfest (with the $300 worth of inventory purchased last night), the kitty can pay for it.

I have a feeling it is going to be quite good. Apparently the smart car people at Zap having been playing it at different venues along the way of their promotional smart car tour.

The "heading for empty" cartoon is correct only if you are measuring fossil fuels (especially petroleum, although the current guestimates of 2 centuries of coal are based on current usage - if we replace petroleum with coal (synfuels), it will last another 50 years after we run out of oil). Energy from the sun directly (light, heat, electricity from solar cells) and indirectly (wind, biomass fuels) will long outlast the human race. Unless, of course, the human race manages to survive as is (without evolving to another species) for 4.5 or so billion years. At its current rate of "messing the nest", humanity will be lucky to live another 4.5 centuries.

DAR
So would you move the needle to the right or the left?

Barbara wrote:The way high prices hit the "poor" is why rationing combined with price controls - like in WWII - would be the best way to handle this until the combination of renewable/biofuels, serious gas-sippers (50+ mpg), EVs, and public transit have time to get online.

Is government oppression your "solution" to everything? We know what happens when things are not rationed by price - they are rationed by favoritism, sexual favors, racism, secret preferred customer deals, and the whims of petty bureaucrats and gestapo types. What about incentives? Coercive rationing reduces incentives to increase efficiency or bring out alternative fuels. Instead of car-pooling and more efficient transportation, such rationing would reward petrol use by making it cheaper than it would otherwise be. Rationing failed in WWI, WWII, and in the 1970s when Nixon tried it.

High prices are the main incentive for conservation. Don't destroy these incentives.

Hogeye wrote: Is government oppression your "solution" to everything? We know what happens when things are not rationed by price - they are rationed by favoritism, sexual favors, racism, secret preferred customer deals, and the whims of petty bureaucrats and gestapo types. What about incentives? Coercive rationing reduces incentives to increase efficiency or bring out alternative fuels.

DOUG
Why would a reduction in supply reduce the incentive to create alternatives?

Why should anyone think that if a commodity is too expensive to buy, we as a society would be inclined to create alternatives, but if that same commodity is in short supply, our society would not be inclined to create alternatives? That makes no sense.

Hogeye wrote: Instead of car-pooling and more efficient transportation, such rationing would reward petrol use by making it cheaper than it would otherwise be. Rationing failed in WWI, WWII, and in the 1970s when Nixon tried it.

DOUG
I don't see how rationing failed in WWI and II. Everything from rubber tires to sugar was rationed. The rationing was for the purposes of maintaining a supply to the troops, not for price reduction. To confuse the two kinds of rationing (supply shift v. price shift) is to compare apples and oranges.

See here for posters about rationing and conservation in WWII.

Hogeye wrote:High prices are the main incentive for conservation. Don't destroy these incentives.

DOUG
So if people are allowed less gasoline they are less likely to conserve? Are you kidding? Rationing in WWII changed the way many people used gasoline, rubber, etc.

Rationing in WWI didn't have time to really get off the ground - we were only in that war for under 2 years and we didn't start rationing until 1918. What there was of it worked quite well.

Rationing in general and of gasoline in particular in WWII was very successful, since they started it within 6 months of the declaration of war, and we were in that war for 4 & 1/2 years. The first voluntary attempts failed, of course, but it worked once it became mandatory. It takes a certain amount of time to prepare such an undertaking - printing ration books and getting them out to everybody, etc. Most people don't realize there were 3 reasons for gas rationing: 1) military need, 2) unequal supply (we didn't have the pipeline distribution we have now - fuel was shipped from the Gulf ports -where the petroleum was - to the Atlantic ports - where most of the population was - and German U-boats were knocking out our coastal shipping, especially tankers), and 3) need to save rubber (we got NO new rubber until mid-1945, from 12/7/41 tires in America needed to last "the duration", and the only way to keep people from driving on those precious tires was to restrict gasoline).

Here I could easily get by on the 3 gallons per week an A sticker allowed, but it would have been iffy when I lived in Kansas City - so, even if we could convince America to accept gas rationing ala WWII, we'd still use about 3-4 times what was used domestically back then (2x population + 1.5-2x amount of gas required for necessary driving - work, groceries, etc).

As to need for governmental solutions (solutions, not "oppression") - anything affecting 300 million people in a country as large as America (4,000 miles by 2,500 miles not counting Alaska and Hawaii), requires centralized planning and organization - and the ability to enforce the rules coming from that planning and organization. That's one definition of government - a central planning and organizing agency with enforcement power. Rationing in WWII didn't work until it bacame law. Voluntary programs produced lots of signs and flagwaving, but no reduction of usage (sort of like the "greenwash" of present-day American auto manufacturers regarding both emissions and mpgs).

