Anes Weblog

Back when I was a kid, I read in a school textbook that we only had about 20 years more of oil. They where wrong. But at the same time, they pointed out one fact: Oil was getting scarcer, and scarce things tend to cost more — especially if people start using more of them.

We should open our history books and remember a few decisions we have taken, consciously, that have increased the likelihood of an oil price increase:

• SUVs - Nuff Said.
  
• Cozy Homes - The other day a bunch of people looked funny when I was telling them about how cold are the nights in Bogota, Colombia. They thought that everyone in the world had a heating system that kept their homes at a confy 72F degrees. No, this is not the case. Most areas in the world where the temperature do not fall below freezing do not have a heating system. You just use more blankets! Turn the thermostat down! [to 65F]– Jimmy Carter (BTW, Sweaters and Jackets can look nice.)
• Nuclear Plants - We haven’t built ‘em. In 1979 people got scared with the Three Mile Island incident. France has most of their power from them (those green, tree huggers know exactly how to produce green energy - they even make tons of Euros out of it).
• Artic Refuge Drilling - We haven’t done it. Clinton Vetoed. Bush couldn’t get Congress to pass anything he said (independent of the validity of it).
• E85 - Why don’t we have a tax credit for people buying flexible fuel vehicles? We had it for hybrids. BTW, why don’t we expand the one on hybrids as well - maybe increase it only for U.S. produced hybrids so that we can help the auto workers at the same time and please both parties.
• Stop Buying Trinkets - Every time you buy a trinket from China (or other country), you send money overseas. The trade balance gets against us — more dollars in circulation than the world needs — lowering our currency and increasing the price of oil.

Who knows what the future will hold? But following the1973 and 1979 oil crisis, we got the 1980’s Oil Glut - incredibly low prices that got ourselves comfortably seated in greenhouse gas emitting SUVs.