The Game Changing $4.00+

I'd say we're definitely not ready to deal with it, and unfortunately we're not only not ready to work toward a solution but I think we've lost the 'buck up' mindset of past generations to get through hard times. Then again, maybe hard times are what foster that attitude, I don't know.

What do you think is the right way to deal with the issue, T-Steel?

What family road trip? My family never took them.

The right way is for our president is to officially declare that this is a crisis and use "crisis language". Tell the American people that THIS IS A CRISIS. Alarm Americans! The ride is over. Stop playing with the language. Tell us that this will affect the American way of life. Do not sugar coat this. That is the problem. Encourage a "buck up" mindset by causing alarm.

Once we are sufficiently unnerved by OUR PRESIDENT, then we are ready to act as a nation. As for the details after that address, I would like to see a massive influx of dollars to ween us away from foreign oil with the pertinent activities. We need to be bold about this to signal the nation and the world that this is where we are going. I'm prepared to sacrifice IF I SEE BOLD ACTION. I think many other Americans will also.

This is the backlash effect of the past 5 years wasting resources on an insipid and manufactured conflict.
The chickens can't come home to roost because the henhouse got foreclosed.

t_steel,

It is hard to consider it a crisis when the Democrats keep talking about open borders and unlimited immigration. As long as the Democrats support increasing the population, increased sprawl, and increased consumption by illegal immigration, it is not a crisis.

Until oil is our enemy we will never be rid of the day in and day out crisis of what is the middle east and its unusual stranglehold on all peoples planet wide.

It is a politicians job to put off the day of reckoning. The minute they hit the halls of congress the oil and gas companies are sticking huge kickback enemas up everyone of their collective hind sides in order to keep America held Hostage to oil and gasoline.

I've reduced my travel substantially, reduced my highway road speed, and am a feather-foot when it comes to acceleration. I've seen next to no one else here in Iowa changing their habits in these ways, though. Not yet, at least.

Some folks are talking about oil reaching $200 a barrel in the not too distant future, maybe as early as the next year or two, so if you think 4 bux a gallon for gas is a game changer, wait till it's 6 or 7. Time to dust off that bicycle...

I agree with T-Steel's recommendation that the President publically own up to what is going on. The 'everythings is wonderful' message he's had so far misses the boat on providing what is needed..

I would say, though, that there needs to be a barrier between 'crisis language' and the language of fear. That's how we got into the national security vs. civil liberteis mess.

Crisis language coupled with a can-do cooperative message fits the bill for me.

It's a real pity that wake-up call about the looming crisis was not sounded on September 12, 2001. I believe in the aftermath of that horror, America and the world could have joined together and put our heads together in the way Americans always have to face and solve this crisis with innovation, ingenuity, hard work and determination.

This is not a crisis; it's the end of a free ride. These are the prices that the rest of the Western world has been paying for years for gasoline. Higher prices aren't necessarily bad when they better reflect the value of a commodity. We've been enjoying a government subsidy at the pump (far in excess of the 18-cent tax) that covers externalized costs (tax breaks to oil companies, a strong military presence in the Middle East, etc.). Higher prices will mean that we will have to take conservation more seriously--as we've been admonished to do for the last 30 years. Nobody forced 10-mpg SUVs on anyone.

Of course, it's not just fuel, but will also be reflected in all transported goods--but again, these are real costs that we simply have not been shouldering as part of the artificial propping up of our consumer-driven economy. More accurate prices aren't the crisis; the crisis comes from stagnant wages and the piling up of individual and national debt without rational consideration of the cost of all this borrowing.

But if we can (re)learn to value what we can afford, perhaps we break ourselves of the habit of expecting that we deserve it all and more ... and never have to foot the bill.

GreenDreams,

You've hit on a great point.

Recovering form the economic effects of 9/11 drove many of the ensuing economic policies, but they were the wrong ones!

T Steel- I guess I'm skeptical that it would make a difference if the president used crisis language because we had that during the Carter years, which I'm sure you are too young to remember. I think people have to see some definitive action being taken by the govt, not just rhetoric.

$4 is nothing. A sustained price of $200 a barrel (which is not out of the realm of possibility) would lead to $10-$12 a gallon gas.

CS, Carter put solar panels on the White House. Reagan tore them down. He also tore down the tax credits for Americans to invest in alternative energy. Bush put it so succinctly when he said, probably in a Freudian slip, "we need an energy policy that encourages consumption." Carter put on a cardigan and addressed the nation, encouraging us to put on a sweater and turn down the thermostat. Just imagine if the tone of presidential pronouncements and policies had been closer to Carter's message for the past 30 years.

aba23, I agree with your point but it will surely feel like a crisis to cash-strapped non-wealthy Americans.

C Stanley,

Yep I was a wee lad during the Carter presidency. Sesame Street and the Electric Company back in those days. One thing for certain, saying things are OK just doesn't fly. I agree with you 110%. People do need to see definitive action by the government. But they also need to stop being told it's "all good.

mikkel,

The very thought of $200 a barrel oil sends me into depression. $10 - $12 gallon gasoline? My family and I will be serial bikers with wagons.

