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Rising
Gas Prices
by
Peary Perry | |
Most
of us are honest, hardworking folks just trying to get along and raise our families
and have a little peace and quiet along the way. In today’s turbulent times this
is getting harder and harder to achieve. First off, last month the Texas legislature
(most likely not any different the rest of the nation) passed and enacted over
700 new laws to become effective on September 1st. So now, we have more restrictions
to deal with. Wonderful.
Secondly, most of us have to take out a loan to
be able to fill up the gas tanks on our cars. We’ve had hurricanes before and
yet any time anyone sneezes in any part of the world the gas per gallon goes up.
We are all dying here and yet no one seems to care or is concerned. The prices
rise like a rocket and go lower like a feather. Fast on the way up and slow on
the way down. Now, the reason for the price increase in gasoline we are told is
the demand in China. Excuse me, but the last photos I saw of the population over
there showed most of them riding bicycles in all of the major cities.
So, where did they acquire all of these cars that need the gasoline? Seems to
me the US automakers were in a severe hurt and were having to come up with all
kinds of incentives to sell their production. Did I miss something and somehow
in the past year or so, the Chinese economy grew at such a rapid pace that everyone
is now driving their own automobile around and needing more gas?
To say
the market is volatile is probably the greatest understatement of the year. The
market is running on the premise that anything can and will affect the price of
oil per barrel. If one of the daughters of one of the sheiks in Saudi Arabia fails
a class and he gets in a bad mood, the price is going to go up on a barrel of
oil. Heaven help us if someone runs into his Mercedes.
In the meantime,
the oil companies in this country are running record earnings for the past couple
of years. “Gee, we’re sorry, but oil is going up, so that just means we’ll have
to charge more, oh yes and by the way that means we make more for our shareholders.”
You tell me, that there isn’t a way out there to make fuel cheaper and more affordable.
The Germans were doing it in 1940, what happened to that deal? In fact the Germans
are currently looking at ways to resurrect this process. My question, is why aren’t
we doing the same?
I suppose you’re going to tell me that the US auto
makers don’t know how to get more miles per gallon out of a vehicle, either….if
the government told them we had to have 50 miles per gallon fuel efficiency or
you couldn’t sell their cars in this country, what do you think would happen?
You and I both know the answer to this one.
Our current recycling efforts
are a joke. We toss our glass, paper and plastic into little containers that go
to land fills or to companies who get subsidies for collecting them and never
actually recycling them back into production. Look at the corruption in this industry
across the nation. It makes you want to go back to telling the clerk at the grocer
you want ‘paper’ instead of plastic. What’s the use of trying?
Nope, we’re
just like the blind leading the blind. We are a reactive nation, rather than a
proactive nation. We’ve known that our dependency on foreign oil has been going
up for the past twenty years and not one of the administrations; both republican
and democratic have chosen to do anything about it. We just stick our collective
heads in the sand and act as if there isn’t anything wrong and that all will be
ok. We build and buy (I’m as guilty as the next person) bigger and larger gas
guzzling behemoths and fly into the face of conventional wisdom thinking somehow
it will all be all right.
Oil is like land, they aren’t making anymore
of it.
Maybe we need to advertise this fact. | | |
