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Ronald Bailey wonders whether Congress will try and "save us" from high gas prices.
The Wine Commonsewer|6.15.07 @ 1:39PM|#
Hope not because the prices have already dropped by 35 cents a gallon from the last time I bought gas here in Sunny So Cal. Under three bucks this morning.
Paul|6.15.07 @ 1:44PM|#
mean plowing up 100 million acres of land for fuel each
year-an area about the size of California.
So, what you're saying is, we finally found a use for
California...
|6.15.07 @ 1:47PM|#
What has never come up on any of these threads is that the
American public, of its own free will, over the last 30 years has
spent 100s of billions of dollars on Energy star products, double
paned windows, insulating their houses, replacing coal and oil
burners with updated gas heaters and water tanks.
Never mind the huge amount of time spent separating our bottles
from paper and trash or that the SUV I drive now gets better gas
mileage that the economy car I bought 12 years ago.
I am sick of people telling us we haven't done anything and need to
feel the pain.
We as a people have invested heavily in reducing pollution and
waste and the result has been greatly improved water, air and
land.
Why are we now being told carbon is toxic and we must be held
accountable for our carbon "footprint?"
Carbon, a product essential to life for humans and plants.
So now we must "sacrifice" our entire corn crop to appease the Gaia
gods for a less efficient and more wasteful product.
We have to start looking past the screeching from the left and stop
justifying this insanity with pseudo science or making believe
these are market forces at work.
These are no more market forces than German citizen getting a
stylish trend for brown shirts in the thirties.
Stop the insanity stop the lunacy.
Paul|6.15.07 @ 1:54PM|#
What has never come up on any of these threads is that the
American public, of its own free will, over the last 30 years has
spent 100s of billions of dollars on Energy star products, double
paned windows, insulating their houses, replacing coal and oil
burners with updated gas heaters and water tanks.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, tiger. Slow down. You're on a slippery
slope. The next thing you're going to suggest is that healthful
foods actually exist on the shelf, ready to be purchased by people
wanting to seek them out. That they can, if they so choose, quit
smoking and... AND, that eating right and exercise may be the best
method of getting in shape.
ed|6.15.07 @ 1:56PM|#
Harry Reid (D-Nev.) identified the culprits ... "There is
nothing wrong with companies making money," declared Reid.
"But..."
Yep. Everyone always has a big but.
c|6.15.07 @ 1:59PM|#
Art, what are you ranting about?
Why are we now being told carbon is toxic and we must be held
accountable for our carbon "footprint?" Carbon, a product essential
to life for humans and plants.
Well, becuase we're coming to learn the damage done by carbon
emissions. So, fixing or mitigating that damage is going to cost
money. The money should come from a tax levied on those who do the
damage.
It's great that your SUV is more efficient than the car you bought
12 years ago. You're right that our air and water have improved
dramatically in the last generation. But they didn't improve
because we spent the last 25 years calling enivronmentalists nazi
brownshirts.
Ashley|6.15.07 @ 2:02PM|#
It must be a confounding puzzle to our lawmakers that while
plenty of high mileage automobiles are available to drivers today,
not everybody wants to buy them.
That is an unfair statement. Anyone with 3 children, or needing to
transport 3 children, is legally prohibited from owning a small car
by the safety seat laws. Some would love to buy/keep a reasonable
car but it's illegal to do so.
|6.15.07 @ 2:07PM|#
Well, becuase we're coming to learn the damage done by
carbon emissions.
No. We're learning what the Gaia worshippers like to believe carbon
emissions are doing.
|6.15.07 @ 2:09PM|#
Ashley: Hmmmm. CAFE as an incentive for pollution and population reduction at the same time. A environmentalist twofer! They've even cleverer than I thought.
|6.15.07 @ 2:14PM|#
Ron,
Dude, you're scaring the shit out of me. I better start drinking
before I have to go out and get me another trunk trophy.
|6.15.07 @ 2:16PM|#
c
So we give our governments tons of money to "fix" the damage.
Perhaps you didn't read Ron's current or past articles. The same
government who has effectively blocked most avenues to energy
improvements are now starting to fix this problem.
No, we did call the enviromentalist lunatics, but they were so cute
when they were saving the bald eagles. Now that they are
successfully implemting through ligslatures and courts, incredibly
short sighted and harmful policies on a problem of questionable
importance we are now calling them some thing else.
