Re: E-85

Sorry, MTB416, we are not "battling the richest of the rich in the entire world." We ARE the richest of the rich. As Pogo once said - "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Every time any one of us turns on his/her computer, or sends an email, or adds to this thread, or drives by him/herself to work or the supermarket, we consume energy and we are exploiting other resources. The plastic that is the case of the computer, or the dashboard or seat of the car, or synthetics that are the clothes we wear comes from oil (or in some cases coal, and a very few cases corn). The paints we use to paint our houses mostly come from coal and oil. The fertilizers, pesticides, and fuel for the tractors that raise the crops we eat directly as plant products or indirectly as meat products, all come from oil.

I asked the question earlier in this thread of how much energy is consumed in driving to the hills for a hike (or commuting to work or to the grocery store, or just in one year of driving), counting the gasoline only. Nobody answered. Was it that hard to figure out? Or were people too frightened by the answer? Well, here's a partial clue - commuting 10 miles each way to work consumes as much energy in half a year as the average US household consumes in electricity in a year. Our biggest energy usage is our cars. Why? Because, despite the cries of "price gouging", gas is cheap, and far cheaper in the US than elsewhere in the world (except for a few heavily subsidized countries like Iran and Venezuela).

In the first Arab Oil Embargo, when we were living in Boston, gas was 29 cents a gallon before, then jumped to almost 50 cents a gallon. Predictions were that people would switch to mass transit if gas ever got to 75 cents, or, horrors, to $1/gallon. A couple years ago, it was said that people would stop driving if gas hit $2/gallon, then a year ago, the magic number was $3/gallon. Yet the decrease in driving has been miniscule. People keep driving in Europe at $5/gallon. The median family income in the US is something like $50,000, so driving the average of 12,000 miles per year at 20 mpg, means 600 gallons, which is only $1800 per year in gas (the other car expenses are much greater, especially the loss through depreciation). That's less than 4% of the average family's income. That's trivial, miniscule, negligible. People think nothing these days of buying a $2000 flat screen TV to hang on the wall, plus over $100/month ($1200/yr) for the cable connection. Why should they worry about less than $2000/year on gas. Ok, so the SUV consumes 10 mpg, or $3600 per year for gas. That's still less than 10% of the average family income. For the 20 mpg car, if conversion were 100% efficient, that's 21,000 kw-hr/year, or about twice the average US household uses in electricity in the house (the 10 mpg SUV uses about 4x the average household use in energy).

In other words, gas is cheap (just under 9 cents/KW-hr for $3/gallon gas), but everyone likes to complain while continuing to fill up. Frankly, I don't believe it will change until gas gets to $10-$20/gallon (and maybe not even then).