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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (43900)	5/12/2004 9:15:31 PM
From: Valley Girl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

...if that happens... If? Surely there's no doubt. New petroleum reserves are being formed, if at all, on geologic time scales. It's only a matter of time; eventually we'll be forced to transition to something else. ...it's called "price."... The pricing system doesn't always account for everything. It misses out externalities such as pollution. Another problem is discounting of future effects; the time scales of individual humans are much shorter than that of civilization. Also don't forget that there are other means of resource allocation, such as war, which we should avoid if possible. ...What we know won't work is a rationing system... Rationing is of course silly. Just look at CAFE. Working against the pricing system always leads to failure. Price increases are the only way to cause people to conserve. Consumption taxes could be used to reduce demand by working with the pricing system - arguably this has been tried (in Europe) and is working (to reduce consumption). No worries, it's politically impossible here. You'll recall that at the first sign of a spike in petrol prices Bubba ran to the SPR and the federal gasoline tax to try to bring the price down, rather than allowing higher prices to bring down demand. So much for the Democrats' commitment to conservation and the environment. Sooner or later we're going to have to make a transition away from oil. I'd rather it be sooner and smoother, and also take place over a longer period of time. There aren't yet good alternatives for many current uses, and I'd prefer to have time to develop some rather that deal with them in a crisis. Plus I'd just as soon write smaller checks to the oil-producing countries, most of which aren't on our Christmas-card list. Using less through conservation strikes me as a no-regrets course of action. Alas, I expect the opposite will happen; we'll draw down oil and gas deposits until the well's nearly dry, then face yet another dangerous world situation.