Living Car Free - Isn't $4.00 Gas a good thing?

We've allready made Russia some hard curancy with the latest Oil War. Raising the price to boost approriate developement of new technologies would be great. I bet that we would even start to decentralize agriculture. As it is now, if avian flu hit there would be mass migrations to IOWA and KANSAS. I support higher gas prices it will hasten the development of advanced technologies. And I don't mean bio fuels.

E85 is still in it's infancy which require huge government subsidy. E85 can work if the energy used to make it comes from solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, renewables, ect. But to me the idea of growing food for fuel is stupid, that food can feed people instead. The reason why E85 is being pushed by the President is because we already a country that is run on corn. I have nothing against E85, but it is not going to be our magic bullet. Instead think of E85 as energy storage for solar, wind, hydro. Maybe one day instead of having nice grass lawns, we will be growing corn on our lawns and making our own E85 and store human muscle power into E85. Raising the CAFE standard on cars/trucks by 8mpg will eliminate all oil coming from the hostile arabs. Fight terrorist by using less gasoline, because that oil money eventually trickles down to IED=improvise explosive device. Let them eat sand!

People think that the economy will go down greatly when gasoline hits $5.00+ but once that happen driving habits will surely change. Gasoline has already gone down because the supplies are starting to go up because people are using less. To me rising gasoline is a great thing because it will force change. This is a capitalist country and money changes things.

There are already many cheap ways to get around without using a lot of energy. Mopeds/scooters, motorcycles, subcompacts, diesel, hybrids, walking, bicycles, bus. The American economy won't grind to a halt if gasoline hits +$20 bucks, because we will have a Manhatten Project by then. ITER=International Thermal-Nuclear Experimental Reactor is the magic bullet if it works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iter

Mixed revues. Good for forcing us to switch to alternatives. Because w/o incentives, we will never get there. Should we not , then the western way of life might be in peril.

H2 Hummers are going down in price, gee I wonder why.

I rode my bike to a family get-together last weekend, my sister and mom were both talking about how the gas prices are affecting their SUV's, when my sister stopped and turned to me and said "you rode your bike here? You're so wierd!!" she's been calling me wierd since i was 6 though...

my dad has a huge RV and a big truck, he uses them for long trips and hauling stuff, but for most trips less than 20 miles he has an old ross road bike he got at goodwill for $15 in 1989 i believe, still runs great. my sister, however, bought a trek 3900 in 2003 to lose weight, never rode it, ever. go figure...

To me, the scariest thing is a large upsurge of "clueless" cyclists hitting the streets without training or an understanding of what they are getting themselves into.

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=155944&highlight=Popular

Read through that thread and you'll see that I agree with you, not to mention some of the other things that would follow if cycling magically became more popular.

Some other points: can anyone tell me why people are accusing oil companies of greed or whatever as if that's a bad thing? Last time I heard, we lived in a capitalist society, everyone suffers from the same greed. Reverse the roles and put any of the people complaining in that position, and see how they behave -- I suspect they'd be trying to make as much from the oil or any other commodity that they can. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem living under a socialist structure, but the fact is that we don't, and if the whiners aren't prepared to make sacrifices for "the common good" themselves, why do they expect it of oil company executives?

Would a recession really be such a bad thing? Think about this question before answering it. I lived through the 1990 (or thereabouts) recession, things were tight, but pretty much everyone got by in some capacity, albeit without a few luxuries for a while. Here in Australia at least, I've noticed a bit of a trend in recent years -- relative prosperity and affluence have done terrible things to a lot of our social structures. We now have a real "because I can" culture evident in this country. Most people lack any consideration whatsoever for the welfare of any other member of society. There is a belief that anyone worse off than anyone else is somehow there by their own doing, and consequently undeserving of any kind of sympathy or assistance. I think a lot of people at the lower end of the social scale are probably worse off now than they were in the recession, largely for this reason. A recession might just bring a few people back to reality, and I don't see this as a bad thing.

i don't think $4 gas is a bad thing but it needs to go up slow and steady, this up and down unstable price crap is what's going to hurt the economy.

I think we need higher gas prices. To help get rid of the Canyonero's on the street and to motivate us to conserve and find alternatives. People don't change because they want to. They change because they have to. Adapt or die. Dr. Darwin does make house calls.

E85 is still in it's infancy which require huge government subsidy. E85 can work if the energy used to make it comes from solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, renewables, ect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iter

E85 is not the answer but a temporary solution. The cost to make E85 brings the price to almost the same amount one would pay for regular. Furthermore, you get less miles to the gallon mening you have to fill up more often so it's a wash. Eventually, you have to goto E65, then E25 and finally E100 as the supply of oil deminishes. I suspect you'll probably get 10 miles to the gallon with E100 providing you drive a VW Golf!

E85 is 85%ethanol 15%gasoline, the gasoline is added mainly to help ignition. E85 has a octane of 105 meaning it can boost power performance. The current vehichles that does run on E85 is know as flex-fuel and can run on gasoline too. A vehicle that was designed only for E85 will run more efficiently. http://www.e85fuel.com/index.php

The current methods of using corn as the main source of ethanol is not effiecient and will abandoned eventually. Switch grass is the proposed "crop" that will generate the ethanol. http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html

Ethanol is going to be a major energy source in the future because hydrogen cars are too expensive and dangerous.

Any data on how many barrels of petroleum it takes to manufacture, deliver and pump a barrel of ethanol?

In 10 years the title of this thread will be "Isn't $0.25 a gallon water a good thing?" Look whose buying up the water companies!

High gas prices affect every aspect of our economy, from mass food production (petrochemicals used as fertlizer and pesticides), transport of food, transport of cheap stuff from China, construction, etc. Plastic, which is made from petrochemicals, is ubiquitous in our lives.