Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General Gas Prices???

I find it a little frustrating when Americans go buy a $30 or 40k Suburban and then complain about $2.29 for gas. We pay a fraction of the cost of that Europeans pay, and even Canadians are paying more than we are. If you don't like paying so much for gas, buy a smaller car. Very few people I know need a large SUV, and most of them don't need it every day. There are so many people driving their RX330's and ML430's 25 miles to work here...alone. The real solution to gas prices is to use less gas, not to make gas cheaper so more people with big cars can afford to fill up their 30 gallon tanks. Either accept /all/ the consequences of driving such a large car, or buy a smaller car.

Oh, yeah, the last time I filled up at Chevron, it was 1.79, but it goes up quickly from there. There are stations in Seattle that are easily over $2 a gallon. I feel for the people in California though. When I was there over the summer, we could hardly find any gas cheaper than $1.99 a gallon.

Just consider the fact that no one, not even the government or oil companies, will argue the fact that we've used at least half of the oil that the Earth ever had.

We've been using oil for 150 years, so that gives us another 150 years to fix things, right?

Bzzzzt.

The population is several times what it was 150 years ago, so we're using it several times faster.

So if it took 150 years for an average population of 2.5 billion people to consume half the oil, it will only take 35 years to consume the same amount of oil at our current population growth.

But there's more....

Every item we use everyday uses oil, whereas even 50 years ago almost nothing was made from oil but gasoline.

We're using oil at a rate several times faster than even our grandparents did, and exponentially faster than our great-grandparents did.

There's no doubt amongst any reputable experts that the current reserves will last more than 30 years at current consumption rates.

Even if one were to say that we still had 75% of the oil reserves left after 150 years, we still wouldn't last more than 70 years provided oil consumption didn't increase at all over that time -- which it of course would. In 70 years the population will be double what it is now.

But, there's even more on top of the fact that it's running out.

The half of the oil that is left will cost exponentially more to retrieve than the oil we have been getting, whether it's because of it's depth or its' location on the surface of the Earth. It's far cheaper to drill in the surface of Kuwait than off the Antarctic Coast.

Like it or not, within 3-5 years we WILL be paying $5/gallon for gas in the United States. Irregardless of whatever OPEC does, it still is going to cost Exxon-Mobil considerably more in the near future to retrieve oil thanit does now.

It's not the impact on how much you pay that you should be worried about. It's the impact on our economy when all of us are paying $500+ per month just to drive our cars.

Gas prices are going to far exceed automakers ability to push out fuel-saving cars, and definently far exceed our nation's total inability to implement mass transit solutions.

Whether it's 3, 5, 10, or even 15 years at a stretch, the plain and simply truth of the matter is that something very very bad is going to happen to our country and the World in our lifetimes. There's simply not enough time to adequately solve the problem anymore.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a Doomsdayer, not a Conspiracy Theorist, Chicken Little, etc, etc.

But, when we are presented with facts that are agreed upon by some of the most intelligent people on the planet... I mean, Come on!

NASA finds an Asteroid that may Cross our path in 2000 years and it's Headline News. The US Energy Secretary says that we've got 10 years left before our lives turn to [censored] because there's no more oil, and it's not talked about.

Sigma, you must be crazy man. We find new oil everyday. Especially underneath the ocean. There are vast amounts of oil under the ocean we haven't even found yet. Not to mention the fact that we use other country's oil in order to save ours. We'll be using oil for at least another 150 years, and I'm sure they'll have another energy source by then anyways.

Oil takes a long time to produce, and in the end -- its still a finite resource.

IMHO, I'd like the US government to grow some balls and start putting more money into R$D into more experimental technologies (like methanol powered vehicles) and begin giving tax incentives (breaks) for people who drive smaller displacement vehicles.

When the "Soccer Moms" are buying up Excursions to go to the grocery two blocks down, that is decadence at it's finest.

Oh, and gas is 90c/litre here, that works out to $3.60CAD/gal, which is $2.75USD/gal. So you guys still have it easy = p.

Days like this though I wished I bought a TDI ; p.