Joseph:

What we have here is a difference of philosophy.

Wouldn't you rather that the bulk of the $3/gallon you're spending go to things to make things better, other than just enriching a few people and perpetuating the problem?

Forgot to close italics.

James: It's called buying stock. And yes, those corporations *are* accountable to their stockholders. If the company isn't making money, those stockholders can make changes to the Board of Directors.

If you disagree with the business practices of a company, all you have to do is not buy stock. You don't have the choice of not paying taxes.

The bottom line is that I don't trust my government. The less they get of the money I earn, the better.

So you trust the oil & gas industry, including the nations which have large oil reserves more than your own government, and would rather they get your money than your own government? The reality is that the average US household is spending over $2,000 more on gasoline today then they were a few years ago, and all that extra money is going to oil & gas interests, while tax receipts have only moved as much as demand has increased (which is actually very little).

I'm just wondering, all things being equal, you'd rather have a dollar go to your local, state, and federal government for roads and transit, or to Saudia Arabia and Venezuela? When Hussein was still in power, you would have preferred a dollar go to him instead of your own government?

We can agree that demand responds to price signals, not the components of price, right? And we can also agree that almost every cent we pay in fuel taxes is currently earmarked towards roads and a sliver towards transit, right? And that a legitimate role of government is to deal with roads, right?

Assuming we agree on that, then I don't really understand why someone would prefer $2.53 wholesale gasoline (current LA spot price) and 50 cents of tax instead of $1.00 wholesale gasoline and $2 of tax. Either way it's $3 gas sending a price signal to influence demand.

James: It's called buying stock. And yes, those corporations *are* accountable to their stockholders. If the company isn't making money, those stockholders can make changes to the Board of Directors.

That's a nice theory, but we all know in practice this isn't how it works - especially with respect to small investors.

If you disagree with the business practices of a company, all you have to do is not buy stock. You don't have the choice of not paying taxes.

But when that company then takes all of its huge profits then turns around to influence your government, it very much becomes your business as a citizen, regardless of whether you are an investor or consumer of their products.

Hummers' sales going down fast (only 98 sales in the last 4 months) may be a sign that the American people are finally waking up or can no longer afford to drive 3 and 4-ton gas guzzling dinosaurs. Without sufficient buyers, GM, Ford and others would stop manufacturing unwarranted huge inefficient ICE vehicles.

Governments should impose special tariffs on oversized vehicles instead of encouraging their purchase with direct and indirect subsidies. The new revenues could be used to support the purchase of more efficient smaller vehicles, hybrids and PHEVs.

A progressive tax increase on liquid fossil fuels may not be (in the short term) very popular with most voters but it makes sense to accellerate transition to alternative cleaner energies, to reduce oil imports, to ruduce the US trade deficits and to stop financing international terrorism every time we stop at the gas pump. If properly explained, the American public would understand and even support such a move, specially if it is strictly revenue (tax) neutral.

You know, the Hummer is intended as an off-road vehicle and not something for the daily commute.

I do remember hearing a few out there, namely celebrities, who actually run the diesel Hummers on biodiesel and thus cite them as being more environmentally friendly. Hmm...I wonder how a hybrid Hummer would sell.

Joseph:

No, I'd rather not send my money to Saudi Arabia. But the problem is that we've been forced to seek oil elsehwere because our environmental lobby practically threw the oil companies out. We need to open ANWR and our Outer Continental Shelf. MMS estimates there's over 80 billion barrels of undiscovered oil there and over 400 trillion cubic feet of natral gas. But 85% of the OCS is currently off limits to drilling. We are thus more dependent on foreign sources of oil.

If ANWR had been opened years ago, we'd be producing about a million barrels more per day. That's about the same amount we import from Venezuela or Nigeria.

I'm a big proponent of energy independence because I don't want to support these regimes. But why are we buying oil from them in the first place? Because we've been locked out of exploting our own resources.

We have 1/4 of the world's coal reserves. We have seen on GCC how various private companies are investing in F-T technologies to improve efficiency and lower capital lower costs.

We have up-and-coming technology in algal oil (GreenFuel Technologies, GreenShift, to name two private companies). Our biodiesel industry is expanding exponentially, with several hundred million gallons per year of capacity under construction. Cellulose ethanol is almost ready to go ($29US million investment from Goldman Sachs in Iogen, recently).

The irony is that as more and more fuel efficient vehicles get on the road, states have started looking at new ways of getting tax revenue to cover the shortfall. The state of Oregon has recently tested a GPS tracking method for road taxes. This raises serious privacy issues, to say the least. And a lot of states, especially in the northeast, already have both fuel taxes and toll roads. Here I thought drivers were already paying for them at the fuel pump.

MMS estimates there's over 80 billion barrels of undiscovered oil there

Could you provide a reference for that? I'm unfamiliar with that claim.

But when that company then takes all of its huge profits then turns around to influence your government, it very much becomes your business as a citizen, regardless of whether you are an investor or consumer of their products.

