To all the defenders of the gas price increases who wrote me hate mail, and to all who think I don’t know that dinosaurs aren’t making new oil, which may be one and the same group:
For the past thirty years at least, this nation’s leadership has spoken of the need for an energy policy, and we have none to this day. That is not only poor management of the nation’s economy, but it is catering to the oil company interests at the expense of everyone in this nation and for a fact, everyone on the planet. And to say that a fifty cent rise in the price per gallon of gas over the past eight to ten weeks is due to a “sudden” shortage of a fossil fuel that we’ve been monitoring for decades is STUPID.
People have to get to work one way or another. Here in the Phoenix area we’ve talked about light rail for twenty years and today we still have none. It is in the works, somewhere along the line. Whether it will be effective, whether city planners are approving new housing development only where public transportation is or will be available, are other unanswered questions. We lack adequate freeways because of poor city planning, and that is true of most highly urban areas built after the advent of the motor car. It is particularly true of the states west of the Mississippi.
I have read conflicting stories about how long the world’s known crude supplies can or will last. There are differing opinions by equally competent geological experts.
As to prices, what seems to appear most often in the news when prices take a whopping jump is that OPEC will either cut back or increase production by so many million barrels a day. Not a word from OPEC about shortages in the world’s fossil fuel supply, just pricing and production.
This is the kind of mixed message that says there is more politics and profit at stake (at least in the minds of the world’s suppliers and money controllers) than concern for the duration of the world’s supply of fossil fuel itself. Now I will enumerate the factors that caused me to call the present rise in gas a price-gouge rather than a genuine issue of limited supplies (and plenty of reserves for the oil barons somewhere):
1. OPEC is not wringing its collective hands over a lack of oil. It is controlling the supply to extract maximum price according to the demand, not warning that demand will outrun supplies.
2. Our government has announced that it will “look into” the rise in gas prices. In the case of a clear and imminent danger of actually running out to the extent that it will affect the whole nation’s mobility, the individual’s ability to work, the few remaining manufacturers’ ability to produce, then immediate rationing should have been instituted based upon personal, work, commercial and emergency usage.
3. If our little war in Iraq caused the United States to deplete its reserves, the Pentagon knows how much and should have worked with the Department of Energy and the White House, along with the oil companies, to determine what measures (other than a fifty-cent per gallon rise in prices) should be immediately put into effect by Congress or by the department in charge. That includes rationing.
4. We didn’t “look into” the Nine-Eleven attack on America, our nation rallied to take action because of what appeared to be a clear and present danger from a homeland attack. What we got, of course, was more bureaucracy at more expense, but if the same attitude of urgency prevailed toward our energy reserves, and fossil fuels in particular, then we should not only have every resource possible allocated to an Energy Policy, an intermediate conservation program, but also alternative resources for transportation, particularly for workers and the disabled.
5. Granted that windmill farms and some solar energy programs have resulted in the ridiculous rather than the relevant, but that does not mean each and every alternative has been exhausted. Those that seemed feasible disappeared. This can mean one of two things: either the oil companies have a trump card up their sleeve with patents on alternative and renewable energy resources they won’t use until there is a real shortage of fossil fuel and not an OPEC-generated price game, OR as some geologists have theorized, there is a lot more fossil fuel available in places where no one is presently looking. The Middle East has known resources and the world is looking to the Middle East, much to their delight.
What should be clear is that price increases make the oil companies more profit and their balance sheets show it. Their investors are delighted. This information is available on financial sites on the web. It also should be clear that there are people who will pay for the gasoline they need for work and even for vacations because that is the working person’s necessity and renewal. Those who can’t afford the vacations will do without, because they still have to work. Some folks may try carpooling, but the reason it hasn’t worked is due to the rush hour gridlock on our inadequate freeways that is relieved by the flexible hour work schedule. Getting people who live in the same area and work the same flex hours isn’t easy. Many mothers now pick up their children from school in their auto rather than risk having their child abducted, a condition that did not exist in the gasoline rationing era of World War II when people were less depraved or at least far more fearful of showing it and abducting children.
I’ve seen crises come and go in this nation and few of them have been real crises. Where there was a real one, response time was close to zero. To say we now have a critical shortage of fossil fuels that will be solved by a fifty-cent a gallon rise in gas prices is simply beyond absurd when the nation’s leaders have been talking about energy and doing nothing about an energy policy for many decades, and that in the face of increased production and purchase of automobiles. I grew up in a one-car family, which was the norm in the 40’s and 50’s. With the increase in jobs and salaries during the 60’s “space race” people began the two car family, along with the two-income family.
What are cities doing about expanding up rather than out? What is being done by cities and states about mass transit where automobiles are the primary mode of transportation?
Suburbs continue to grow while freeways lag behind, using considerably more gasoline in the gridlock. City planning is probably one of the most inadequate areas of planning in the United States. Transportation is close to the top of the list of critical issues and yet, like the promised US Energy Policy, very little is really being done other than talk.
While geologists argue over the issues of the reality of fossil fuel exhaustion, how much and how soon, it seems the politicians are content to have their chauffeured limousines take them to and fro, as well as their private planes, all of which use fossil fuels. Celebrities still travel where they wish in private planes. It’s always the working people who pay the bills for the luxuries of the few who were either born into money or came up with some form of talent who can buy what they want at any price, with no shortages in mind.
When the rationing starts at the top, then we will see progress, and until then, it’s still the working people who will pay the price for better oil company balance sheets.
We cannot have better government, real policies for conservation of vital resources and the hope of freedom until the working people, who constitute the majority of adults in the United States, stop taking everything the government and the Military/Industrial Complex hands out without any opposition or resistance. And that is exactly why the working people continue to be the cash cows that the government and the huge industries milk dry.
No, we don’t have dinosaurs making more oil. Neither do we have a sensible energy program to keep prices low, fossil and alternative fuels available, and the working people with more spendable income. The working people are too busy working to even find out, for the most part, what is happening to them and why, and that’s why it continues.
But as with everything, somewhere there is a breaking point. The only question is, where?
Related article:
WE HAVE A GAS SHORTAGE? – WHERE DID THAT COME FROM SO QUICKLY?
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”