I’m pretty sure they’ll work out in the end. I’m pretty sure the big complaints from democrats about gas prices are just politically motivated as well. Unless they’re stupid, they should realize that the higher gas prices are going to do their job regarding SUVs for them. They should also realize that adjusted for inflation, gas prices are actually just adjusting back up to the level they were years ago, and that they’ve been kept artificially low all this time, and that this is the reason their much hated SUVs and other similar automobiles have even been economically feasible for all this time.
I know all this, and yet I don’t know why some opinion articles bother me so much. I understand that they are misrepresenting their true opinions for political points. I understand why they are doing it as well. But it still bothers me. (Up front, yet again, I’ll say that I’m not a supporter of Intelligent Design. I just hate how it’s being portrayed by the left press.)
It really bothers me in a number of ways. Why is it that the only people equating ID and Creationism are those on the far left? I haven’t seen anyone in support of intelligent design say that natural selection is a myth because of it. Only those who support natural selection. I’m sure the majority of ID believers think that there is just some amount of push given to the dna in one direction or another, and that natural selection still plays a part in the things that are not pushed. Natural selection is demonstrable and has been shown to actually happen.
I’ll toss out a few quotes and my reactions.
“Consumers may begin to naturally deselect SUVs.” well duh. This has already happened. You wouldn’t believe the number of used SUVs I see for sale every day around here. SUV sales have been dropping for a couple years now. This guy has obviously missed the boat.
“If He doesn’t act soon, Hubbert’s Peak is will render Bush’s rejection of higher SUV mileage standards moot.” He doesn’t need to act. All he’s doing is allowing the free market to setup the gas mileage of SUVs and this is a GOOD thing. The free market works alot better than some stuffy bureaucrat in an office saying “ALL CARS SOLD MUST USE GAS AT THIS RATE!” which circumvents the free market and causes numerous problems for people that for some reason need a lower mileage car. All of the protections and stuffy-bureaucrat-rules have the effect of cutting off new innovations from profitability when future iterations of these innovations could solve the problem completely.
You can expect three big things to come from the higher gas prices.
1. More exploratory drilling in America because it is now again profitable to do so.
2. Lower gas mileage cars will be left in the hands of car makers and they will lose money because of them. They will produce far fewer of these cars next year because of it. They will be producing MORE of the more fuel efficient SUV-styled cars like the Dodge Caliber and Dodge Magnum for those people who think they’re too cool to drive a minivan or station wagon. This will help the gas industry stay competitive against #3.
3. Alternative fuels will start looking more and more attractive and will be slowly phased in as their prices start being competitive with gasoline. There have been all sorts of conspiracy theorists who have stated “Because of the Gas companies’ greed X alternative fuel was destroyed.” It wasn’t greed at all that stopped these fuels but the free market combined with the artificially low gas prices made it so the alternative fuels could not compete. You could almost say it was the gas companys’ philanthropy rather than greed that killed the alternative fuels. In other cases, it was the environmentalists’ paranoia that killed alternative fuels, like Nuclear. Now that gas prices are high again, there’s a huge oppourtunity for someone to market alternative fuels that are competitive with gasoline.
One other thing that could throw a monkey wrench in the article writer’s plans is Oil Shale. There’s 1-2 times the world supply of oil trapped in oil shale in 3 states in the US alone. Now that it is profitable to mine it again, #1 above will happen to the oil shale industry as well.
The other reason I shouldn’t worry about this is that there are people that get it. In Los Angeles of all places there was an article that understood part of the problem.
Someone else understands how the oil prices are actually causing a small economic boom for the oil producing states in america too.
I guess the thing that bothers me most is how the first articles’ venomous, acidic attacks on the president’s intelligence are counter-productive to the democratic movement. They just don’t realize that when a large percentage of the people in the country voted for a guy, that viciously insulting them and the person they voted for is going to make them less likely, not more likely to come over to your cause. I want a divided government again, and that’s just not going to happen with the democrats shooting themselves in the foot like this.