15 Comments

1. Goyo Marquez:

Speaking of energy prices, perhaps even this cloud has a silver lining.

My son and I drove from our home in El Centro on Monday to Santa Maria to visit my sister. We were able to drive non-stop from San Diego to Culver City, we stopped at Tito’s for lunch. Non stop mind you, not one hiccup on the freeway.

We returned on Tuesday, stopped at the Apple Pan for lunch, eating is the point of traveling isn’t it? We drove from the Apple Pan straight home to El Centro. Again not a single slow down on the freeway.

I was shocked, amazed. Then the thought occurred to me, could the price of gasoline have reduced freeway traffic that much. If so, then I say hurray for the price of gas.

Greg Marquez
goyomarquez@earthlink.net

Jun 11, 2008 - 8:39 am 2. Anthony (Los Angeles):

The CAFE standards should be raised

I’d settle for SUVs being subject to the same environmental regulations as normal cars. That would do a lot right there.

The market will take care of inefficient, polluting vehicles, if the tanking of SUV sales and the plant closures at GM are any indication.

But there’s a problem at the lower end of the economic scale, where the average Joe or Jose drives to work in his old pickup or sedan and can’t afford a new (or even used) Prius. How do we help them? I’m all in favor of tax breaks to encourage the purchase of cleaner vehicles,a nd I’m sure there are other solutions.

and incentives designed (yes, and government money spent) for alternative energy.

Depends on which kind of alternative energy. Solar and wind can only do so much (and not nearly as much as their advocates claim) and aren’t really reliable, and the biofuel craze is causing real economic and environmental harm. Hydrogen cells for cars may be promising, but effective (and affordable) technology is still a long way off.

Nuclear, coal, and oil remain our best bets for the near to medium term. Technology already exists to make their use safer and cleaner. I’m all for not dumping crap into the air and water, but environmental concerns have to be balanced with the economic and security needs of the nation.

Jun 11, 2008 - 9:29 am 3. ray_g:

“..CAFE standards should be raised..”

What the SUV haters forget is that the original CAFE standards created the SUV, by killing off the ol’ family station wagon. There was still a need for something like that, and since mini-vans and SUV’s weren’t included in a company’s CAFE rating (since they were considered light trucks), they took the station wagon’s place. I’m curious to see what the unintended consequence of the decline of SUV’s will be.

Jun 11, 2008 - 9:49 am 4. IrishLad317:

It seems to me that it’s obvious that we need to find alternative fuels. However, what we need is TIME to find the best alternative. That means increasing domestic supply of oil and building refineries. If we don’t give the market time to find the best alternative, what we end up with is a government mandate of what the alternative should be (or what would effectively be a mandate based on what the government funds). Do YOU trust the government to figure out what the best alternative is? They gave it a shot with corn-based ethanol which is not only a bad alternative because it takes as much energy to make it as it produces, and it causes problems with the food supply, especially in poor countries. The government is the LAST place that decision should be made. Government makes lousy decisions. The market, on the other hand, tends to find great solutions. However, it will take time. There’s probably some person in a lab, or in his garage right now working on something brilliant and new. TIME is what we need… time for development of more fuel efficient cars, time for development of alternatives that are better than what’s been developed so far (if what we’ve developed so far was so great, we’d be using it!). The only thing that buys us that time is drilling here and starting now. It seems that the average American knows this intuitively. I have no clue why people in government don’t get it.

I think McCain would win in a landslide if he said, “Here’s my energy policy: We’re in a state of economic emergency as well as having nation security concerns. Therefore, we have to drill… offshore and in ANWR in as clean a way as modern technology can possibly do it. We have to build refineries, also in as clean a way as technology allows. I’m asking big oil to create, using the huge profits of the last several years, a Manhatten project to get our domestic oil to market as quickly, efficiently, and cleanly as possible.”

Jun 11, 2008 - 9:56 am 5. Lem:

CAFE standards should be raised

From the NY Times.

