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 : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neil H who wrote (90545)	3/11/2011 1:12:48 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Gas Is Too Cheap Posted by Steve Patterson March 10th, 2011 I’m tired of the news stories about the recent spike in gas prices, as a nation we’ve enjoyed cheap fuel for decades. Long enough to build ourselves into a corner where if we don’t continue to have cheap gas our society crumbles. Well folks, the party is coming to a close. Now the Obama administration is considering stepping in and selling some reserves: “The U.S.-held emergency oil supply - called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve - contains 727,000,000 barrels of oil … enough to supply the nation for several months. Proponents say releasing oil from the reserves would calm spiking gas prices and limit the threat to the U.S. economic recovery. Critics say the oil reserves should be saved for a true emergency.” (CBS News: Would tapping oil reserve help in wake of Libya?) An increase in price isn’t an emergency — yet. We need to figure out how to transition from our cheap gas culture (sprawl, limited transit, etc) to the reality the rest of the world has known for years, oil supply is limited. Officials worry about the economic recovery, but they want to get back to the old economy that requires cheap gas. In other parts of the world gas can cost the equivalent of $6-$8/gallon! We must work on a plan to get us to this point with as little pain as possible. We will get there at some point anyway, I’d just rather we planned for it than having it creep up on us. The pain (war) it will take to keep our cheap gas society over the next 20 years will be far worse than planning for change now. From April 2010: “Responding to one of the first major directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today jointly established historic new federal rules that set the first-ever national greenhouse gas emissions standards and will significantly increase the fuel economy of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States. The rules could potentially save the average buyer of a 2016 model year car $3,000 over the life of the vehicle and, nationally, will conserve about 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the lives of the vehicles covered.” (Source: EPA) Raising the CAFE standards was a good start, we’ve got to let gas prices go up so that buys demand the more fuel efficient vehicles the automakers must begin selling in volume. The longer we wait the harder it is going to be when the time comes. The following steps need to be taken: Raise fuel taxes to fund modern urban transit systems (modern streetcars) and discourage auto use. Change zoning & building codes to require compact/walkable development. We don’t need to ban cars, we just need to tilt the playing field so people have legitimate options to get from A to B. urbanreviewstl.com