Category: oil

06/02/08 11:21 - ID#44521

oil

i was reading the news at work yesterday. our census is so low at the hospital, and so things have been really slow, leaving me hours of sitting idly.

anyway, the price of gas in france is 11 or 12 something a gallon. in venezuela, a gallon of gas is 12 cents. lets all move to venezuela right?

i guess that it isn't as big of a deal in france, because gas was always way more expensive and it has only gone up 90% compared with 170% here in the u.s.

imagine filling up a hummer in france. what would that cost you? 250?

gas prices here are cheaper than in ny, but i definitely find myself wanting to drive less. wayyyyyy less. it makes a difference not commuting to school for the summer, and my work is relatively close. i drive with the windows down when i can.

all this makes me wonder, when will we finally stop using oil???

did anyone see charlie wilsons war? i think it is so crazy that the u.s. gave the afghans all those weapons to kill the soviets, and now we want to kill the afghans.

jenks writes at 03:14:58 06/03/08 - Comment #35688: I do not pretend to fully understand why gas prices are going up and up. To vastly oversimplify, I'm sure it's a combo of politics AND supply/demand issues.

But (you'll love this josh)- I work with a guy who is a well-educated smart guy. But he is 100% convinced that the gas crisis is COMPLETELY Bush crony-ism. I.e. he lets his oil CEO friends get rich so that they will do the same for him when he is out of office. He is sure that gas will be $2/gal the day after the election.

I for one think that view is a little extreme... but that's just me...

joshua writes at 12:57:56 06/03/08 - Comment #35685: Take a look at how much per gallon the governments in Europe are taking in taxes on that gallon of gas. Its more expensive for many reasons but that is an enormous one.

I'm not getting into it here, but there are so many numerous misconceptions about why gas costs what it does that I could write a novel about it. I'll just summarize by saying that most Americans have a simplistic view of how it works, but truth be told, its a complex issue and and many variables in place, some of which are ignored depending on your agenda.

RE: Iraq and Iran, and the Afghani-Soviet war. Throughout American history we've taken flexible stances with governments that we are not allied with in order to achieve a larger objective. Iran and Iraq have long been distrustful of each other - we assisted Iraq and Saddam Hussein to stick one to the clerics in Tehran. We assisted the Mujahadeen to stick one to the Soviets.

Honestly, and this is no swipe at you (e:Z), but if I hear one more comparison to Cuba and the USA I'm going to throw up. Cuba out of a depression? C'mon. Cuba has been third world virtually the entire time a Castro has been around. We're talking about a country where the government provides a pair of shoes once a year and a sack of food every month. They haven't been in a depression because they've never had any degree of economic prosperity.

vincent writes at 10:09:20 06/02/08 - Comment #35660: (e:carolinian) I think you are on to something. Look at all the suburbanites trading their Explorers for Civics. We will be living like Euros in 10 years, which means the rich will live in the cities while the poor in the 'burbs, all while driving small cars.

metalpeter writes at 07:19:15 06/02/08 - Comment #35653: I didn't see that movie. But what gets even stranger is that both Iraq and Iran went from friends to enemies and we gave them weapons when they where our friends or maybe they were not our friends but they didn't like our enemy.

libertad writes at 06:03:41 06/02/08 - Comment #35648: da me mas gasolina. yeah I am all about not having a vehicle, living and working in the same place and getting produce locally whenever possible. Guercio's is super awesome for that. All that being said, when are you flying via a gas guzzling jet back to buffalo?

carolinian writes at 12:28:51 06/02/08 - Comment #35638: If gas hits $6/gallon, suburbanites might move back to Buffalo. Wouldn't be ironic if after all of the attempts to revive Buffalo failed, what succeeded in reviving the city was the cost of gas.

drew writes at 12:24:51 06/02/08 - Comment #35637: I saw that film. It was good.

I only drive when I have to now.

zobar writes at 11:59:30 06/02/08 - Comment #35636: Something is definitely up with the oil supply. When gas was $3/gal people griped but it didn't really affect driving habits as far as I could tell. But now that gas is $4/gal the market really can't bear it. People really are cutting back on their usage.

I read an interesting article on Wikipedia about post-Soviet Cuba :::link::: - Cuba got heavily subsidized oil from the Soviet Union, which dried up more or less immediately once the Soviet Union fell and brought the economy with it. Sixteen years later, they're still not back up to their pre-Soviet level but they're out of the depression at least. One of the things I didn't think about was agriculture - many synthetic fertilizers [which are also widely used in the US] are petrochemicals. Cuba's produce is now 80% organic out of necessity.

- Z