Three dollar gas

[Good 'N Plenty]

I filled up today for $2.89 gal.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

Your welcome! Also, you better cancel that flight over here if the Spurs make it to the Finals. That would be a MAJOR waste of gas.

I have been thinking about this, and if I don't come it will be the reason.

However, while we are throwing stones in glass houses, my annual mileage since 2005 has decreased from around 12,000 miles (about average in Australia) to around 3,000 miles, or about one tank of gas a week to one tank a month, a 75% decrease. Thus, in the last two years I have saved about 18,000 miles of gas on the average Australian consumer. I used much of that saving (about 16,600 miles) to come to SA earlier this year, so if I make this trip I will be dipping into my future carbon savings against the average Australian for about the next year and a half.

I have to weigh that up against the likelihood of the Spurs being in such a good position to win another championship, but then whether I come this year or next makes no difference in energy terms. Also, the embodied energy cost of ONE of your cars is roughly equivalent to the energy I will use to come to SA and back (based on Canberra-SA 8,300 miles). Finally, I will be buying a ticket at the last minute, so the plane will be flying whether I am on it or not.

I probably won't come because of all this, although if i do i will pay for it down the road.

Flea - I didn't say you don't need a big vehicle, but does that big vehicle have to be powered by a 6L V8? No, it can be powered by a 3L engine which uses half as much gas, and would be if there were sane emission standards, but there aren't because Big Oil owns the government, and the bigger the engine, the more gas consumed, the more money Big Oil makes. There is no incentive in the system for efficiency whatsoever, although there would be if govt regulation stepped in with firm vehicle emissions standards. That is my point.

[Duff McCartney]

Big oil gets a bad wrap. They are publicly traded companies who's shareholders demand results. Today is an up cycle......but we soon forget about $10 bbl oil after the peak in the late 70's/early 80's.

It is a world market.

There in is the problem in the big oil...it's a publicly traded company. It's a business..and that's what makes it ty. This isn't McDonalds...where they sell burgers that people don't have to buy...or Amazon.

Oil/gas are what the world lives on..period. It's almost like making oxygen into a business...where you sell it and run it like a business. The world runs on oil and depends heavily on it...if there were no oil tomorrow..the world would practically destroy itself...how can you have that be a business? If there were no McDonalds tomorrow..the world wouldn't care that much.

[jayfmyers]

My point, you can't just snap your fingers and make the switch occur. It is something that will have to happen over decades at the very least

I'm not saying it will be soon, I'm talking about future generations. I don't know about you but it will be several decades before I have grandchildren.

unless of course your blind faith in technology brings us a miracle.

I don't have blind faith in technology and I never claimed to. I said that I hope that future generations won't have these oil problems. There's a big difference between hope and blind faith.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for conserving energy and am just as annoyed as the next guy when I see a single, urban dude driving a hummer. I have never owned a car that got fewer than about 33 MPG and am getting 37 in my current car. I just think it's too soon to say that we're screwing our kids and our kids' kids.

[RuffnReadyOzStyle]

I'm not saying it will be soon, I'm talking about future generations. I don't know about you but it will be several decades before I have grandchildren.

I don't have blind faith in technology and I never claimed to. I said that I hope that future generations won't have these oil problems. There's a big difference between hope and blind faith.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for conserving energy and am just as annoyed as the next guy when I see a single, urban dude driving a hummer. I have never owned a car that got fewer than about 33 MPG and am getting 37 in my current car. I just think it's too soon to say that we're screwing our kids and our kids' kids.

Resource depletion, ie peakoil, means that cheap energy for transport will soon be a thing of the past. We continue to accelerate our use of said products, hence accelerating their depletion and thus increasing the cost of transport to future generations. Said greater costs will percolate throughout the global economy. That is screwing those generations IMHO. Intergenerational equity is a thorny beast.

Oh, and your hope is noble, but my post wasn't about hope it was about the reality of the situation. Over a billion oil-reliant vehicles, and climbing rapidly while oil production is soon to decline. We need to start switching to alternatives NOW, but we're going in exactly the opposite direction, accelerating production of oil-dependent infrastructure and vehicles. Like you I hope this won't create a massive problem in the future, but it's absurd to think it won't IMHO.