🚀 go-pugleaf

Thank you for your comments. I agree with you. Rather one single event
bringing about change, it would take a comprehensive approach. But WE
NEED A POLITICAL WILL first. Regretably, the political will goes
toward consumption, as proven by the recent $.08 tax break on
gasoline.

So the starving of the dinosaur may come as the result of some major
world event--something we are totally and absolutely unprepared for.
How much better it would be to wean the oil-addicted dinosaur over a
period of time... ;)

AJFeeney48@yahoo.com (JohnAndrew) wrote in message news:<2fcaf67c.0408032004.47be4ab1@posting.google.com>...
> Bravo for this post.  My great grandfather was a staunch Republican
> too, and he'd agree. For Americans with 4% of the world's
> population to squander 25% of the world's
> limited oil supply, as if there's no tomorrow, is immoral
> from a social justice perspective, and from a political and
> an environmental perspective, it's insane.
> 
> However, higher gas prices ALONE will not be enough.  If we
> just let gas and oil prices rise, one thing we'll do is encourage
> the global energy industry to produce a lot more fossil fuels.
> It's not unthinkable that this could then lead to a temporary DROP
> in energy prices again, and the sales of more SUVs and Hummers.
> 
> This sounds paradoxical, but it is pretty much what happened
> in the early 1980s when world oil prices were soaring and the US
> had just decontrolled the oil industry - thanks to a 1978 decision by
> the Carter administration, oddly enough, and not the Reaganites.
> 
> Especially with Iraq and Iran engaged in a bitter war, world oil
> prices in the early 1980s soared to something like $27 a barrel or
> more, then suddenly plunged in 1985 to roughly $13/barrel.  It
> wasn't global scarcities or global surpluses that did this, but
> the vagaries of Middle East politics and disagreements within OPEC.
> 
> But in any case, "energy conservation" powered by high prices suddenly
> became un-economic, big cars started to come back into fashion, and
> the US embarked on the trend towards gas-guzzling SUVs that we see today.
> 
> Given the high degree of oligopoly and global cooperation/conflict
> that characterizes the global oil market, relying on price trends
> alone to promote conservation is a mistake. Higher prices, taken
> by themselves, help the oil companies to boost their revenues
> and their power, which may not be that good for the environment.
> 
> They also screw the poor and those living on fixed incomes,
> and they don't guarantee that private enterprise and government
> will make the large investments needed -- in mass transit and
> in residential housing patterns, for example -- to make a "green"
> and sustainable energy future possible.
> 
> So if we do embrace higher energy prices, let's make damned sure
> that there are safeguards put in place to keep lower-income people
> from being ruined in the process -- if only because we don't want
> them being mobilized against "environmental elitists" by the 
> corporate polluters and amoral economic conservatives of the future. 
> 
> Meanwhile, let's use the power of government to make other
> essential changes as well -- more public investment in mass
> transit systems, higher fuel efficiency standards for new
> cars mandated by law, higher federally mandated standards for
> the energy efficiciency of large appliances, and maybe some
> government-funded pilot projects on making it easier for people
> to live near where they shop and work.  
> 
> Federal subsidies for promising new alternative energy technologies
> and tax breaks for "green" alternative energy development would be good,
> too.  
> 
> When these measures are combined with higher fuel prices, they
> might enable American society to make use of some "market mechanisms"
> to promote better energy policies -- but without becoming slaves
> of a so-called "free market" in energy that are largely controlled
> by the largest corporations on earth, and not by the average individual.