OT: Gas Prices

[Renegade 13]

Rollo said:
Just for reference, gas currently costs about $6.00 per gallon where I live.

What is your complaint about US gas prices exactly?

I too am not sure what American's are complaining about. Currently, where I live, we're paying approx. $1.15/liter!. Taking into account the difference between Canadian and American dollars and converting liters to gallons, we in Canada are paying the equivalent of $3.83/gallon!

According to Will, you're only paying about $2.75 per gallon. We're paying over a dollar more per gallon than you are, and up here in Canada the average distance a person has to travel per year is much farther than the average American...the country is larger and less populous, equalling greater travel distances, on average. Not to mention rural people like me, who have much much farther distances to travel of average...

I'd say you have it pretty easy.

[Atrocities]

Rollo said:
Just for reference, gas currently costs about $6.00 per gallon where I live.

What is your complaint about US gas prices exactly?

We so not live where you live. And your cost per gallon of gas is mostly tax and not Oil Company Greed.

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Atrocities said:

We so not live where you live. And your cost per gallon of gas is mostly tax and not Oil Company Greed.

I live near Rollo it seems..
As for USA maybe you shouldn't have Oil Company executives as Government heads ?

[shinigami]

Are the oil companies sticking it to us? Sure they are.

Should the government do something about it? No, its called free enterprise. You have the option to not pay that outrageous price for gas. Of course, if you exercise that choice then you may also be choosing to not work and by extension, not eat, but you do have that choice.

Seriously, I don't feel that it is the government's place to step in and do something about high prices. History has shown that whenever the price of a product goes higher than the market will bear people will start to find alternatives.

Now, having said all that, I do believe that the oil lobby uses our government to squash any alternatives that come along. My solution, ban all lobbying of Congress.

[PvK]

Gas companies are ripping US customers off, using the excuses of current events (Gulf war, hurricanes) to raise prices even though it just means billions of profit for them.

Gas costs $6.00 outside the US because the governments are less supportive of mass consumption of fuel (fewer subsidies, more tax).

More important though is global warming and destruction caused by human carbon emissions. Humans are killing the planet, essentially because we are selfish short-sighted morons, and that's way more important than "prices at the pump", whatever pleasure some people have from commuting to a city job as the only passenger in a ridiculously enormous truck or SUV, and so on. As more and more countries (or just China, all by itself) motorize on the American model, good luck for the planet's ecology.

PvK

[PvK]

No, media is late to the game. I've been listenning to the scientists who have been saying this for decades, and who are saying it louder and louder as things get worse and worse. Yes there have been ice age cycles in the past, but we are also accelerating things a lot. Greenhouse gasses from life are a cyclical system, but humans are defossilizing huge amounts of carbon and dumping it into the atmosphere, which is not part of the cycle except when a major asteroid has hit the planet and has caused mass extinctions. Only this time, we're making our own. I am really worried about what has been said recently about the effects of ocean warming, and the general health of the oceans, and of birds and other animals, and eventually us (though we're the only ones who may deserve to be extinct...).

[PvK]

Ya, or an asteroid strike. So, you're saying, we may as well cause cataclysms ourselves?

Y'know, that SUV blocking my view would have flown off the bridge if the driver had a natural stroke or heart attack, so I may as well have shoved them off the bridge. Falling to its death was a natural process which I just helped along, and I profitted from it, so it's all good, right?

PvK

[Renegade 13]

PvK said:
Ya, or an asteroid strike. So, you're saying, we may as well cause cataclysms ourselves?

Y'know, that SUV blocking my view would have flown off the bridge if the driver had a natural stroke or heart attack, so I may as well have shoved them off the bridge. Falling to its death was a natural process which I just helped along, and I profitted from it, so it's all good, right?

PvK

Nope. I think we should do what we can to keep emissions low, within reason.

However, it won't take much for nature to undo anything mankind tries to do (as has been shown multiple times in the past). If something like Krakatoa erupts again...well that'd put a chunk of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, many of them worse than just CO2 (water vapor for one is worse than CO2 if I recall correctly, methane as well for retaining heat).

Comparing an erupting volcano to pushing a person of a bridge...well that's just ludicrous.

[ToddT]

In regurds to gas/oil prices, you guys are leaving out the speculators and hedges funds, that have a intrest in driving up prices for their own needs.

gloabal warming, volcues do spew a lot of gases,b ut the also seend large quanties of ash into the upper atmaosphere causeing temps to actually drop. Mt pinatoba (sp) causes a slight drop for around a year.
that also applie to all exaust emissions, they contain particulate matter that has the same effect. so both the burining of oil has been sending both componets into the atmosphere. one tends to cause heating the other cooling.
funny thing particulate emmissions from us and europe are dropping, but are rising in china and india. cleaning up the the particulate emmisions are easy, the co2...........

[Atrocities]

People in the US started buying those huge SUV's because gas was affordable and the big SUV's were something that the Jones had so they had to have em.

I hate huge cars, SUV's, and most huge trucks. I don't see a purpose to them if your not using them to hull things and or huge amounts of people.

Now Gas prices have spiked and the poor are being priced right off the road. There are calls by some to raise the gas tax in order to "punish" SUV drivers. To me that is just utterly [censored] silly. The only ones who would be hurt by a $3.00 gas tax would be people like me who can barely aford the current price of gas. Hell I am about $0.50 per gallon away from being permentaly forced off the road. And I am not alone.

Higher gas prices serve only to make the roads less congested for the rich, the very people who can aford higher prices and taxes. The people who buy and drive those huge mother [censored] SUV's in the first place.

Ya, lets punish them by raising the price of gas to the point where only they can aford to drive. Ya, what a real incentive for them to stop driving those gas guzzling SUV's, price the poor and lower income right off the road and presto... no more congestion. Ya, bang on idea there guys.

Less drives, as we all know the ratio, 80% of Americans are at the poverty level or within a pay check of it, so by raising the gas prices to $4.00 and higher per gallon, most of us will be priced right off the road. Less drivers means less congestion. Not nessassarly less polution mind you, as those who can aford to buy those huge SUV's, will still be out their driving them, but with far less traffic.

But hey, this is progress in a free market so who am I to *****.