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Originally Posted by LIforrelaxin
Indeed Gas is never going to get back down to 1$ a gallon, that ship has sailed never to return again.
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Yes, I agree with you that prices will not be going down
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However I don't see it going back up past 3.00$ per gallon either, the petroleum companies have tried that it doesn't work out for them.
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It is not the petroleum companies who are affecting the prices. They might affect 10% of the variance in prices. Supply, and demand, are the biggest factors by far. Supply is not increasing, and at best could only be increased a little over what it is now. Demand, however, is increasing, here and around the world.
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...(I)t is still cost prohibitive for an oil company to drill for oil in the United States. With all the environmental, land rights, and labor law issue faced here in this country producing a gallon of crude and delivering it to a refinery is not cheep. It is just as expensive as buying it from somewhere else. If people want to fix the problem. We need to make drilling and pumping oil in the US viable again.
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One of the basic problems of oil prices is that so far, they have only factored in the price of producing and delivering the oil. They have not factored in the cost of negative effects associated with the production and use of oil. Air pollution is made (almost) immeasurably worse by car exhausts, and health problems come from the increased pollution, but neither we nor the oil companies pay for the full costs associated with oil.
There was a very good article by Paul Krugman in today's New York Times entitled "Building a Green Economy". He thoughtfully covers a lot of the pros and cons of various forms of "economic environmentalism", from carbon taxes to cap and trade to other ways governments can act to reduce emissions. The thrust of his argument is 1) we have to act and act now 9he, like I, has little tolerance for climate skeptics who are in denial) and 2) we need to extend the cost to other countries who want the economic advantage of polluting without paying the price by a carbon tariff, which he feels will quickly compel the rest of the world to comply with environmental regulations by pricing them out of the market if they pollute.
The answer is not destroying our environment by allowing drilling in more places. The answer is moving to a sustainable economy. This includes changes like - not shipping food an average of 1500 miles from production to consumption (and especially no airfreight of food), decreasing meat consumption (a diet based on "raised" meat (as opposed to "hunted meat") is much more ravaging of the environment that an vegetarian diet), stopping rewards for population growth (changing tax deduction laws), promoting renewable energy (which even in NH is cheaper than power purchased from the power company). It also strikes me that having the rich compete to have the closest to zero carbon emissions would be infinitely better for the environment that having the biggest, most polluting boat on the lake would be a positive step....