Letters to the Editor
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why
why do journalists always use the quotation marks when they refer to peak oil? It is as factually established as "evolution" and "gravity."
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Punishment is not in the denomination
"American consumers, facing painful prices at the gas pump, are, at the moment, being further punished by the fact that most global oil transactions are denominated in dollars."
This is incorrect. The problem for Americans is not the denomination of the sale, but the weakness of the dollar.
The dollar has lost roughly a third of its value versus other world currencies in the last several years (currently $1.50 ~= €1.00). If it had kept its value, one would expect oil to be priced at around 2/3rds of its current price ($67/bbl). Likewise, Europeans get to buy oil at around €67/bbl. Remember that the euro was originally at parity with the dollar.
On the other hand, if oil were sold globally in, say, euros, the actual price for Americans would not change, as we would have to convert our weak dollars before purchasing €67/bbl oil, costing us $100/bbl as before.
If anything, denominating oil in dollars *helps* Americans by creating a demand for dollars, propping up the dollar's value.
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Bring it on!!!
"What, then, will be the lasting consequences of higher energy costs? For the ordinary American consumer the answer is simple, if grim: A diminished quality of life..."
"Consumer" being the key word here, folks- our source of identity, the essence of what it is to be American! We consume. Chomp chomp.
Anyway, cheap and abundant fossil fuels have brought America such lovely things as: infinite replicates of treeless, soulless, cookie-cutter suburbs; massive amounts of cheap, shoddy crap from China; unprecedented obesity from highly processed foods and utter lack of exercise; smog over Yellowstone in winter; chemo-intensive farming that has created a humongous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico- and we could go on and on (especially with regard to climate change). Yet we are to believe higher petroleum costs will DIMINISH our quality of life? Come on...
If we can't survive peak oil, we don't deserve to.
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The skewed priorities produced by political lobbyists
You'd think the current high price of oil would be enough to start convincing politicians & their constituents to move more public money to improving mass-transit options, and better city planning.
Actually, you'd think this would've been the case for a couple years now. But no. I understand the hope: that once again we'll have cheap gas... just as soon as "the war is over." But seriously, after seeing the growing consumption numbers for China and India, is this a realistic possibility? And even if it is, we're better off with less reliance on gasoline, more efficient transportation, less money and land wasted on roads, higher property values, less automobile pollution...
I look at my old hometown, Metro-Detroit. Any discussion of installing light rail is D.O.A., evem with gas prices above $3.30/gallon. People just don't get it. They'll whine and complain about gas prices, traffic, and construction, yet when it comes to passing a millage for a bus system, they piss themselves in anger. I guess the public needs to hire better lobbyists. Voting doesn't seem to get the job done anymore.
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This should be easy
If, as stated in the article, oil accounts for 40% of American energy use, and we import 2/3 of the oil we use, we need only reduce our energy use by 25% in order to be unaffected by the international oil "scarcity" to come. Considering the fact that, in order to avoid the most severe catastrophe in human history (that would be climate change), we need to reduce our energy use by 80-90% over the next fifteen to twenty years, this should be a good warm-up.
As someone already wrote, if we cannot survive peak oil, we don't deserve to. However, we are going to need some sort of social safety net to be re-established or we will find poor people starved to death in their homes (or cardboard shanties) like they do in Japan. We can do better than that, but whether we do or not will depend on our ability to shed the years of fears of the Bushes.
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There's an easy solution
We're the most incarcerated nation on Earth. We can burn the old prisoners for heat and eat the young ones for food.
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@ $110/bbl those poor sources are economically viable for the first time
So in other words all those expensive sites are now practical. Similarly, tar sands are now economically viable for the first time. In fact a whole host of oil sources once thought useless are now economically viable when crude is that expensive. Which means there are new untapped sources.
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@einnocent
If anything, denominating oil in dollars *helps* Americans by creating a demand for dollars, propping up the dollar's value.
It doesn't work that way. Oil is denominated in dollars not sold with dollars.
If oil is $50 a barrel and the the Euro and the dollar are at par Saudi Arabia is happy to take 50 Euros for a barrel of oil knowing it can be spent in Europe. If the dollar declines to $1.50 for a Euro, SA will only get 33 Euros for the same barrel. Only by raising the price per barrel can SA be assured of not losing out selling in non-US dollar transactions.
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goodness gracious!
there really is a down-side to greed, arrogance, and brutality. it's a shame america's rich and well-connected can't be made to pay it.
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Americans are dumb-fucks
Americans deserve everything they're getting: a $3 trillion war with decaying infrastructure, schools, and a massive re-distribution of wealth which is turning the clock back to the 1890's. They vote for the Chimp and his Republithugs, twice, while drooling at their TV's eating nutritionally devalued food, becoming diabetic in the process, which in turn, increases their reliance on a healthcare system which is increasingly leaving them without health insurance, which in turn causes more and more bankruptcies and increases poverty. They are so stupid they have voted themselves off the island, in favor of oligarchical societies which outlaw political parties and any form of democratic rule.
Americans have to be some of the dumbest bunch of idiots the planet has seen. The era of America as a super-power is OVER. (This is a good thing) From the ashes a new society should be re-built.