My own Congressmen went to prison for bribery. I think I have a right to be cynical. This is why I say that government is the problem, not the solution. I don't trust any of them, no matter what Party they belong to. But good government or not, it's up to individuals to take action.

I'm going to leave it at that.

Joseph:

Briefly, here's an article at Rigzone.

Concurrently, and as directed by Congress, an inventory of oil and gas resources on the OCS has been conducted. MMS estimates of undiscovered resources are 85.9 billion barrels of oil and 419.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that are technically recoverable from all federal offshore areas. The estimate for both oil and gas increased about 15 percent compared to the 2001 report.

"Technically recoverable" estimates represent the quantities of oil or gas that could be produced using existing or reasonably foreseeable technology. Current technologies include drilling in water in excess of 10,000 feet and subsea depths in excess of 31,000 feet.

Emphasis added. I take it with a grain of salt. But even half that estimate would be worthwhile.

If we are really at War, then our leaders should rally citizens to sacrifice:
Force higher gas taxes
Force a tax on low MPG vehicles
Force new homes to have solar collection
Force energy independence
This will pay for the War and to have enough energy for our Military:

But we have NONE of the above?

This begs the question; Are we really at war?

THE MORE OUR FOLLOW CITIZENS SACRIFICE, the quicker, the war will be over.

Cervus claims:

the problem is that we've been forced to seek oil elsehwere because our environmental lobby practically threw the oil companies out.

1 million barrels a day from ANWR wouldn't even eliminate 10% of our imports, and we could do TWICE as much by increasing our fleet-average gasoline mileage from 22 MPG to 27.  You could cut another 2 million barrels/day by improving diesel trucks from 6.5 MPG to 13 MPG, as Wal-Mart is doing for its own.

If every car rolling off the line in 2012 was a 150-MPG (plus electricity) CalCar-equivalent, we could eliminate the vast bulk of our oil imports.  No amount of drilling will get us there, it will just let the problem keep growing.

We need to open ANWR and our Outer Continental Shelf.

I found the source report for the claim.

http://www.mms.gov/PDFs/2005EPAct/InventoryRTC.pdf

I'll take a more thorough look at it later, but just a quick glance shows substantial differences with prior assessments, especially in the GOM.

But first a question - you said "This is why I say that government is the problem, not the solution. I don't trust any of them". If this is true, why would you believe the MMS report, especially when the estimates are so different from not many years ago?

we've been forced to seek oil elsehwere because our environmental lobby practically threw the oil companies out

And I think that's not really supported by the facts. A good deal of shift away from domestic production over the past couple decades was because global oil prices were cheap, and we're high cost producers. Naturally, this creates a lag effect in terms of new exploration. With prices where they are now, though, all of a sudden Texas, Wyoming, and Alaska are flush with cash again and what's considered "economically recoverable" has changed dramatically.

This rapid change in circumstances is not coincidental.

This is my final comment on this topic.

Engineer-Poet: Conservation alone will not do it. Any such efforts must be met coming the other way with increases in domestic supplies. Eventually you'll hit a bottom in conservation anyway, and demand will start going back up again.

You also can't replace every vehicle on the road with a "CalCar". What if I need a truck for my small business? What if I have a large family? There are people out there who genuinely need an SUV or large pickup. Are you going to tell them they can't buy one?

I'd like to point out that Wal-Mart's efforts are being done by a private company, not at the government's mandate. That one million barrels from ANWR would still displace 5% of imports, which is not an insignificant amount.

People are buying more fuel efficient vehicles without mandates. Current prices alone are enough. I've said this a few times already, but I think I need to point out that I put my money where my mouth is. Last year I bought a new Corolla (35mpg) and a Honda Reflex scooter (67mpg). No mandates needed here.

You cannot use government for social engineering, which is what many here are proposing to do with fuel taxes and increasing CAFE standards. In fact, I think it's wrong to try and make other people's choices for them. Even if they turn out to be the wrong ones, as many SUV buyers are discovering now.

SUVs sold well in the 90s because that's what people wanted to buy. The auto companies didn't force them on us. They responded to consumer demand, culminating in bohemoths like the Ford Expedition and the H1 (both of which are now out of production). But the market changes fast. Now we have the Prius, Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris, and various crossover vehicles that get better mileage displacing SUVs. The market is responding at it should.

Joseph: Which is why I take that report with a healthy amount of skepticism, but regard the exploration as worthwhile.

A good friend of mine was in college back when the oil exploration business went bust in the early 80s. He was training to be a petroleum geologist. It understandably changed his career plans. A few weeks ago I read that the industry is now booming again, and is undergoing the first retooling in about 30 years. New rigs are being built. There's a big shortage. At these prices, even shale oil is looking viable.

So no, it's not a coincidence. There was just no incentive to invest in exploration or new production at $20 a barrel. This is basic economics at work.

I have mixed feelings about the current high prices. On one hand, we're moving faster and faster towards alternatives that will reduce our dependence on imports. On the other, prices will keep increasing until something in the economy breaks. The IEA said last Friday that they're seeing signs that prices have started pushing down demand. But new capacity--if there is any and we haven't hit peak--won't come online for years. Even if we opened ANWR today it would take five years to see anything from it.

