Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (307605)	10/25/2006 8:37:11 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571405

China, despite it's size, uses about 30% of the oil the US uses. Even at a growth rate of 15%, our decrease would dwarf their increase. I don't think our oil use would be likely to shrink rapidly enough to dwarf a 15% increase in China's oil. Even if we could decrease by 15% a year (and thus in the first year reduce oil use by over three times China's increase) I'm not sure that is enough of a difference that "dwarf" would apply, and China's increase would compound upward while a 15% decrease would represent a smaller reduction each year. Also to the extent that our decrease in oil use pushes oil prices down, it would tend to increase oil use in China, and slow the decrease in the US. And China is hardly the only country who's oil use is increasing. A strong move towards MPG efficiency would have an immediate effect on ME earnings. A very strong move would certainly have a major impact on ME's oil profits, but that still doesn't amount to changing the ME "back to being an impoverished desert with no oil money." And to the extent it does reduce the oil revenue it might destabilize the governments and produce more problems with terrorism rather than less. I wouldn't argue against reducing our oil use for this reason, but I don't think that impoverishing the ME is a good reason to argue for a strong push for lower oil use. Eventually oil could be something you use to make plastics, and that's about it. That will likely be the case. An even further out we might not need it for that purpose. But its not a transition that will happen rapidly, it won't occur in 15 years, and likely not in 50.