Comments on: Gas Price Got You Down?

By: dave

dave — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:17:14 +0000

Ok , I don’t want to sound as a typical capitolist…… but , ethanol , and greasal are food products. Now with ethanol , the problem is that the farmers (also corp farms) get encentives to produce for fuel. So a farmer would make more income for producing corn for fuel than for food. Then we get higher and higher food prices due to corn. At the present rate of consumption of fuel , there really isn’t enough corn to make this a realistic alternative. Waste veggie oil , is however a product that is to be discarded , so there for , in its true sense it shouldn’t impact the prices or availability of food. We need more domestic oil production right now. I know that this may ot sit well with the majority of people who read this , but for me it is true. Ideas like cutting down on driving are great , but what if you have to drive alot for work. My former job(was laid off recently) had me putting an average of 50,000 to 60,000 miles a year on my SUV , for me it would be impossible to reduce my driving and maintain that job. I do know that during hurricane katrina , the storm passed over many oil drilling platforms , none of which had accidents or leaked. I believe a responsible and cautious move to more drilling for the immediate increase in oil is a good thing. Again , for those of us who work for a living that requires us to drive so much , even a 50 cent drop in gas prices would help out alot. Also I know from some research(don’t have the links to yet post) the oil companies are making a smaller profit than most corps , on a percentage basis. but due to the amount of product sold , the pennies add up to billions. but our own government makes more “profit” off of oil than the companies that actually work to produce it. The short term need would seem to be to increase domestic production and wean off of foreign oil. but then we as a whole need to steer away from the “fake” alternatives like ethanol and “hybrids” and really shift to something more like hydrogen fuel cell technology. Very low impact on the earth , and renewable. but i do know that congress is as much to blame for the current prices of fuels , with all of their amazing regulations imposed on companies , there has been no real incentive to change , or drill , because there is little to no chance of making a profit. And like I said this will probably not sit well with some of you , but I am just voicing my take on the matter. Profit , however an evil ideal it may seem has always been a good driving force behind advances in technology. And like I said my bias comes from the “get er done” status of jobs , construction and telecommunications , where those of us in those fields are heavily dependant on trucks and transportation to make our work possible. I could always look into a new career , but in a state where jobs are getting scarce , it seems unrealistic at this point to change and take a job that would pay 1/4 of what i am making , which would basically put me on the streets , homeless until I could get an invatation to the local county “hotel”. I would just hope that we all could see that sometimes protecting the earth can go wrong , and cause a mass fear of “global warming” which intern , if you really look into it , you will find that there is a lot of profit to be made by corps from goiong green. carbon credits , … good ol Gore stands to make a killing with the latest round of terrorist green thinking, I am still open to alternative , and I don’t want my opinions to be taken wrong. The earth is important and protecting the beauty of it matters alot , but i believ that we can do both , drill and explore the resources here and keep the impact low.

By: MaryAlive

MaryAlive — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:15:23 +0000

I think we are on the same train of thought on this subject. And I agree that it will be cool to see how we will dream up solutions to the obvious problem of gas dependency.
Thanks so much for the response:)

By: nicole

nicole — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:27:48 +0000

Mary those are great points. I don’t think that veggie oil is really the answer at all. That is clear to see by the fact that only diesel engines can be converted to run off of it. And there area ll sorts of questions about what running your car off of oil will do to the food supply… But I do like the fact that it is one way to get around the power of big oil. I agree though that driving less is a great idea. I am excited about other creative ways folks will find to either run their cars on alternative energy sources or else get around not using their cars as much. I really feel like the place we are in as far as oil is concerned kind of sucks, but ultimately opens up a world of possible solutions. Thanks for your thoughts!

By: MaryAlive

MaryAlive — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:05:47 +0000

So, I’m totally NOT bashing the idea of running off of veggie oil, because obviously its beneficial, and works well for mewithoutYou, Psalters, and others, but is it a sufficient substitute for gasoline? With the way we are using gasoline, will we be able to produce enough veggie oil to run a good portion of our engines off of? Or is it only meant to be one subsitute? For all I know there could very easily be enough left over veggie oil to run a good portion of our engines off of, but its just something we need to think about if we are going to propose it as a real possibility. (not to mention that a good solution MIGHT be learning to drive less, but that’s beside the point when trying to present veggie oil to non-supporters)
Grace&Peace
MaryAlive