A little humor the start the week, but also a very serious matter. Americans, Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives all have something in common. They cannot afford the ever increasing cost of a gallon of gas. These prices are turning our country, one not prepared to institute public transportation, into a screaming mad house. We have to do something, but what do we do?
When the left yells buy hybrids, the right says buck up and take it, we ignore the vast amount of people that live in this country that both can't afford to by one of these hybrid cars and also can't really buck up and take the prices either.
It is time to hold the oil companies accountable, OPEC accountable, and our elected leaders accountable for this national disaster. If you want us to buy hybrids start helping us purchase them. Stop spending money on new highways and build some public transportation. We can't ride public trans if it doesn't exist.
It is up to the American people to help find the solutions to this problem . Like I have advocated in the past here are some options to save you at the pump. Take a bus, ride your bike, carpool, but please don't stop going to shop and eat out. Us servers and retail employees really really really need your money... we need jobs too haha.
-Zak
3 comments:
It aint got shit to do with "public transportation" or holding anyone accountable.
It has to do with the demand for energy.
What u think moves "public transportation"? OIL.................... hydrocarbons........ that's what!
Supply and demand, and oil.............. its what runs the damn world.
FACT of the matter is gasoline should be higher than it is if you take inflation into account. We as Americans got spoilt by cheap ass gas for many many years. ONLY because barrels of oil was cheap and it was cheap to refine it.
Its over 8.00 a gallon is Europe!
Cheap gas and cheap oil...............NOT any more. The barrels of oil are expensive and the cost to refine it is very expensive due to government regulations.
ExxonMobil is a fortune 500 company that is ranked around 300. So that leaves MANY more corporations taking in ALLOT more profit than ExxonMobil does.
Gasoline is never going to be "cheap" again!
The demand for the raw oil is to great.
OPEC is not going to add more oil to the market just to bring the price down. BECAUSE OPEC puts enough oil into the market to meet demand. That's all they are going to do. Why should they flood the market with their product just to lower prices?
Only two ways to bring the price of the raw oil down.
Drill our own oil reserves around here or kick someone's ass and take it!
That's it.
Until then , we will pay what the market sets the price at. Thats the end of that.
I've said it a million times before, there is NO damn alternative fuel!
Its either a fuel or it aint, its not free. It all comes from somewhere!
Yes Jase but,
If people carpool, if they use buses, subways, lightrail, you are transporting ten to twenty time more people for less gas, and therefore you are able to make that form of transportation more affordable. A one way bus ticket in Nashville-Davidson costs 1.25, an all day pass is less than 5 dollars. It is more price-centric to encourage more forms of mass transit than continue to build highways that nobody can afford to drive on anymore.
-zak
I disagree !
Its basic physics.
A gallon of gas possesses roughly 130,000 BTUs of energy.
A gallon of diesel possesses roughly 150,000 BTUs of energy.
A gallon of propane liquefied gas possesses roughly 10,000 BTUs of energy.
To keep things simple.
A car uses fuel to propel its weight, this includes the vehicle itself plus passenger and cargo weight.
If you load the car down with four people, it uses more fuel.
A bus may hold 50 people but it is consuming the amount of BTUs necessary to move itself, its passengers and its cargo!
NO matter how u slice it, fuel is energy that can be measured. It takes a certain amount of energy to do anything.
How about this............
100 watts of power will power a 100 light bulb.
If you put two one hundred watt light bulbs on the same circuit................. you get two bulbs putting out 50 watts of heat. Some of that heat obviously will be light, most though will be heat.
Just cuz you put more bulbs on the same circuit don't mean your getting more "efficiency"............ you aint. And you CANT.
Obviously there are ways to squeeze more bang out of the same amount of energy. Such as a fluorescent light, you use less energy and obtain the same amount of visible light.
Unfortunately.................... we have gotten the internal combustion engine about as "fuel efficient" as its going to get.
Mass transit has its place. New York city for instance cannot function without such a system.
However, I would dare to bet that the mass transit system of New York city uses as much if not more BTUs of energy than would be used if those folks all drove individual cars.
Bet it !
I've crunched numbers for a long time on allot of different things.
The only thing I have ever found that equals up to a fuel savings is carpooling.
I will not get into the reasons why because it is way to complicated to type in this blog.
I will however tell you that a BUS is NOT fuel efficient and actually adds to congestion and pollution for many different reasons.
And on the subway systems of New York................ ConEddison Electric stocks would not be trading for what they do today if it wasn't for those subs!
Oh and BTW ...... ConEddison buys its power for a distributor in New England that generates 85% of its energy from GASP........... coal.
:)
Cave men use to kill for fire way back in the day.
Now folks kill for oil.
If the world does not self destruct in a thousand years, folks will be killing one another for some other fuel in the future.
Question is................... where is the breaking point?
When the economy sinks into oblivion, soup lines are forming and nothing is getting accomplished then the superpowers of the world will realize how important energy truely is. Then and only THEN will the superpowers of the world do something about it.
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