And no I am not calling them the N word. My implication is that
Germans didn't suddenly decide to buy brown shirts because they
wanted to but because they felt they needed to in order to keep up
with the shifting politics of the time.
|6.15.07 @ 2:16PM|#
How
Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome
By the end of the third century, Rome had clearly reached a crisis. The state could no longer obtain sufficient resources even through compulsion and was forced to rely ever more heavily on debasement of the currency to raise revenue. By the reign of Claudius II Gothicus (268-270 A.D.) the silver content of the denarius was down to just .02 percent (Michell 1947: 2). As a consequence, prices skyrocketed. A measure of Egyptian wheat, for example, which sold for seven to eight drachmaes in the second century now cost 120,000 drachmaes. This suggests an inflation of 15,000 percent during the third century (Rostovtzeff 1957: 471).
Finally, the very survival of the state was at stake. At this point, the Emperor Diocletian (284-305 A.D.) took action. He attempted to stop the inflation with a far-reaching system of price controls on all services and commodities. [10] These controls were justified by Diocletian's belief that the inflation was due mainly to speculation and hoarding, rather than debasement of the currency.
...
Despite the fact that the death penalty applied to violations of the price controls, they were a total failure.
...
In the fifty years after Diocletian the Roman tax burden roughly doubled, making it impossible for small farmers to live on their production.
...taxpayers evaded taxation by withdrawing from society altogether. Large, powerful landowners, able to avoid taxation through legal or illegal means, began to organize small communities around them. Small landowners, crushed into bankruptcy by the heavy burden of taxation, threw themselves at the mercy of the large landowners, signing on as tenants or even as slaves. (Slaves, of course, paid no taxes.) The latter phenomenon was so widespread and so injurious to the state's revenues, in fact, that in 368 A.D. Emperor Valens declared it illegal to renounce one's liberty in order to place oneself under the protection of a great landlord.
In the end, there was no money left to pay the army, build forts or ships, or protect the frontier. The barbarian invasions, which were the final blow to the Roman state in the fifth century, were simply the culmination of three centuries of deterioration in the fiscal capacity of the state to defend itself. Indeed, many Romans welcomed the barbarians as saviors from the onerous tax burden. [15]
Although the fall of Rome appears as a cataclysmic event in history, for the bulk of Roman citizens it had little impact on their way of life. As Henri Pirenne (1939: 33-62) has pointed out, once the invaders effectively had displaced the Roman government they settled into governing themselves. At this point, they no longer had any incentive to pillage, but rather sought to provide peace and stability in the areas they controlled. After all, the wealthier their subjects the greater their taxpaying capacity.
In conclusion, the fall of Rome was fundamentally due to economic deterioration resulting from excessive taxation, inflation, and over-regulation. Higher and higher taxes failed to raise additional revenues because wealthier taxpayers could evade such taxes while the middle class--and its taxpaying capacity--were exterminated. Although the final demise of the Roman Empire in the West (its Eastern half continued on as the Byzantine Empire) was an event of great historical importance, for most Romans it was a relief.
Read it, and notice the parallels.
c|6.15.07 @ 2:16PM|#
Genghis, are you seriously trying to dismiss all those who believe damage is being done by carbon emissions as "Gaia worshippers?" If that's the basis of your objection, you've already lost.
|6.15.07 @ 2:20PM|#
Democrats say they want to reduce our demand for foreign oil,
and they also want to reduce the number of carbon emissions.
Yet, they are against letting gas prices rise, which would be the
most effective way of reducing greenhouse emissions and
reducing demand for oil.
c|6.15.07 @ 2:22PM|#
The way I see it, taxation in this case should act as a public "hedge". It takes us, the public, off the hook for paying to fix, or suffering from, damage done to our public resources like the environment. If a tax on carbon emissions approximates the cost of the damage or the cost to fix the damage, then we can breath easy knowing that it doesn't matter whether people continue to spew CO2. If they do, then we have the money to fix it. If they don't, then we don't have any money but there's nothing to fix.
|6.15.07 @ 2:32PM|#
"are you seriously trying to dismiss all those who believe
damage is being done by carbon emissions as "Gaia
worshippers""
Maybe because they have been pretty much wrong on every other
impending doom issue.
c|6.15.07 @ 2:44PM|#
"They" being "gaia worshippers", those concerned about CO2, or
the fictional people you've conflated from those two sets of
folks?
How can anyone respond to that, except to say "I suppose they're
due to be right about something."
|6.15.07 @ 3:10PM|#
You go, Ron! You don't know bupkas about the Civil War, but when it comes to oil, you da man! If there were a modicum of justice in this world, if there were a trace, the Democratic "bill" would collapse from the weight of its own stupidity. But the odds are awfully good that that won't happen.
|6.15.07 @ 3:22PM|#
If they do, then we have the money to fix it.
