Gas 2.0

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This morning on NPR, President Bush tried to blame congress for the nation’s high gas, food, and electricity prices. Apparently, Congress has been thwarting the President’s attempts to fix the economy:

“I’ve repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems,” the president said. “Yet time after time, Congress chose to block them.” Read the rest of this entry »

How much does business-as-usual cost? This morning, Green Car Congress reported that the US is projected to pay $440 billion for imported petroleum in 2008:

The increase to the estimated $440 billion for 2008 is based on an average $90 per barrel crude oil price for the year. In 2002, before the current bull market for oil began, US oil imports cost less than $103 billion. The preliminary figures for last year came to some $327 billion.

With little prospect for cheaper gas prices in the future, any decrease in the US export bill will have to come from a reduction in petroleum usage.

Which brings to mind two important questions:

1. What percentage of our Gross Domestic Product will the US have to export before things start to change dramatically?
2. Where is all this money going, anyway?

Read the rest of this entry »

While gasoline prices continue to inch upward, the U.S. still enjoys some of the cheapest fuel in the world. FastCompany.com put together a list of world gas prices that could make you feel better about $3 per gallon gas.

Country and Price per US gallon:

Norway $ 8.67
Netherlands $ 8.52
Belgium $ 8.36
Germany $ 8.06
United Kingdom $ 7.91
Italy $ 7.68
France $ 7.46
Read the rest of this entry »

Stacy Feldman of solveclimate.com wrote a prescient post today about the coming clash between growing car demand and peak oil. Basically, there will be so many new cars added to the road in the next ten years (think China, India) that global petroleum usage will increase overall, even with drastic fuel efficiency increases. Add to that the eventual economic depletion of oil, and we have a a bit of a situation on our hands:

(1) The number of cars on the road globally will hit 1 billion by 2011.

(2) The world’s oil will peak by 2015, according to the CEO of Shell.

Better fuel efficiency + more cars = more oil burned.

Mull this over and America’s new CAFE standards of 35 mpg seem rather impotent. What’s needed is a multi-pronged approached to energy independence, based on three primary concepts:

1. Read the rest of this entry »