When you make $1300 a second...

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
I get so frustrated when I see Congress fight against helping the poor, yet jump at the chance to help the oil industry. How will sustainable energy industries ever get a chance to replace oil?

See: Exxon shatters profit records

[Tim Liston]

The reason the oil companies are so wildly profitable is because they provide a product that Americans cannot seem to live without. Even as the price of gasoline marches inexorably higher, our consumption continues unabated. Will we hit $3.50 or even $4.00 a gallon this summer? That’s certainly a possibility.

Look around. Look at the highways, look at the parking lots, look at the subdivisions miles away from jobs, shopping and entertainment. Look at the hulking vehicles we drive.

Whatever you do, don’t blame the oil companies. They are just doing what they are supposed to do. Provide a product that people want, and maximize their return to their shareholders. Don you and I both own businesses and we’re both trying our best to do exactly that. Just not as successfully.

“How will sustainable energy industries ever get a chance to replace oil?â€Â

[ryan costa]

It takes 4 times the energy to move a person one mile in a jetliner as it takes to move a person 1 mile in a train.

You'd think that with nearly continuous rise in productivity over the last 100 years people would have more time to spend riding trains. heh heh heh. A lot of the speed differential is eliminated when you spend more time waiting at the airport than actually flying.

If there is a whole new motherlode of oil in Alaska, it will take a few billion dollars just to build the pipelines to transport it. Let's hope the oil companies use their own profits to pay for that. instead of hitting up the feds for it.

[Brian Pedaci]

If they could put wi-fi in trains, I'd gladly trade off the extra travel time.

[Lynn Farris]

You know Tim, I beg to differ. When Don and I got married, 30 years ago, the first car we purchased was a Rabbit Diesel that got 50 MPG. Carter was in the White House and he had solar panels up on it and NASA Lewis was producing the first municipal windmill.

Regan came in and everything changed. Hillary is talking about sometime in the future having the average car get 50 mpg. She really only needs to look at the past. We have the technology to do this easily - but for some reason it hasn't yet.

The market works if we would only let it. If the cost of oil got high enough, people would demand alternatives - either more efficient cars or alternative ways to power their cars. Or mass transportation. But we have an oil man in the White House now and he is doing everything he can to protect the oil and to keep that the status quo. That is my personal opinion. But the oil companies were very critical in drafting our energy policy.

How much variation is their in the price of gas? Is it a defacto monopoly? Is there colusion? They have obscene profits. And Don is right it is the taxpayers who are paying for this war and American men and women who are giving their lives for it. It isn't about making Iraq a democracy - we are kowtowing to Musaref a military dictator who overthrew a democracy. It is about oil. And they aren't securing the oil or taking it for us in a Nationalized way - they are securing it for our oil companies.

The market as I stated does work. But there appears to be barriers to enty. With the price of gas going up - a non gasoline car should be coming out that should but gas guzzeling cars out of business. I'm not talking about the hybrids whose batteries are extremely dangerous to dispose of - but a true alternative.

But to be fair - I'm not complaining only about the Republicans. I was extremely disappointed that Robert Kennedy Jr. one of leaders in the environmental movement was fighting against windmills in an area where his family sails. A big case of NIMBY.

BTW, I agree with you about the Fed.

[Tim Liston]

Hi (again) Lynn….

You “beg to differâ€Â

[Brad Hutchison]

I agree with your main points, although the idea of taxing the public into submission is troublesome. Sure, 3 or 4 years down the road it might lead to alternatives -- after crippling our economy. A buck or two gas tax, as Tim suggested, is for the time after we have alternative fuel vehicles, better public transportation, regional rail, etc. We want the tax to encourage people to make the switch, not force them to their knees begging the government for alternatives that may be 5+ years away.

[sharon kinsella]

I'm posting a link for talk by Jaime Lerner on Ted.com. He is a city planner and one of his primary focuses is on public transporation. He is one of the people behind the highly successful mass transit projects in Brazil.

He is a little tough to understand, but he's someone we can learn a lot from.

www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/213

(dl and Jim - I tried)

[Lynn Farris]

Tim,

You said "Finally, I’m sure we both agree that IT IS NOT OK to send our young men and women to die in the Middle East to “secureâ€Â

[Brad Hutchison]

Lynn, those are great points. Your last paragraph is the same point I was trying to make about recycling in the "Should Lakewood Pledge to Go Green" thread. Like it or not, people aren't going to participate if it means a lot of extra work for them. Especially since a lot of "green" items and technologies are more expensive.

