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HeyBub[_2_] HeyBub[_2_] is offline
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Default Are we the only ones getting screwed ?????

wrote:
On Mar 28, 7:15 pm, " wrote:
Put on another sweater. Our government is not responsible for the
world-wide price of oil. Oil is fungible.


the fast and loose devaluing of our money is at least partially from
ru away war spending and the lack of any energy policy at all.

big oil owns the white house and congress, and were getting screwed


High oil prices IS an energy policy (albeit not a planned one--Bush
isn't responsible for it)
With high oil prices, alternative energy will gain strength.
If oil is cheap, we won't change. I've been advocating $5.00 per
gallon for gas for some years now. However, I would have like to have
seen it gradually, and through taxation, instead of a dollar
devaluation and a rise in world consumption.


Virtually every survey shows that the cost of oil is not a deterrent to its
use. Oil is not price elastic. Like food, fuel is a necessity and increasing
the price - through taxes or supply/demand - only nibbles at the margins.

Doubling the cost of fuel means adding 10% to the cost of almost everything
that travels by truck. That translates to about a 30% increase at the retail
level.

Alternative energies may gain influence, but there are two things to
consider when pinning hopes on such plans:

1. Solar energy is dependent entirely on the earth's distance from the sun*.
It would take a solar collector farm the size of the Los Angeles basin to
provide electricity for just California.

2. Meddling in the natural order causes unintended consequences. Conversion
of traditional crops to grow corn (for example) has contributed to a
doubling of rice prices in only one year (now up to $1000/ton from $360 in
January 2007). Just this past week, Egypt, Pakistan, and Viet Nam stopped
the export of locally grown rice to forstall famine and inflation.

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*745 watts/sq meter at the equator, at noon, with no clouds. Adjusted for
latitude, night, and cloud cover, a solar collector farm in, say, Arizona
might average 100-200 watts/sq m.