by Outcast_Searcher » Fri 01 Jul 2011, 14:24:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seahorse3', ' ')Since we haven't started, NG should be cheap for a long time. I'm all for it, and have bought stock in Picken's company CLNE, but the reality is, its a long way from going from dream to reality.
Right. So it's all up to the price of oil. Chindia and the relative inaccessability on average of meaningful new finds tells us where that HAS to go, on average, as the years pass. (Green tech. may help eventually, but short term demand will overwhelm it for at least a decade, IMO).
So in the U.S., we'll sit on our asses and (helplessly - for J6P) watch the oil price rise over time, until FINALLY it is at a sustained average price high enough to really piss the overall public off and get them OFF their collective asses and reaming politicians who keep doing nothing.
Then, we'll START UP a process to do something, such as this logical project, which will take years to get to sufficient scale to help.
Brilliant. It is so great to live in the only remaining military superpower country (at present) and have political leaders with a planning horizon of the next election cycle, or maybe just the next press release.
Of course, we could also try to mitigate this with an intelligent action like a rising gasoline and diesel tax (with an offsetting credit to the poor, for everyone who will now cry "unfair") -- to help get us to the required-action gasoline price point sooner, help prevent us from bankrupting the country, and perhaps even start to meaningfully maintain our transportation and energy infrastructures.
Pick a number. I like 50 cents a gallon per year for 5 years, and then see where we are. It would be progress, and wouldn't even put us at fuel cost parity with Europe at that point.
But nope -- no planning ahead, no potential slowing of BAU growth -- that would be "unamerican".

Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.