Massive problems require massive solutions at the organizational level, even though they will always require local action. The pseudo free trade of the oil industry (as massive as that is) will only provide "solutions" of money channeled into their pockets - and a platinum parachute out of the situation when the revolution they caused gets nasty. We won't have real free trade until government enforces the rules that keeps corporations market controlled, instead of controlling the market. That's what governments are for - to prevent power from becoming so concentrated that it cannot be controlled by market forces.

And Doug is absolutely right - reduction in supply works just as well as high prices to create incentives to alternatives (as long as the populace doesn't believe the scarcity is artificially created - that's when rationing doesn't work and the black market florishes). The old WWII A coupon allowing 3 gallons of gas a week makes a 50+ mpg hybrid or an EV look mighty nice.

Reducing retail consumption, through rationing or any other means, has the added benefit of reducing usage at the production end. The combination of virgin pulp paper making, metal refining, and petroleum refining uses 80% of the energy in this country (also 80% of the water and produces 80% of the pollution). Cuts in usage = cuts in production = more availibility of what petroleum we have (so we have more time to engineer the switch to alternates), as well as more available potable water and less pollution at both the production and consumption ends. Too bad America isn't likely to accept it, even if this administration was willing to suggest it.

Doug wrote:Why would a reduction in supply reduce the incentive to create alternatives?

Ceteris Paribus, it wouldn't. In an uncoerced market, a reduction in supply would cause an increase in price, providing a financial incentive to find better ways. E.g. Ethanol was cheaper per gallon than petrol until Alcohol Prohibition. By coercively banning stills (approx. 80% of the alcohol generated was for fuels, not drinking) suddenly petrol was cheaper than the scarcer ethanol. The rest is history.

I would like to see the price per unit of petrol go higher than the price per unit of ethanol, so we can have a renewable, less polluting fuel source. If the government holds prices for petrol artificially low and rations using non-price means, much of the motivation and information associated with price goes away. I have absolutely no problem with the person who produces ethanol (or hydrogen or whatever) cheaper than petrol getting filthy rich. They'd deserve it.

Doug wrote:Why should anyone think that if a commodity is too expensive to buy, we as a society would be inclined to create alternatives, but if that same commodity is in short supply, our society would not be inclined to create alternatives?

I didn't say no one would be inclined; I simply pointed out that the incentive is reduced. Money is a very good incentive, one of the strongest. Why cripple this incentive? Most technological advancement is done at least partially for money, not by some altruistic schmoos for the good of mankind. Also, there is an information function of price - that's how the market knows what is scarce.


You guys really lap up the fascist line on the necessity of corporatism. Mussolini and FDR both used the same techniques, the former calling them "corporations" and the latter "war (or national recovery) boards." Needless to say, I disapprove of the State telling people what they can and cannot have, price-fixing and rationing, collusion with corporations and unions, etc.

Doug wrote:Why would a reduction in supply reduce the incentive to create alternatives?

Hogeye wrote:Ceteris Paribus, it wouldn't.

DOUG
OK, so don't suggest that rationing would reduce the incentive.

Doug wrote:Why should anyone think that if a commodity is too expensive to buy, we as a society would be inclined to create alternatives, but if that same commodity is in short supply, our society would not be inclined to create alternatives?

Hogeye wrote:I didn't say no one would be inclined; I simply pointed out that the incentive is reduced.

DOUG
Actually, you DID say:

Hogeye wrote:Coercive rationing reduces incentives to increase efficiency or bring out alternative fuels.

OK, and I asked you for evidence that this is so and you have produced none. I agree that high prices provide an incentive for people to look for alternatives, but so does scarcity.

Hogeye doesn't seem to have any concept of the affects of rising fuel prices on the working poor, especially in a land of little or no mass transit - without some kind of assistance, like rationing (and nobody said making it cheap, just keeping if from being a perc solely of the rich), they won't be the WORKING poor much longer. It would take about 6 months to get rationing in place, it will take at least a year and probably more to get decent diesel bus mass transit in place in small communities like Fayetteville, and it will take 5 years or more to get electric mass transit like ELs and street cars back online. It will take between 7 and 10 years to replace 90% or more of the gasoline-powered cars on the road today, since most of the alternative-fuel replacements haven't been designed yet, much less built - though hopefully the latter is an inflated number, since mass transit could simply retire a number of those gas guzzlers, rather than needing to replace them. It takes time to change the transportation style of 300 million people, and gas rationing would give us that time without putting 75 million people out of work from inability to get there - and the economic chaos THAT would cause only pleases people who don't include starving babies and dead bodies in the calculations of what makes a worthwhile end.