Rewards are nice, but recognition is better. So if I’m one of Starbucks’s best customers, I want to have elite status, as I do on American Airlines. I want shorter lines, better freebies, special seating (Aeron chairs, preferably) and electrical outlets reserved just for me and my laptop.

http://tinyurl.com/66497k

And they call Obama a snub

Jun 11, 2008 - 10:19 am 6. AlanC:

People above are correct about SUVs, they are an unintended consequence of the CAFE and Safety standards of the gov’t.

As anyone with half a brain could see the market is the best mechanism to allocate scarce resources and the drop in SUV sales is an example.

What needs to be made more clear is that there are two totally separate energy problems.

1) vehicle fuel
2) electricity generation

The former is where oil is needed the most. I’ve not heard of an all electric airplane.

For the other we HAVE an excellent alternative to fossil fuels with nuclear. We could also build nuclear powered ships to replace the diesel guzzling ships of today. THAT’s where we should be concentrating.

Government isn’t needed to finance every possible alternative. If it works, investment won’t be a problem.

What Gov’t needs to do is make sure that the rules and regulations are done in such a way as to make any technology easy to implement from a regulatory standpoint while still being safe.

I don’t want to see Liberian registry of nuclear ships.

But Gov’t is best at getting in the way of new ideas to protect those rent-seekers and special interests that might be opposed. In this case that especially includes the Gaia worshiping cult.

Wind and Solar will never have more than an effect at the margins cause physics can’t be denied.

Hydrogen is interesting but I have one question…
since one of the much touted benefits of hydrogen power is that it’s exhaust is only water vapor, and, given that water vapor is by far the worst of the green house gases, how is large scale hydrogen power going to stop global warming?

Jun 11, 2008 - 10:38 am 7. Insufficiently Sensitive:

We should, alas, as Newt is urging, start to drill domestically. At the same time we can’t use this for a license to go out and buy SUVs, etc.

The bigotry against SUVs is carried to extremes, and members of the anti-SUV cult should search their souls to determine if their desire for resource conservation isn’t wildly exceeded by their antipathy towards the human beings to whom SUVs are very practical transportation. Class warfare aint pretty, and environmentalism is a flimsy disguise for it.

Let’s assume that the ‘we knows best’ Democrats can be frightened into permitting more domestic oil production, under threat of a whole population turning electorally against those who play dog in the manger to prevent affordable automotive transportation. Even if development of ANWR, the coastal shelves and the vast oil shale deposits were to start tomorrow, it will be some years before the benefits of that production hit the markets. High gas prices are the real world for the near future. Said prices, surprise surprise, will cause the production of a class of autos with greatly reduced fuel consumption, by natural market forces – including SUVs whose carrying capacity has always been more important than the muscle motor.

And if sufficient nuclear plants may also be constructed, the electric auto may eventually become feasible, provided that storage batteries are also made an order of magnitude more efficient than those now sold.

Jun 11, 2008 - 12:03 pm 8. fred:

Give me Adam Smith’s “invisible” hand anytime — especially against the invisible head of congress. As other comments have noted the market works. People are buying fewer SUV’s with gas at $4. What’s missing is supply — domestic supply: ANWR,(if Clinton had not vetoed ANWR, it would be on-line today), off-shore (China is reportedly drilling off Cuba), new refineries (no new refineries in 30 years), importing superior Brazilian “non-corn based” ethanol, to name a few answers. Along the way, efforts at developing other forms of energy will continue. Let the market work.

Jun 11, 2008 - 2:55 pm 9. pastorius:

The energy crisis meme doesn’t give off much heat.

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/03/massive-oil-field-found-in.html

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/06/america-has-enough-oil-to-be-1-oil.html

Jun 11, 2008 - 2:58 pm 10. LenS:

Car seats. Try fitting three car seats in a car. And get the kids in those seats. The bigger an SUV or mini van is, the easier it is to get the kids in every trip. Of course, the environmentalist hate people who aren’t them, so their solution would be to follow the Chinese one child policy.

In the end, this is more about control. The elites have never liked to share easier transportation with the “masses”, be it horses, chariots, trains, planes or automobiles. Our new elites are repeating the same old pattern. It’s just that they get to fly while we take the bus or ride a bike when a few centuries ago, it was they take a coach or yacht while we walk.

