Overwritten.net
Community => Serious Topics => Topic started by: angrykeebler on Monday, April 23, 2007, 01:47:15 PM
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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=news&sid=afOlUzd30YOo
Fucking BULLSHIT. I am so mad right now. This sucks since its a 20 mile trip to work and back.
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I hope not. I have American currency I need to convert to CDN, and I will lose a lot if this is true. Canada's exports are 50% oil, and this would mean their dollar gets a lot more powerful, and I'd be losing :(
CRAP!
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give me all your money
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Why? I don't want to have sex with you.
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Liar.
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Your rates are too high! Well that's what GPW said.
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Die in a bus fire.
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And then you'll pretend to be a fireman and rescue me? That's pretty screwed up.
Leave me alone.
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I didn't think this was possible, but my Kawasaki Ninja 500 sportbike is looking even better!
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Am I ready? No. But I'm certainly not surprised.
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And here, we're pissed that gas is just over $1 a liter.
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Awesome.
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My mini and I are ready.
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Damn, I'm glad I just bought a Geo Metro and live close enough to work to just walk if I have to.
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Fuck foreign oil. My car runs on the crushed dreams and tears of orphans. To the QueCar™, also known affectionately as the Qar™!
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We aparently have the most expensive gas in north america here. It's at about $1.20 a litre right now and will probably hit $1.40 this summer.
As much it's brought up, I've never heard a satisfactory answer as to why there is no competitive pricing in the gas market here.
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They should introduce CNG.
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I love it when they do the supply and demand thing to gas. "While the price is higher, demand has gone up", as if that should cause surprise. Hello? Gas is a needed commodity. Everyone who has to get from one place to another is going to buy it. The price tag may affect the anxiety of the buyer, but little else. A few athletic green types switching to bicycles won't amount to anything more than token conservation. Higher prices mean more debt for consumers and less money spent on other things. It's a social necessity, and should be regulated as such. I'm all for mandating stricter fuel economy across the board, particularly targetting SUVs and those monster trucks that no one uses as trucks. C.A.F.E. is bullshit, because it means rich people can keep squandering all the gas they want. I mean make it illegal to sell any new vehicle with passenger-car plates that gets less than 30 mpg.
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Well, good luck getting legislation passed that accomplishes that. As long as good ol' W is in the White House you can be sure that these oil companies will continue to see record profits.
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I wouldn't go so far as to say demand for gas isn't tied to the price of gas at all
The economic term for a good like gas is inelastic. Small changes in price will not result in much change in consumer behavior, but if the price gets expensive enough people will start to change the way they do things.
The other huge factor in gas prices is that it is a critical input good to so many other products. Expensive gas means expensive everything which mainly just equals inflation.
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The other huge factor in gas prices is that it is a critical input good to so many other products. Expensive gas means expensive everything which mainly just equals inflation.
Yeah, like plastic. What the hell are we going to do when the oil supply is completely depleted? How are we going to make plastic?
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Bacteria my friend, bacteria.
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Yeah, like plastic. What the hell are we going to do when the oil supply is completely depleted? How are we going to make plastic?
Sugar, or whatever is second cheapest.
But anyway, worldwide oil supplies are nowhere near depleted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands#As_oil_source.2C_by_location).
Oil sands may represent as much as 2/3 of the world's total petroleum resource, with at least 1.7 trillion barrels (1.7×1012 bbl or 270×109 m³) in the Canadian Athabasca Oil Sands and perhaps 1.8 trillion barrels (1.8×1012 bbl or 280×109 m³) in the Venezuelan Orinoco tar sands[citation needed], compared to 1.75 trillion barrels (1.75×1012 bbl or 278×109 m³) of conventional oil worldwide, most of it in Saudi Arabia and other Middle-Eastern countries. Between them, the Canadian and Venezuelan deposits contain about 3.6 trillion barrels of oil in place. This is only the remnant of vast petroleum deposits which once totaled as much as 18 trillion barrels, most of which has escaped or been destroyed by bacteria over the eons. See also below notes about limits to production capacity.
There are three catches, however: you'll have to pay $5/gallon for this stuff because of the expense of extracting it; demand for petroleum is continuing to grow, so those 3.5 trillion barrels might be consumed in record time; and these sources produce more CO2 for an equivalently useful volume of petroleum.
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I wouldn't go so far as to say demand for gas isn't tied to the price of gas at all
The economic term for a good like gas is inelastic. Small changes in price will not result in much change in consumer behavior, but if the price gets expensive enough people will start to change the way they do things.
The other huge factor in gas prices is that it is a critical input good to so many other products. Expensive gas means expensive everything which mainly just equals inflation.
You mean over the long term. I agree. Short term, it means nothing other than more suffering for working stiffs. They already can't afford those trips they used to take all over. They already get less paid vacation, and less real income than they ever did before. Even outings to movies are more rare. But after you cut out all the nonessential gas use, you still need to get to work, the grocery store, and maybe church and your mom's on Sundays. It's going to take one hell of a wallop at the gas pump to convince anyone they need to spend five figures they don't have to replace their less-than-efficient car in a hurry. Should we wallop them, again? There is the faction which wants to do just that, make gas so expensive that people have no choice but to ditch their car and find other ways around. I'm not on their side. What I do back now, which I didn't before, is forced economy standards for new vehicles, all of them. That and preventing price gouging are the only responsible things the government has the power to do while maintaining our way of life.
GW is out in '08. Who gets to do things after that is in our hands right now.
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I agree with you there. Oil use is the backbone our entire economy is based on. Jacking up gas prices isn't going to change behavior easily or quickly.
The consumer mindset is simle enough though. Consumers buy the largest most gas guzzling vehicle they can afford. I do think the Toyota Prius brings some hope, even if it is just a status symbol for wealthy people to make a statement about their "environmentalism"