Sure. They're just gonna keep the trillions raised through the
carbon tax in a cardboard box somewhere, so its handy in case
anyone can ever show any damage done by CO2 emissions.
|6.15.07 @ 3:37PM|#
""They" being "gaia worshippers", those concerned about
CO2,"
Add in the politicians, the NGOs and the remaining organizations
and companies that will be stealing a huge amount of our money
"saving the world"
And you have "They"
|6.15.07 @ 3:39PM|#
RC
No cardboard boxes, they are responsible people.
They are going to put it in Al Gore's lock box.
|6.15.07 @ 3:50PM|#
I think somehow this is related:
http://www.businessgreen.com/2007/06/opec_biofuel_br.html#comments
"It was always going to happen. Like a lover fearful they are about
to get dumped for a younger rival, the Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (Opec) appears to have its scissors poised and
ready to cut up the rest of the world's suits unless it stops
flirting with those wanton biofuels.
..."
|6.15.07 @ 5:26PM|#
"""Well, becuase we're coming to learn the damage done by carbon
emissions."""
No we're not. We are being fed a bunch of crap about carbon
emission damage. Check out the Great Global Warming Swindle.
This is only part one of eight. I could not find the full video,
which was long. I'm sure all the parts can be found
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f8v5du5_ag
|6.15.07 @ 5:36PM|#
I came home from vacation today. Five messages on the machine.
One of them was from a candidate for the Special Election to fill
Marty Meehan's Congressional seat.
"Hi, I'm Barry Feingold. I think $3 a gallon is too much to pay for
gasoline..."
Beep. Buh-bye, Barry.
|6.15.07 @ 10:10PM|#
ed said: "Yep. Everyone always has a big but."
Speak for yourself. My but is of a moderate size.
|6.16.07 @ 5:48AM|#
are you seriously trying to dismiss all those who believe
damage is being done by carbon emissions as "Gaia worshippers?" If
that's the basis of your objection, you've already lost.
Yes, that's not a bad summary of my catagorizing. But lost what,
and to whom?
You don't know what my basis is for rejecting the theory that CO2
is destroying the universe. Or at least this world.
Now hear this: Gore was wrong. The debate is not over.
|6.17.07 @ 7:01AM|#
A president with any respect and power of persuasion would easily be able to rouse the oil industry into constructing additional refineries--despite the popular wisdom, plenty of locales would welcome them. Instead a corrupt executive branch recently offered )and was forced to revoke) an absurd 8 bil tax break for big and immensely profitable oil firms. Addl refineries are not just a good idea, they are critical for national security---sort of like the currently degraded military. Btw, join me in requesting that Exxon Mobil raise their absurdly low dividend. Enjoy the transfer of wealth to our enemies with these high prices--doubtless a nightmare not on your shallow radarr.
|6.17.07 @ 2:19PM|#
Oil companies and other business interests are over charging,
Price Gouging, customers and paying lower dividends using the money
to pay for political purposes, Lobbyists and PACs.
Where do you think Politicians get all those millions from?
|6.17.07 @ 8:46PM|#
Trickyvic...
No we're not. We are being fed a bunch of crap about carbon
emission damage. Check out the Great Global Warming
Swindle.
You've been duped...
http://curtrosengren.typepad.com/alternative_energy/2007/03/the_great_globa_2.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2032575,00.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/
http://reasic.com/2007/03/10/the-great-global-warming-swindle-questions-answered/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Reception_and_criticism
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php
http://inthegreen.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/deconstructing_.html
Really a weak attempt at propoganda more than a science
documentary.
|6.17.07 @ 8:55PM|#
TrickyVic...
Cambridge University's response to the GGWS
http://www.btplc.com/ClimateChange/Learnmore/Booksfilmsandsites/gws_scientific_responses.pdf
Scientific Response to "The Great Global Warming Swindle"
Compiled by University of Cambridge Programme for Industry
It is short and to the point.
|6.17.07 @ 9:02PM|#
TrickyVic,
THE GGWS fairs less well than even Al Gore's movie in terms of
accuracy...here are some errors in Gore's film detailed by various
sources.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=299
http://www.wunderground.com/education/gore.asp
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-06-27-gore-science-truth_x.htm
http://eteam.ncpa.org/commentaries/the-truth-about-al-gores-film-an-inconvenient-truth
|6.18.07 @ 12:51AM|#
Of course humans are to blame for global warming. Just listen to the National Academy of Sciences.
|6.22.07 @ 2:33AM|#
Two years ago Toyota built a prototype that was capable of 70mpg. Where are all the cars that can deliver between 50mpg and 70mpg? No auto manufacturer is going to raise the mpg until the oil companies agree upon what that target should be. It is in the oil companies' short term interest to milk every dime out of oil they can, before resources can no longer support the demand. It may be how businesses plan, but it is not how a nation should plan.
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