Jun 11, 2008 - 4:45 pm 11. stu:

The price signals also are encouraging the use of newer technologies to maximize the production from old wells and what would have been previously considered uneconomic fields to work. McCain’s comment comparing Anwar to the Grand Canyon causes me to question his judgment. If ever there was a campaign issue the Republicans could exploit, drilling and refining is it, yet he manages to blow it!

Jun 11, 2008 - 5:43 pm 12. Barry Dauphin:

I’m not sure that opposing CAFE standards is any less ideological than supporting them. In the end, it is a bet about whether they are actually effective at achieving their stated ends, taking all of the costs into consideration. It is far from clear that they do achieve their stated aims, and are usually something politicians talk about to make themselves believe they are “doing something” about energy consumption. But the higher price of gasoline is cutting down on emissions. It is like a tax, except that Exxon calls it profit. Will government intervention actually be less painful than high gas prices? Don’t high gas prices make it economical for other forms of energy to be considered?

Market solutions aren’t attractive because of some uber ideological purity. They tend to produce results. Some things are problematic to simply leave to the market, but gasoline is a commodity that can be owned. Collecting oil, refining it into other products, and distributing it via sales are all amenable to various market pressures.

One nit to pick. Oil is not simply about gasoline for cars. Petroleum is essential to living in modernity in its entirety. This is not simply about driving cars. Oil is needed for all kinds of synthetic products. You can’t make clothes, carpet, beverage containers, IV lines, plastic you-name-its out of wind or sunlight. Oil is here to stay even if we drive our cars using the power of our own farts.

Jun 11, 2008 - 8:34 pm 13. Roger:

“The bigotry against SUVs is carried to extremes, and members of the anti-SUV cult should search their souls to determine if their desire for resource conservation isn’t wildly exceeded by their antipathy towards the human beings to whom SUVs are very practical transportation. Class warfare aint pretty, and environmentalism is a flimsy disguise for it.”

Oh, blablabla, Insuffish…. This isn’t bigotry, it’s common sense. Ninety percent of the SUVs I see being driven around have one person in them, going to work or elsewhere. Meanwhile they are sending gazillions of oil dollars to our enemies. The oil sheiks are buying up Manhattan… they just bought the Chrysler Building today… You like that?

This isn’t about class war. It’s about real war. You want to win it or not? Doesn’t sound to me like you do. You just want to be right about some boring ideological point.

Jun 11, 2008 - 10:05 pm 14. Insufficiently Sensitive:

Sorry if I was irritating. If by saying SUV the intent is to include all inefficient fuel-consumers such as pickup trucks, elderly autos, delivery vans, muscle cars, classic cars etc etc, I can see its use as a symbol. But some modern SUVs get better mileage than those examples. Why not just direct the opprobrium to
“any auto not achieving more than 30 mpg in city driving”?

And nobody wants to win the war (let’s be specific: the war in Iraq, and the one in Afghanistan/Pakistan too) more than me – I have a son in the military, and spent a couple of years in Fort Bragg myself. If there’s a war to be won in oil production, it currently would be against the dog-in-the-manger Democrats who deny us the domestic petroleum resources already known to exist. They’re using environmentalism as a disguise for economic manipulation of the whole US population. I hope it backfires spectacularly to win us (the ordinary citizens using the superb technology of the internal combustion engine) a minimum of politically-imposed restrictions on our free choices of the routing and scheduling of our travels.

Jun 12, 2008 - 7:32 am 15. MarkD:

I disagree, it is bigotry. Yes, I see people driving pickup trucks with one person in them. My neighbor, the contractor is one.

OK, you’re not talking about him. You mean the others, the guys I work with. Yes, it’s true.

One of them uses his to haul wood. Another tows his boat with his pickup. I’m not convinced that world energy consumption would be lower if they have two vehicles instead, because that second one requires a lot of energy to produce.

Markets are usually pretty good at sorting this stuff out. i don’t know anyone too stupid to figure out his own best solution for $4 gas. The government, OTOH, does one-size-fits-all and poorly at that.

Jun 12, 2008 - 7:55 am

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