OK, you’re not talking about him. You mean the others, the guys I work with. Yes, it’s true.

One of them uses his to haul wood. Another tows his boat with his pickup. I’m not convinced that world energy consumption would be lower if they have two vehicles instead, because that second one requires a lot of energy to produce.

Markets are usually pretty good at sorting this stuff out. i don’t know anyone too stupid to figure out his own best solution for $4 gas. The government, OTOH, does one-size-fits-all and poorly at that.

And nobody wants to win the war (let’s be specific: the war in Iraq, and the one in Afghanistan/Pakistan too) more than me – I have a son in the military, and spent a couple of years in Fort Bragg myself. If there’s a war to be won in oil production, it currently would be against the dog-in-the-manger Democrats who deny us the domestic petroleum resources already known to exist. They’re using environmentalism as a disguise for economic manipulation of the whole US population. I hope it backfires spectacularly to win us (the ordinary citizens using the superb technology of the internal combustion engine) a minimum of politically-imposed restrictions on our free choices of the routing and scheduling of our travels.

Oh, blablabla, Insuffish…. This isn’t bigotry, it’s common sense. Ninety percent of the SUVs I see being driven around have one person in them, going to work or elsewhere. Meanwhile they are sending gazillions of oil dollars to our enemies. The oil sheiks are buying up Manhattan… they just bought the Chrysler Building today… You like that?

This isn’t about class war. It’s about real war. You want to win it or not? Doesn’t sound to me like you do. You just want to be right about some boring ideological point.

Market solutions aren’t attractive because of some uber ideological purity. They tend to produce results. Some things are problematic to simply leave to the market, but gasoline is a commodity that can be owned. Collecting oil, refining it into other products, and distributing it via sales are all amenable to various market pressures.

One nit to pick. Oil is not simply about gasoline for cars. Petroleum is essential to living in modernity in its entirety. This is not simply about driving cars. Oil is needed for all kinds of synthetic products. You can’t make clothes, carpet, beverage containers, IV lines, plastic you-name-its out of wind or sunlight. Oil is here to stay even if we drive our cars using the power of our own farts.

In the end, this is more about control. The elites have never liked to share easier transportation with the “masses”, be it horses, chariots, trains, planes or automobiles. Our new elites are repeating the same old pattern. It’s just that they get to fly while we take the bus or ride a bike when a few centuries ago, it was they take a coach or yacht while we walk.

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/03/massive-oil-field-found-in.html

http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2008/06/america-has-enough-oil-to-be-1-oil.html

The bigotry against SUVs is carried to extremes, and members of the anti-SUV cult should search their souls to determine if their desire for resource conservation isn’t wildly exceeded by their antipathy towards the human beings to whom SUVs are very practical transportation. Class warfare aint pretty, and environmentalism is a flimsy disguise for it.

Let’s assume that the ‘we knows best’ Democrats can be frightened into permitting more domestic oil production, under threat of a whole population turning electorally against those who play dog in the manger to prevent affordable automotive transportation. Even if development of ANWR, the coastal shelves and the vast oil shale deposits were to start tomorrow, it will be some years before the benefits of that production hit the markets. High gas prices are the real world for the near future. Said prices, surprise surprise, will cause the production of a class of autos with greatly reduced fuel consumption, by natural market forces – including SUVs whose carrying capacity has always been more important than the muscle motor.

And if sufficient nuclear plants may also be constructed, the electric auto may eventually become feasible, provided that storage batteries are also made an order of magnitude more efficient than those now sold.

As anyone with half a brain could see the market is the best mechanism to allocate scarce resources and the drop in SUV sales is an example.

What needs to be made more clear is that there are two totally separate energy problems.

1) vehicle fuel
2) electricity generation

The former is where oil is needed the most. I’ve not heard of an all electric airplane.

For the other we HAVE an excellent alternative to fossil fuels with nuclear. We could also build nuclear powered ships to replace the diesel guzzling ships of today. THAT’s where we should be concentrating.

Government isn’t needed to finance every possible alternative. If it works, investment won’t be a problem.

What Gov’t needs to do is make sure that the rules and regulations are done in such a way as to make any technology easy to implement from a regulatory standpoint while still being safe.

I don’t want to see Liberian registry of nuclear ships.

But Gov’t is best at getting in the way of new ideas to protect those rent-seekers and special interests that might be opposed. In this case that especially includes the Gaia worshiping cult.

Wind and Solar will never have more than an effect at the margins cause physics can’t be denied.

Hydrogen is interesting but I have one question…
since one of the much touted benefits of hydrogen power is that it’s exhaust is only water vapor, and, given that water vapor is by far the worst of the green house gases, how is large scale hydrogen power going to stop global warming?