Harry Krause wrote:
Ignatius Thistlewhite wrote:
You wrote:

HoustonChronicle.com

April 19, 2006, 10:21PM

ENERGY
Rising crude oil prices splash over $72 a barrel
- - -

Time for regime change...here.

Your posts seem to suggest strong support for Democrats. Since that party
has been a proponent of prohibitive tax increases on energy, your argument
seems to be purely partisan rather than the product of principle.


I support the idea of a tax increase on gasoline if it will be used to
directly support significant R&D aimed at weaning us off oil. I also
believe the $70+ a barrel we're now facing is a number reached because
the oil cartels know the Bush administration won't even *try* to do
anything about it.

You're looking for a technological answer to an issue that is primarily
about lifestyle choices. The vast majority of us insist on traveling
everywhere by private automobile, and it isn't unusual these days for a
family unit with a common address to have 2 or 3 cars on the road at
the same time. The majority of Americans prefer to live in Disneyesque
suburbs, (places that exist only to serve as bedroom communities for
commuters), than in actual cities with employment and commercial
opportunities. They all need to get from their couple thousand square
feet of lawn (and their privacy fences that foster the illusion they
aren't really living in a horizontal hive) into town so they can
convert their labor into the mortgage payments that prevent the true
owner from kicking them out of their little look alike cell. Some of
these horizontal hive dwellers spend no more than 2-3 waking hours in
their patch of paradise on an average weekday, given 9 hour work days
and 2-hours in a traffic jam every morning and evening.

Why adapt technology simply to allow the continuation of a broken model
for a few more generations? Why do we need technology to move people
from bedrooms 40-50 miles out of town into their daily workplace? The
basic premise makes no sense.

Then there are boaters. I operate a boat that gets about 4 nmpg and
that's ridiclously efficient among powerboats. Am I going to give up my
boat to save "society" 300 gallons of diesel per year? Frankly, "Nope."
Are the suburbanities going to rediscover the joys of urban living and
return to the city? Probably not. If we are going to wean ourselves off
of oil, any time soon, it will have to be a result of changing the way
we live not the technology that
allows us to live that way. I think that's something most people
probably realize but are reluctant to admit. I'm sure we'd all like to
see the "other guy" reduce his use of oil, merely to ensure a continued
supply for our personal consumption.

Much as I hate to see the high prices for refined producs and resent
the fact that BIG OIL is pocketing nearly all of the increase in the
form of robber-baron profits, it's the current high price and the
future higher prices for gas, diesel, home heating oil, etc that will
bring about the needed lifestyle changes much more quickly than any
government program would ever modify technology. As my friends who
often hold differing opinions on things are often heard to say, "Keep
government out of it, and let the free market dictate how society
operates."
We're watching the free market argument (minus any meaningful
competition and with the major suppliers in tacit collusion) play out
right before our eyes. I think the conservatives are right on this one:
The free market profiteering will do more to change our lifestyles than
any government regulation ever could. Sadly enough, it's the very
lifestyle enjoyed by so many of the free market proponents that will be
most badly damaged by the change.