Where I'm a bit uncertain about how I feel is on the question of letting the market work to dictate the best technologies. Somebody has to push, because the consumers aren't going to. Consumers will ultimately "choose" the most efficient and easiest to use products, and that is where the market will be useful. However, unless someone (i.e. the government) mandates or otherwise provides incentives for companies to really work for break throughs, the public is not going to beg for it.

[Tim Liston]

“The idea of taxing the public into submission is troublesome.â€Â

[Lynn Farris]

Who invited Dick Cheney onto this forum?

Ouch that hurts!:) But American's have proven that it is hard to get them to change.

I was all for RPS in Ohio which Mike Skindell tried to get through years ago. That is huge energy that can be mandated and can easily work.

If we would spend the money we are spending in Iraq on energy independence by having a Manhattan type of project we wouldn't need any extra tax. And we could do it. We can bring our troops home from Europe (why do they need us to subsidize them? And Bermuda, and....

Maybe we can stop the financial help we give countries that don't need it.

Eliminate the Dept. of Education. No one here rose to support it.

Then we might have the money without gouging the already overtaxed citizens.

[Stephen Eisel]

Hi,
I get so frustrated when I see Congress fight against helping the poor, yet jump at the chance to help the oil industry. How will sustainable energy industries ever get a chance to replace oil?

See: Exxon shatters profit records

Poor by US standards?

[Will Brown]

Europe has had very high taxes on gasoline for quite a few years, and highly efficient vehicles (which often means very small) are the rule there, and rail service is excellent. However, the towns are also very compact. You still see a few gas guzzlers there, but they are usually driven by the very well off.

I think raising our gas taxes sharply would help, but over time all the people in Avon and Parma would want to move back to Lakewood and give up their multi-acre lots. My wife and I drive to Catawba to buy cheese and peaches, and I would rather take a train and enjoy the scenery, but it would take quite a while to establish a rail infrastructure.

I don't think rail service will catch on for long distance travel. I can fly to San Diego in half a day; the last time I looked, Amtrak took over five days. I do make longer journeys by train in Europe, but that is because I am a tourist and want to see the scenery, not because it is competitive time-wise, because it isn't.

I question people who criticize companies' earnings, as I think it is unlikely they realize how large the corporation is, and how much the corporation has invested to earn those profits. Many of us are in a burger-flipping mindset, and complain of obscene profits, thinking that a corporation like Exxon works at a similar level as do we. An international corporation that made only what the burger-flipping thinker thinks is an adequate profit would shortly be out of business; the shareholders would see to that.

I also wonder about people who say we went to war in Iraq to get their oil. While none of us has the actual information on which the decision to go to war was made, if it was to get their oil it was a serious mistake, as we were buying all the oil we wanted before the invasion, and have gotten virtually none since the invasion; perhaps our politicians forgot their objective, but more likely the reasons were other than getting their oil.

[Donald Farris]

Hi,
Mr. Brown, you said,

"I question people who criticize companies' earnings, as I think it is unlikely they realize how large the corporation is, and how much the corporation has invested to earn those profits."

Good point. My feeble little mind is incapable of understanding all the "hard" work these people do. I am at the limits of my brain to imagine the huge amounts of cash they make each and every second.

But perhaps, the dimness of my brain permits me to notice little things like:
- by controlling both refining and distribution they have total control over supply. This let's them set the price. Collusion may be a big word for simple me but I think it fits. OPEC raises the price of oil and I see an increase at the pumps within hours or days. If the price drops, I'll see it drop a week or two later at the pumps. Our profiteering Oil companies cash in on both sides of these changes.
- The Oil man in the White House then gets Congress to give the Oil companies HUGE tax credits so they don't need to share those profits with the government. Yet the Oil man in the White House also saw to it the the Oil companies do not need to follow environment regulations. Little things like pumping 3 lbs of mercury into Lake Michigan, with then flows into Lake Erie and others before hits oceans. PS. I don't eat Lake Erie fish so that isn't the reason for my dimness.

Before we add additional taxes on the consumer at the pump could we please stop running a country to serve these oil companies. Maybe then they won't have enough spare change to kill other industries like Wind generators.