by free2beme 47 Replies latest jw friends
Your paying so much in gas right now that it has brought out national economy to its knees, and yet the thing that should upset you this most is this ...
THE GOVERMENT IS DOING "NOTHING!"
Not one bill has been passed, plan implemented or action taken. All talk and no action, which is why our government needs to be fired and replaced or this country is done.
We went through this in the 70's with the government promising "Never Again"..... yeah, right.... both parties are to blame...no leadership at all, AND the public is partially to blame for not holding the politicians feet to the fire to keep their promises.
W need real leadership to do ALL sides of the issue:
Short term - drill everywhere (before the Chinese and Cubans take it from us) AND
Long term - have a "manhattan project" in developing alternative fuels to get us off of ALL foreign oil.
I think we would do better to dig up the all the dead leaders from World War 2 .... they knew how to make things happen (they couldn't be worse).
Why should the government 'do' anything? This has been a well known issue for 30 years, and yet Americans took the easy way and didn't bother to actually change their habits. You have control over how much oil / petroleum type products you use. There are no 'quick and easy' solutions. Any action taken today will take 5 to 15 years to implement. Why didn't America and the Bush administration do anything post 9/11? I'm glad to see gas where it is and hope to see it go up yet more. $5 a gallon gasoline seems to be a good price to me. Finally, it is making a dent in the consumption side of the equation.
It didn't have to be painful, but the majority of people stuck their head in the sand while singing Happy Days Are Here Again and buying full sized trucks/vans/SUVs and moving 40 miles away from their jobs. Don't like it? Move closer to your job. Get a new job. Buy a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic. Take mass transit.
A better question is what are you doing? Have you done anything or are you all talk and no action? Why wait for the government to do something?
I am miffed that it hit us so fast. There was no time to make adjustments in our budgets.
On the up side I bought a really nice late model full size pickup for 50% of book price. Figure what I saved will buy some gas.
$4.00+per gallon is still a low price when compared to other what countries pay, and adjustment for inflation over the past 30 years.
This has been a well known issue for 30 years
It's been sold to us for roughly 100 years.
Read about rapid transit (cable cars) that existed in the West Coast cities in the early 1900's and why it suddenly ended. Here in Sacramento it was cheap, effective and clean (hydroelectric). The disadvantage was that it didn't sell cars, tires, fuel...etc. and most importantly didn't funnel money into the pockets of the companys that could buy Ca's politicians. It's interesting to ferret out who bought and then closed down the west coast cable cars.
San Fran still operates a few of these visionary Cable Cars. Sadly, capatilism dictated that profit demanded an end to cheap public transit.
What is upsetting is that there is no valid reason why the prices are as high as they are. We have plenty of Oil on this planet and more is being discovered every day.
some people say it is the speculators driving up the price, but when the largest oilfield ever discovered in this country, it didn't even make a dent in the prices. Which leads me to believe they are purposefully keeping the prices high.
If Saudi Arabia delivered a trillion barrels of oil to this country tomorrow, it probably still wouldn't make a dent in the prices. It is corruption that is keeping the prices high, not a lack of oil.
We have had a warning about this in 1973, and another in 1979. We need to develop alternative energy sources. We needed them back then. And there was enough time--had those sources been developed during those years, we would not be in this pickle now.
And that the Jehovah's Witlesses are still allowed to waste huge quantities of the stuff by going out in field circus.
Habits have to change. I for one have saved money the past year. I stopped driving to work and started biking and walking the 5km to get there. I live in Alberta, which has the oilsands which produce millions of gallons of oil. I tend to believe that most of the major oil fields in the world have been tapped into, there is more down there, but demand is outstripping supply. World peak oil is imminent. If you're interested, I would recommend looking at the "Hirsch Report" prepared by the US Department of Energy.
