Bigtime

Right on Pete :thumbup:

When my family and I go out to dinner or to a movie, do people expect us to hop on our bikes and ride to the restaurant? I don't think so. But if more people (a LOT more) would ride to work just once a week the benefits would be well worth the effort.
-BT

Bigtime

Hi Chris,

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I will say that I think we Americans (myself included) rely too much at times on gas powered vehicles. I don't think that taking away subsidies is the way to go, unless another alternative is presented to encourage people to make the switch to other, more "pleasant" modes of transport. Don't forget that most everything we use or buy (including food) is brought to us by some type of fuel powered conveyance. I don't know about you, but I don't really feel like paying five bucks for a loaf of bread.
Not to mention you are going to create an unnecessary hardship on people, especially the ones who can barely afford to get back and forth to work as it is.
Have a good one,
-BT

Chris L

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm game to try living on passionfruit (especially the way my vine is flowering at the moment, got another five off this morning ).

In all seriousness, you do have a valid point. However, given the rate at which the current finite fuel resources are being used, it seems to me that the above consequences are inevitable whilever people are not focussed on trying to find alternatives. The only thing I can see happening long term is the fuel supply being exhausted, with the question being what happens then?

Sooner or later a transition will have to be made. The sooner it happens the easier it will be. Making fuel more expensive would appear to be one way (possibly the only way) of buying a little more time before the supply is exhausted. Perhapse they could stick with subsidising the people who actually produce the stuff.

Bigtime

Agreed.

Juha

Why subsidise? In time crude oil supplies will become more difficult to reach, resulting to higher costs in drilling. Let that reflect to prices. That's a very effective way to really speed up research on alternative motor designs for e.g. car.

I live in a country where one gallon of gasoline costs appr. USD 3.7 (if I did all the conversions correctly: here 1 liter costs 1.15 euros). There's no black market to speak of (the logistics required in that business are quite remarkable in large scale) and every single car owner I know considers fuel economy an important factor when comparing new cars.

Combine this with the fact that almost 50% of a new car's price is tax here, and you get people like me: over 30, have never owned a car, and will not own one in the foreseeable future. There are people in Finland who must have a car, in the countryside for example. For the rest of us it would be just a pile of unnecessary bills to pay.

--J

Chris L

In this country at the current moment (and I believe this is also the case in the US) the subsidies are used by governments to prevent the true cost of oil drilling/extraction from reaching Joef*ck Lardbutt at the pump.

Although, here is the weird bit, In Australia we have some of the remotest localities in the world (some as much as 600km from the nearest pub, and even further from an actual town), and yet those places always end up paying siginficantly more for fuel than those in the cities, who really don't need it nearly as much.