I just want to note that Sept. 11 '01 came 28 years after the first president, a Republican, did begin to sound the alarm, followed by another even louder presidential warning in '79, both using crisis language, advocating energy saving ideas (developing solar, wind and water, insulating homes, higher milage cars, more efficient appliances etc., etc., etc.) Then Raygun Ronnie showed up and it was morning in America and the price of oil stabilized and we didn't really need all that commie energy saving stuff, and really conservation is just so sissy and unAmerican and we were at war with the Soviets and we needed 10s of billions of Star Wars dollars and so funding got cut, and "green" ideas were marginalized.

Next thing you know, SUVs are the hottest things evah! and if you're going to have an SUV, well hell, it ought'ta be a HUMMER! and oilmen are elected pres and vice pres and whaddya know, oil is headed for $200 a barrel, and we have far less domestic oil reserves and import a far greater percentage and yet we're not much farther along than we were way back in '73 with solar, water, wind, CAFE standards, etc. America's most fundamental security is held in Arab and South American dictator's palms, and we're dumpng trillions of increasingly worthless US dollars into the sands of Babylon because of our apparently unquenchable thirst for oil.

So we've seen all this coming for decades. We were warned. We had even started doing something about it. But then we made other, easier choices. And so now we will pay a far higher price than we would have, for far less security overall. We no longer lead in the energy technologies, education, research or investment that the rest of the world is using to move away from oil. Other countries do. And whoever owns the technology will own the world.

The rest of us? Well, we're their customers. And we pay whatever the market demands.

(I love abusing the new edit capabilities on Disqus by the way.)

Mike_P, couldn't agree more.

Mike_P,

After doing a little research, I fully agree with you. Now the $200/barrel question: what are we going to do now?

T-Steel, my best answer (and I don't claim any expertise in this field!) is for us to regain our lead in new energy technologies through research and investment. We have the basic infrastructure in place to do it. We must "own" the tech if we are going to control our destiny. But as of now as far as I can tell we're behind, and fading. Again, I'm no expert, but I've seen Honda's FCX ( http://world.honda.com/FuelCell/ ), and I know no American car maker has anything nearly as sophisticated, let alone ready for production.

We've kind of done it before. After losing, or at least endangering, our lead in semiconductor technologies in the late 70s and 80s to the Japanese, we realized what was happening and came roaring back. Even today every desktop computer is built on US designed technologies (ie, Intel, AMD, and even if it's "built" in Taiwan, etc.) and the vast majority run on US-designed operating systems.

OK, the comparison isn't perfect, but is descriptive I think.

GD: My only point is that the symbolic actions and the crisis rhetoric itself are not very effective. Most people laughed at Carter's cardigan, just as they did Ford's WIN buttons and Nancy Reagan's "Just say no to drugs" campaign. I'm not defending Reagan's record on energy policy, in fact it was during his tenure that I found myself frustrated at the GOP's adoption of anti-conservationist and anti-environmentalist positions. The tradition of the GOP and conservatism should embrace sensible policies in both regards, and I've long felt that the GOP was making a mistake in going too far to oppose the radicals in the environmental movement and has gone to the other extreme. I'm glad that McCain is attempting to made that adjustment.

I agree with Mike_P about the technology although the 'ownership' issue is a bit sticky when it comes to also wanting to extend usage of new energy technology to developing nations. I don't think it's in our interest to stifle development and further the divide between the haves and the have nots on the global scene.

There's also a point to be made, I think, about the relationship of govt and the oil companies and the market forces in that situation.

I think the govt has embraced favoritism toward the oil companies, but it's not all due to an incestuous relationship. Some of that really has been policy based on knowing the importance of energy to the economy; if Big Oil ain't happy, no one is happy basically. It appears that our energy policy has been centered on buffering the volatility of oil prices. Yet we know that real conservation only happens in response the market forces working- prices rise unti they get to the point of causing changes in behavior. If our govt hadn't subsidized oil companies so that they could keep the supply increasing fast enough to keep prices moderated, then we'd have long ago reached the point where those companies would have invested more in alternative fuel technologies because they would have seen the usage affected as consumers reacted to high prices.

So in some sense, I see both the necessity of the govt subsidies and also the problem with them. Maybe the mistake was in not tying the subsidies more toward R&D investments into green technology instead of allowing them to go just toward oil exploration (when we first tackled the problem, you'd have to first allow for increased oil exploration to meet the gap until the new technologies came on line- but there could have been a time schedule proposed to do this.)

Does someone have more knowledge than me about the actual policies that have been in place (I'm basing it on rather broad but shallow understanding of the situation) to either confirm if my understanding is accurate or correct me if I'm wrong?

I don't' think we should talk this to death and examine past presidents and past policies and find out who's to blame.

We talked immgration reform to death, and we've talked health care reform to death. And we keep talking about innovation without supporitng it .

Meanwhile other countries are running by, busy innovaitng and conserving and doing what they can. Even by failing at something, , they learn and try something new..
We just talk, talk, talk.

We've talked our can-do abilities to death.

We do need the POTUS to address this seriously, and we need to stop bickering and listen, and do our part.

I agree that the major thing we need right now is leadership from the top to inspire us, to challenge us and to create the government policies we will need to address this as an urgent national priority. However, what is most likely to happen in clean energy and green tech is this:

Japan will figure it out and China will build it.
We'll borrow money from China to buy it.

See? We don't have to do anything (which we're good at), we don't have to innovate (which we used to be good at) and we don't have to manufacture anything (which we don't do anymore).