It's not about BLAME.....

Posted by john d on August 31, 2005 at 19:32:27 from (69.128.205.57):

In Reply to: Gasoline posted by Redmud on August 31, 2005 at 15:13:26:

Gas is high, gonna get higher. Areas hit by Katrina are suffering power outage, as well as other forms of destruction and interruption. Since this nation is so inter-locked in terms of transportation, communication, and commodity speculation, a ripple in one place hurts to some degree everywhere else.
This country has not had a coherent energy policy. It still doesn't have one! The opening of strategic oil supplies and politically-motivated speeches don't = a coherent energy policy, either. The American public is used to having the cheapest energy in the Western world, and having as much of it as it wants. We've been running close to the edge on refinery capacity for some time, and we've been importing oil for a long time, much of it through the Gulf Coast ports, as they can handle the big tankers.
Oil, gasoline, and other forms of energy are commodities. They are subject to the price swings we've all seen to some degree in grain, pork, and other products, but because energy is a commodity in great demand on a GLOBAL scale, its prices will likely be even more volatile in the future than they have been.
It doesn't really help to try to blame President Bush, or the ones before him. This country is going to have to get beyond the point of crying "We're in this mess!" and move to the level of realizing that "We're in this mess TOGETHER!"
It doesn't help to blame tree huggers or the EPA. Without the EPA, we might have more refineries, but cars would likey still be burning fuel at the rate they were in the 1960s, and the air wouldn't be any cleaner than it is now, either.
The real blame for this mess we're in TOGETHER isn't as simple as yuppies, soccer moms, SUV sales, etc. Following WWII, this country tore out its rail lines and built interstate highways. I use them, and I like them. The fact remains that filling them with big trucks is not the most fuel-efficient way to move goods across the country. The demise of electric trolley service in many urban areas was a result of Big Oil and Big Auto convincing the public they could do it better with cars and busses. We live in a society that demands fresh produce at the grocery, even if it has to be trucked 1000 miles to have it field-to-table in 36 hours or less. Most of us don't car-pool to work; I don't either. Most of us have some sort of hobby that burns energy in some manner. It's our way of life.
That way of life is being threatened by higher energy costs that are going to ripple through our economy. If we get ANOTHER hurricane in a vital energy-producing sector this season, the effect won't be a ripple, it'll be like the wall of water that hit the Gulf Coast this week!
There's a finite amount of consumable energy available for us at any given time. Unless we reduce our DEMAND somehow, it's likely we won't see a reduction in prices. We might be fortunate just to slow the rate of price increase.
Simply drilling more wells, or building more refineries isn't going to provide ANY short-term relief. More wells and more refineries won't necessarily sustain an un-sustainable demand on limited resources in the long-term, either.
Let's be glad we aren't having this discussion about FOOD supplies....

Follow Ups:

• Re: It's not about BLAME..... ntmcj 22:23:24 08/31/05 (1)
  • Re: It's not about BLAME..... KenSWLA 22:34:32 08/31/05 (0)
• Re: It's not about BLAME..... buickanddeere 20:52:01 08/31/05 (0)

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