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Quote:
Isn't there already as gas-guzzler tax?
Yes, but it's a tax on cars that get less than 11mpg IIRC
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I know there are a bunch of doomsday forcasts for oil, like the $3.00 a gallon gas by 05, but I really don't believe them. People that come up with these studies are usually tied to hardcore environmentalist groups.
Yeah, "hardcore environmentalist groups" like the US Secretary of Energy. Yeah, don't want to believe him when he tells you that we're all up a creek without a paddle.
Or Bush's Energy Advisor, or Exxon-Mobil, or Dutch Shell, or every self-respecting geologist out there.
Yeah, they're all a bunch of loonies!
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Now, getting that oil out of the gound will become harder and harder, but with oil consumption on a steady rise, it will become more profitable for oil companies to develop ways of harvesting this oil; and we all know that the greedy oil companies love their profits...
Come now, you can't concede this fact yet think gas prices can go down.
If Demand is "steadily rising" and oil is getting "harder and harder" to get out of the ground, what do you think happens to the price of the gas?
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Another solution to the U.S.'s oil woes (after all, it is the U.S.'s problems that we do care the most about right? )would be to allow drilling in formally protected areas, such as Alaska. I am not for clear cutting the forests to search for oil, but there are ways of getting the oil out of the ground that minimize harm to the land. To put an oil pump and accessories in the ground doesnt require all that much land to be cleared of trees. Also, the proposal on the table most recently would be to open up a whopping 10% of the protected land to oil drilling.
No one has an issue with the land they're going to take-over.
It's a fear of another Valdez, or the environmental disaster that is the Alaska Pipeline. Pumping oil, by its' very nature is a dirty business. Spills will occur; the Alaska pipeline is leaking constantly; it's only a matter of how big the spills will be.
Los Angeles is only a teeny-tiny portion of the US, yet the pollution spreads hundreds of miles and heat that arises from the city affects weather patterns across the nation.
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Well, if we vote Kerry into office and he actually stands by one of his convictions, we could expect a 50 cent a gallon or more tax increse. I don't see how that would be good for the American people?
It probably wouldn't be "good" for a lot of people in the short-run.
Gas prices WILL rise considerably in the near future. Even if you don't believe in the whole Peak Oil theory, there's no denying that there's less oil in the world than there was years ago, nor that we hit peak oil production 4 years ago and have been steadily declinging ever since. All while demand is rising.
People will eventually be forced out of driving their automobiles. But, in most of the US, there is no alternative. And, when gas prices finally break $5/gallon, no one is going to want to wait 20 years (the average for a light-rail construction plan) for their government to build a mass-transit system. By that time gas will be even more absurd.
Increasing the tax on gasoline, and sending it to where it needs to go, will provide areas with the money necessary to improve their rapidly decaying transportation infrastructure and finally be able to seriously look at mass-transit solutions before it becomes too late.
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Originally posted by sigma:
Quote:
Isn't there already as gas-guzzler tax?
Yes, but it's a tax on cars that get less than 11mpg IIRC
I dont recall the gas guzzler tax bing on MPG that low. The cut off is somewhere in the sub 20 MPG range though. I recall seeing a Mercedes 600SEL in a Merc dealership in Calip with 19MPG and it had the gas suzzler tax on the window sticker. Dealers/car buyers can also get around the gas guzzler and luxury taxes by using leases instead of selling the car outright. Then they resell the car and since it is used, no gas guzzler tax and no luxury tax.
The important part is that trucks are exempt from the gas guzzler tax and SUV's are trucks.
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Originally posted by sigma:
...Gas prices WILL rise considerably in the near future. Even if you don't believe in the whole Peak Oil theory, there's no denying that there's less oil in the world than there was years ago, nor that we hit peak oil production 4 years ago and have been steadily declinging ever since. All while demand is rising.
Ditto. World DEMAND is going up on a finite resource; competition between US demand and Chinese/Indian demand as their economies start to develop a middle-class base will count for a major portion of this.
It's not just the demand for gas, it's the demand for OIL. Damn-well everything that is manufactured or consumed involves some sort of petroleum-based product either building, harvesting, manufacturing, transporting or making that product up.
There's just no running away from this fact unless we figure out a way to drill at 20-30K ft. depths and do it cheaply AND strike HUGE reserves that the likes have never been seen before.
JaTo
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Originally posted by JaTo:
Originally posted by sigma:
...Gas prices WILL rise considerably in the near future. Even if you don't believe in the whole Peak Oil theory, there's no denying that there's less oil in the world than there was years ago, nor that we hit peak oil production 4 years ago and have been steadily declinging ever since. All while demand is rising.
Ditto. World DEMAND is going up on a finite resource; competition between US demand and Chinese/Indian demand as their economies start to develop a middle-class base will count for a major portion of this.
It's not just the demand for gas, it's the demand for OIL. Damn-well everything that is manufactured or consumed involves some sort of petroleum-based product either building, harvesting, manufacturing, transporting or making that product up.
There's just no running away from this fact unless we figure out a way to drill at 20-30K ft. depths and do it cheaply AND strike HUGE reserves that the likes have never been seen before.
BIODESIEL NOW!
Seriously though, the commuter impact on oil supply is something that is blown out of perportion. Oil is also used to generate heat and power. With this country not having any new nuclear power plants built in the last 20 years, our electrical demand has to be met by coal and oil. Hydroelectric, solar and wind methods of generating electricity are a drop in the bucket. Replace those aging coal and oil power plants with safe and reliable nuclear power (yes, it is relatively safer AND cheaper) than either of those option in the long run and produces less uncontrolled pollution. Granted we have to get off of our butts abotu the long term storage or radioactive material, but the medical sector produces more radioactive material than all of this countries nuke power plants combined.
