From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Wed Nov 12 2003 - 05:09:44 EST
MessageGlenn Morton wrote:
"To me, such taxes are extremely cruel to the poor who need their cars to stay economically afloat. I find that it is really easy for the rich to want to have taxes raised for noble purposes."
A large fraction of hydrocarbon usage today is wasteful. It's a safe bet it wouldn't be if prices were, say, ten times what they are now. People would completely rethink their lifestyles. That's why I mentioned the high-rise condominiums in Orange County. For a part of the country that consumes resources as if there were no limits, going to high-rises is novel and at this time unnecessary; but one can imagine in some future, when driving cars may be out of reach for most people, that high-rises which offer all amenities to pedestrians might enable a fairly good life on a minimum of fuel.
Thus high prices would start most people thinking about how to modify their way of life so as to live well without much fuel. For one thing, people would put a lot more thought and effort into living close to their place of work; and the companies that employ them presumably would help. In fact I chose my home to be in a place that would allow me to commute safely by bicycle more than five miles one way, and I commuted in that way for more than 20 years. Conservation wasn't number one on my list of reasons at the time; but living close enough to work was easy and enjoyable. Yet many of my colleagues insisted on living where the required car commutes took more than an hour each way. Then and still it's a matter of personal preference, not necessity.
Although I try to leave a minimal footprint on the environment, I have nothing to brag about. I still take lots of unnecessary car trips, for example. And at this point there's nothing to dissuade me or anyone else other than the annoyance of congestion--and the fact that at our back we always hear the stuff's going to run out.
Is there a way other than high prices that's ever going to make the majority of people conservation conscious? I doubt it. High prices would hurt the poor more than others, but I suspect that's going to be true no matter what. In principle there's no reason why you couldn't build low-rent high-rise condos or apartments for the poor so that they could live close to work and groceries, etc. In the present milieu of abundance few people are thinking in such terms--at least in the US. But such apartment complexes exist in other cities around the world. I lived for a short time in one in Leeds, and I visited relatives in another in Singapore.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Glenn Morton
To: Don Winterstein ; pbrunt@xtra.co.nz ; 'Darryl Maddox' ; asa
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 10:53 AM
Subject: RE: Declining resources [was RE: Declining water]
Others have captured the essence of the issues in trying to replace oil with plant matter oil. The amount of land required to do this is so great as to be prohibitive. I did want to address something Don said,
Don Winterstein
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 11:21 AM
I've often thought it would be good for the US to levy heftier taxes on petroleum products to stimulate a change in behavior and to fund the research on energy that the oil companies are no longer doing; but apparently the required tax levels are politically out of the question. Besides that, at least one study has found that gasoline usage is fairly inelastic: consumption doesn't drop much as prices rise. Whenever a local shortage develops so that prices surge, the public invariably maligns the oil companies and demands that politicians investigate.
GRM: having lived in a country where the petrol taxes are quite high ($4.50/gallon, 80% of which are taxes) I observed the following. It didn't stop the rich from driving. I drove and lots of other rich Scots drove as well. But it did stop the poor from driving, which forced them to
1. walk to work in 80 mph blizzards in the winter
2. ride a bike to work in 80 mph blizzards on icy streets
3. spend 3-4 hours per day on busses trying to get to work (In London some people living out of London because of housing prices, would leave home at 4:30 am and get back home at 9:30 pm)
4. call in sick on such days and lose the income.
To me, such taxes are extremely cruel to the poor who need their cars to stay economically afloat. I find that it is really easy for the rich to want to have taxes raised for noble purposes.
That being said, you are correct that there is simply no R&D being done in the oil companies anymore. The contractors do a wee bit of it, but not all that much. The world will pay for the last 15 years of low R&D.
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