I'm done here.

Cervus:
There is also a big deficit in geophysicists and similar science/engineering/technology specialists partly due to the bust in the 80's and our present fossil fuel boom. All the innovators and brains went Green, business, or I.T. (information tech/techboom)

One phrase "ed": Shaped charge. A properly constructed one will punch through 100mm+ of steel armor at 10+ meters. Sheet metal is gonna do squat. The Sadr goons and Badr boys got their training and supplies for these nasty bombs and mines from Iran (IRGC) to use against Coalition/Iraqi Army forces. Hezbollah helped out too, with training and demonstrations, in simulated and actual ambushes. The roads are the main means of travel for all three sides (a:civilians,b:Coalition/Iraqi,c:insergents /foreign mujahideen/foreign agents/criminals/organised crime). 13 Sunni/mixed cities, 13 highways connecting them. You control the cities, control the highways, the insurgency decreases to the point that political compromise/ solution will finish off the fighting. Tal Afar, and Fallujah went through this with US in the lead. Samara, Mosul, Baghdad, and maybe Basra will be next. The next two years will not be pleasant.

Looking around I think there is a significant proportion of the population who would sell off their children's future ie college tuition to be able to drive a huge Stupid Useless Vehicle. That is why some standards must be in place. The market is fine if everyone were rational. One thing ecomomists ignore is one day there will be no oil so simple supply and demand only works if you have some supply for there to be a demand. Better we put reasonable rational standards in place and stop relying on the market which fails to add damage to the environment and future supply failure in the future. Don't we have a responsibilty to future generations?

One more thing. Just because you may have a big family it doesn't mean you need a Stupid Useless Vehicle to drive them around in. You know before Stupid Useless Vehicles appeared believe it or not people with big families were able to get around. And if you equate big with safe you should see some of the crappy crash tests these babies get mangled in. Of course being big does mean their mass is a concern for other drivers of reasonably sized cars. Trucks! Don't make me laugh the only truck use I see generally are people who have to haul groceries. That is not to say that some do not have a legitimate use for large trucks, maybe 5% of the people who currently own one if that much. By the way I own a small Nissan 2WD pickup and own a cherry orchard in Lake Chelan Washington at the end of a rough dirt road with switchbacks maybe 10% of the time I need a big truck for hauling rock of large amounts of lumber for which I keep an old K20 chevy around which maybe sees 200 miles a year.

I can't believe all the posts: almost 50 and this article is not even a day old!

All I have to say is I sure am glad I own a 2.3 liter vtec four cylinder older Honda Odyssey. With only a 50 litre tank it still cost me 40 (american) bucks to fill it up here in the States today. Ouch! It's quite a bit more in Canada. It's got to hurt to own a big suv right now. maybe I can keep the odyssey another 10 years and still sell it for mucho $$$!

From the RAV4 EV positing. I though it made sense to appear on this thread as well...

"...sport cars are also to be thrown in the SUV fire because they do run at best at 11 mpg.
However, there are thousands of more SUVs/PU-Ts than SCs.

Anway, you're missing the point and you are hiding behind the "payload" excuse that apparently every SUV and pick-up truck owner is so concerned....yeah right!
How many thousands of SUVs and pick-up trucks have I seen never hauling a single thing. I don't disagree that [see the new H1 posting] some people needs heavy vehicles to pull heavy weights, but then those are called contractors and not 18yo "Jennifer" from Beverly Hills... or Brittney from Topeka for that matter.

The problem with the US driver mentality is old and it is time to change it. The famous say "the bigger-the better" doesn't work anymore, [never worked for decades for that matter], and people in this country must do their part in saving the planet by reducing tail-pipe pollution, as well as stop importation of blodd stained petroleum from the middle east!

FS
EV Fanatic/Visionary

Raf; You could afford to be averse to all things militaristic because the U.S. has provided your defense for 60 years.Do you think the USSR may have advanced beyond East Berlin without the presence of U.S. troops?

Iran has recently procured long range missiles from North Korea that put you squarely in their sights.This is why Merkel and Chirac are involved in this go round.

Arent their skinhead groups and neo nazis in Germany?All societies have their extremes.I have never fired a gun and most people I know have never done so.The American cowboy applies to a certain segment of society not to 280.000,000 people.

I wish that mankind was advanced to a postwar status but it has not.I therefore do not apologize for a robust military and a distrust of the ambitions of the mahmouds {ahmadinejab} of the world.He and his ilk will destroy your morally superior society as soon as they are able.

Wow, talk about a wild tangent. H-1 = America/Klingon Empire. Ugh. Silliness. Grow up already.

I, for one, loved the aesthetic of the H-1. Amazing off-road ability too (in the proper environment). I will probably get one in a couple years for next to nothing, convert it to run on waste vegetable oil, and use it on the farm, as well as for some fun. Not an everyday commuter, though. ;)