Homeowners also need to be encourages to convert from fuel oil to natural gas or other methods of producing heat.
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I'm sure medicine does generate MORE nuclear waste. However, is that waste as "dirty" as the waste generated in current reactors?
Now, IIRC, there are newer technology reactors that generage less waste, breeder reactors, I think.
FWIW,
TB
"Seems like our society is more interested in turning each successive generation into cookie-cutter wankers than anything else." -- Jato 8/24/2004
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Originally posted by sigma:
Yeah, "hardcore environmentalist groups" like the US Secretary of Energy. Yeah, don't want to believe him when he tells you that we're all up a creek without a paddle.
Or Bush's Energy Advisor, or Exxon-Mobil, or Dutch Shell, or every self-respecting geologist out there.
Yeah, they're all a bunch of loonies!
You will need to show me where they said this before I will believe it...
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Come now, you can't concede this fact yet think gas prices can go down.
If Demand is "steadily rising" and oil is getting "harder and harder" to get out of the ground, what do you think happens to the price of the gas?
What I am saying is that with oil demmand rising, we need to start looking for ways to get oil that we can't get to right now. If we keep looking for it in easy places and the demmand keeps rising, we will be worse off than looking for oil in the harder places, and having to offset the additional cost of getting this harder to get oil.
There are studies that say there are oil pockets deep under the ocean that are bigger than any field we have seen to date. While it will take more money (and better technology) up front to get to them, the fact that the oil rig could be producing for a longer time will also make it profitable and a good investment for the oil company that takes the risk to get to them.
Another solution to the U.S.'s oil woes (after all, it is the U.S.'s problems that we do care the most about right? )would be to allow drilling in formally protected areas, such as Alaska. I am not for clear cutting the forests to search for oil, but there are ways of getting the oil out of the ground that minimize harm to the land. To put an oil pump and accessories in the ground doesnt require all that much land to be cleared of trees. Also, the proposal on the table most recently would be to open up a whopping 10% of the protected land to oil drilling.
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No one has an issue with the land they're going to take-over.
It's a fear of another Valdez, or the environmental disaster that is the Alaska Pipeline. Pumping oil, by its' very nature is a dirty business. Spills will occur; the Alaska pipeline is leaking constantly; it's only a matter of how big the spills will be.
Okay, thats fine, so we shouldn't go get that oil to help American people? If the Alaska pipeline is really leaking like you say it is, then that should be fixed. Also any new pipelines should be more secure and built better than the ones in place now. We certainly have the technology to pipe oil out of these new rigs safely. If it is going to bring oil prices under control, and allow us to begin to get away from OPEC, then we should do anything.
Speaking of OPEC, do you have as large a problem with the way they conduct business, as you did Microsoft? If you do, what do you think we should do about them having so much control over our lives? You think I dislike the EU, well you should see what I think about OPEC...
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It probably wouldn't be "good" for a lot of people in the short-run.
Gas prices WILL rise considerably in the near future. Even if you don't believe in the whole Peak Oil theory, there's no denying that there's less oil in the world than there was years ago, nor that we hit peak oil production 4 years ago and have been steadily declinging ever since. All while demand is rising.
If it won't be good in the short term, how can you think it will be good in the long term??? Okay, if we need the money that another tax on gas will provide, say for fixing our roads, thats fine. But before President Bush's tax breaks when was the last time you have seen a tax go away after it has been implimented? You haven't, they don't go away, and when you get used to them being there, another one is slapped on.
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People will eventually be forced out of driving their automobiles. But, in most of the US, there is no alternative. And, when gas prices finally break $5/gallon, no one is going to want to wait 20 years (the average for a light-rail construction plan) for their government to build a mass-transit system. By that time gas will be even more absurd.
It sounds like you don't have a problem with being forced out of driving your car that you worked hard to purchase, and you just say "oh well"? There are things we can do, both in the private and government sectors. We have no control, other than being share owners in a company. But what we do have more control over is our government.
Everyone says that mass transit is an answer, but come on Sigma, you live in Denton, and I am sure you have been out in the sticks. Are you telling me there is going to be a train system in all those small towns?
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Increasing the tax on gasoline, and sending it to where it needs to go, will provide areas with the money necessary to improve their rapidly decaying transportation infrastructure and finally be able to seriously look at mass-transit solutions before it becomes too late.
Good God, as fast as gas prices are going up, you can still sit there and say we need to raise taxes on it??? A typical Democrat thought process if I have ever seen it! Why don't we just make ALL of the money raised from gas tax to go towards transportation instead of rasing taxes?!
Or why dont we take some of that money and help pay for exploration for oil, so we can begin the process of being self dependant? I know you wont agree with this, because you would rather see the government build more mass transit and keep raising gas taxes to fund it; effectively giving you no other choice BUT to use the mass transit.
Or for all you environmentalists, why don't we as consumers start demmanding more fuel efficiant cars and trucks, and buying them when they are produced? Becomming completely unreliant on oil is unrealistic for the forseeable future, so why waste time on that when we can fix the gas prices right now? We can then work on getting our own oil supply, at the same time we get our cars and trucks to be more efficiant.
"Moore has also accused the American people of being the stupidest, most naive people on the face of the Earth. And after last weekend, he's got the box office numbers to prove it!"
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we all just need to buy a Segway 
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It's still cheaper than bottled water!
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Yeah man gas prices here are [censored], $1.89 a gallon for that unleaded [censored] and I drive 300-400 miles a week.
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