Barbara seems to think that access to petrol is an all-or-nothing affair - that suddenly the poor will get zero gas, rather than carpooling, better trip planning, living closer to work, etc. Also, she seems to think that better conservation of fuel for society is a matter of planning from above rather than an evolution in habits and values. I prefer a non-coercive market - voluntary society - rather than orders from rulers, both for moral reasons and utilitarian ones. I prefer people reduce fossil fuel consumption because it is in their individual self-interest, not because it is politically expedient for some politician or favored special interest.

The poor will buy zero gas if it gets high enough. They are already doing their best with trip planning, as far as work is concerned, and car pooling is only efficient if somebody who lives near you also works near you. Living closer to work means moving, which is expensive in itself, and frequently not possible, because of the cost of housing. Lower income folks live where they can afford to and work where they can find jobs, frequently not in the same areas. Voluntary changes only work if you have viable choices. Individuals seldom have control over the viability of choices. Better conservation of fuel for society is a matter of planning from above in industrial nations - I can choose what model of car I drive (if I drive, when I drive) only from the pool of available, affordable cars. I would love to have either an EV (like some of those shown on other threads) or at least one of those Euro-GM cars that get 58 mgp - I can't afford either even if they were available in American, which they aren't.

Aside from which, the change over - which is being and will be driven by self interest, individual and otherwise - takes more time than some people seem to think. It takes time, as well as money, to make the change. We could have done it easily if we'd started in the 70s, when we got the first warning. Reagan & co convinced America (only too ready to be convinced) that the energy crisis was an enviro-hoax - so it will take more money to do what we should have done 30 years ago, because we have 30 years less time to do it in.

It will take a minimum of 10 years to change over the transportation and other energy using systems from whenever we make a serious start. That's where true "trickle down" works - the wealthy buy "new" models, the middle-imcomes buy them when they become "established" models, and the lower-incomes buy them used. It takes money and changes in tax systems to convince any corporation to actually make new stuff, and encourage the wealthy to buy new stuff to start the process. That's true of cars, and to a lesser extent, refrigerators, heating/air units, and any other energy users (the "lesser extent" is because most folks don't buy used heating/air units - although lower income folks do buy used major appliances like refrigerators and washing machines).

It's a bottom-up, top-down, meet in the middle process - but the poor always get slammed by high prices for necessities - and unless/until we get reliable mass transit (7-10 years at a minimum from whenever we start), gas is a necessity. That means, even if they can continue to work, they spend less money at the grocery store, never mind movies and other "entertainment", dining out, clothes, vacations, etc - the stuff that drives the economy. If they can't continue to work, because they can't reliably get to work, they put even less into the economy, and that's from unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other tax-funded programs - until they run out of benefits, and then they are on the street. This is why some method of guaranteeing a minimum requirement of fuel to the working poor without decreasing overall gas prices would be most likely to bring about the necessary reduction in fossile fuel usage without totally trashing the economy (or putting 12 million people out of work because they can't get there) - and THAT takes government intervention, whether rationing or some other method (vouchers, maybe).

Barbara wrote:The poor ... are already doing their best with trip planning, as far as work is concerned, and car pooling...

No; the poor, like everyone else, are influenced by price. There is plenty of room for improvement.

Barbara wrote:Lower income folks live where they can afford to and work where they can find jobs, frequently not in the same areas. ... Aside from which, the change over - which is being and will be driven by self interest, individual and otherwise - takes more time than some people seem to think. It takes time, as well as money, to make the change.

I agree. The issue is whether such change is done better and more morally by voluntary means or government aggression. I see much of the problem caused by government intervention - from subsidies to roads and highways, to prohibition of ethanol (originally lobbied for by Rockefeller and his Standard Oil, using the State to snuff out competition), up to today's bloody and expensive wars to favor govt-connected oil firm cronies. Instead up piling up more government aggression, why not reduce it? When something doesn't work, and exacerbates the problem, stop doing it!

Greed will not be done away with by getting rid of the one force that has the power to control it, even if at the moment it isn't doing its job. Government funding has also provided the research for the solutions - corporations have been getting rid of their R&D divisions since they went to quarterly planning based on the stock market, some 20 years ago. Hybrid engines were developed using DOE & DOT funds. Government funds are also working on crop residue sources of ethanol (which are energy efficient) to replace corn sources of ethanol (which are not), amongst many other projects to solve problems rather than create or exacerbate them. The problem has not been with government not trying to find solutions (at least some of the departments are working very hard on solutions), the problem is funding the implementing of those solutions. The latter is the problem because implementing solutions is not a departmental thing, but a congressional one, and since it strikes fear in the hearts of the corporate CEOs that fund the campaigns, so it mostly doesn't get done.