Does Ibrahim Hooper, reacting indignantly to Donald Rumsfeld’s remark about Muslim aversion to work resulting from oil wealth, think that the world has failed to notice what goes on in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and every else where the Arabs, through an accident of geology, have acquired great, continuing, and completely undeserved wealth? Does he think the world doesn’t know about the millions of wage-slaves, working away in Saudi Arabia, some of them at the bottom hideously mistreated -- from the house slaves who include girls from southeast Asia whose duties encompass all kinds of activities, to the street-sweeping Pakistanis and Indians, to the South Korean building contractors, to the engineers and doctors and other professionals from Europe and America at what might appear to be the top, save for the contumely with which they are treated?
Everyone in the world knows that the Saudis do not work, have not worked, and will not work. A few go to the office for a few hours. Officially the work day for Saudis is about three hours, where they chatter and check on their investments and busily order non-Saudis about. And the same goes for the Emirates and Kuwait and the rest of these places. Every single expatriate who has endured, for the dough, these awful -- morally awful, socially awful -- places knows this, and comes away merely counting the banknotes as the only consolation.
The Administration should be figuring out every possible way to diminish the oil wealth of the rich Arab and Muslim states. In so doing, it will necessarily have to tax oil and, especially, gasoline. It ought to have done so long ago, in 1973, in order then to recapture oligopolistic rents that otherwise were going to OPEC oil producers. The gasoline tax should have been imposed with great fanfare, and the government should have committed to a steady rise in that tax, ensuring to car manufacturers, and to those in charge of mass transit programs, that the price would never go down. A powerful Saudi lobby, consisting of all those who were sure, or at least pretended to be sure, that Saudi Arabia was our "ally" and would ensure "price moderation" (whatever that meant), helped prevent such an energy policy. The Western hirelings of Saudi Arabia have not only helped them to continue to fund, without being stopped, mosques and madrasas and campaigns of Da'wa all over the West, but have helped them to prevent an energy policy that might have headed off the environmental disasters, including the loss of 90% of the world's species, that are now almost certain to occur.
Though Saudi Arabia and the other undeservedly rich Arab and Muslim oil states have been the recipients of the largest transfer of wealth in human history, some ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone (and there was plenty in the decades before that), without having lifted a finger to deserve it, they have failed everywhere to create modern economies. Now they talk grandly of "economic cities" they will build. But what Saudis have learned, or will learn, how to work? The Muslim Arab tradition honors not work but rather wealth gathered through raiding parties, or from the Jizyah received from non-Muslims, or from trading. Nothing is made by the Saudis or other Arab oil sheikdoms and countries. Nothing is offered by way of services. They are rentier states. And what is still more maddening, they have somehow been allowed to get the Western world to pay for, to offer up a disguised Jizyah to, all of the oil-poor Arabs and Muslims. It is not Saudi Arabia that spent tens of billions on aid to Iraq, not Saudi Arabia that has given Egypt more than $60 billion in the last few decades, or close to $30 billion (Selig Harrison's calculation) to Pakistan since the 9/11/2001 attacks. It is not Saudi Arabia but the West that keeps piling money into the pockets of the corrupt "Palestinian" Authority, billions of which disappeared when Arafat died (where did it go? does anyone care?), and that continues to go to Arafat's cronies, now performing their routine as mild-mannered and sober and eminently trustworthy accountants.
And within the Western world, the rates of criminality, and of living off of the dole, of taking maximum advantage of everything the welfare state of the Infidels offers -- of Muslim immigrants, as compared to any other group -- is sky-high. It's not surprising. Infidels owe Muslims the Jizyah. And as Muslim clerics have noted, in those cases where the Jizyah cannot yet be demanded, it is the right of local Muslims to help themselves.
Hooper would like us not to notice all of this. He would like us not to notice how the Saudis, and the assorted sheiks of Araby in the Emirates and Kuwait and elsewhere, do nothing, save for that gaudy island of vulgarity, Dubai, which in fact is mostly the product not of Arabs but of Iranian money, and which, architecturally, and economically, represents nothing but a glossy collection of the most unappealing luxury apartments in a place that is only superficially modern. As the family of a fifteen-year-old French boy, M. Robert, raped by several local men, found out, underneath the glittering surface, the supposed modernity, the primitive and vicious nature of the regime and the people -- what one may call the real Dubai -- still remains.
"Money can buy everything, except civilization." It is our duty to limit the sums available to the rich Arabs, to threaten -- or more than threaten -- to seize their assets in the West. What can they do in return? Stop selling oil? We should also insist that they stop spending money in our countries to spread Islam in every way possible. We have ways. We just don't use them, because we have wrongly believed, without any analysis, that it is we who need them. Not at all. And finally, a full stop to all further transfers of Infidel wealth, beyond that required to pay for oil and gas -- no more disguised Jizyah to Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, the "Palestinians" or any other Muslims. Let them go to Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and ask for some handouts from their fellow Muslims, fellow members of the umma. Whether their requests are granted, or granted fully, hardly matters. The very sense, among the poor Arabs and Muslims, that the rich ones are not sharing, will cause all kinds of disruption, disgruntlement, and strife within the Camp of Islam.
And that internal weakening of the Camp of Islam and hence of Jihad is, or should be, the main goal of the Infidels from here on out. No boots on the ground necessary. Just preventing (from the air) any further acquisitions of major weaponry, and a steady steely determination to reverse the Muslim presence and therefore Muslim menace in the West, and an equally relentless determination to exploit whatever pre-existing fissures exist within the Camp of Islam. It will all be much less expensive, and much less wearying, and much more effective, than what, so far, has been the incoherent response of the American and other Western governments.
Could not agree more. Gas should be minimum of $4/gallon if not more. Our enslavement to them is entirely self-inflicted.
There's an ex-pat joke about working over there: when you arrive, they give you two buckets. One is for money, the other is for shit. You leave when one is full.
This reminds me of a story I was told (supposedly true) by someone who had worked in Saudi Arabia. He knew a Saudi who had a job - and then went and hired a Pakistani to do it for him at a far lower wage. The Saudi pocketed the difference.
I guess I'm not politically astute enough to see the big picture. Would someone explain to me how killing me at the gas station is going to hurt the Saudis?
I can think of several ways. It would make us less eager to buy gas. There is always a breaking point. It would refocus our eyes on the source of the pimps making us jump through their reality hoops for the smack which so addicts us. The Saudis are our enemies and we are not in war mode. We are in mall mode. This is not simply a war that will be fought in Iraq and then home when we have finished.
We have forgotten how wars start...always with lots of hullaballoo and predictions of a quick end to it all....til we start to slog it out. Soon the scales fall from our eyes, and we see it as survive or perish. That is what this war is. Why do we think we can outsource the hard slog for our soldiers and not bear the load ourselves? When historians write about us in the future, after we have either won or lost the war, they will not be kind, I hope.
I am waiting for a presidential candidate or political party to propose some ideas addressing some of these issues.
For instance:
1) As President, the candidate will work to stop any and all taxpayer funding going to any nation....save perhaps Israel.
2) Candidate will "encourage" wealthy gulf nations to fund huminitarian aid rather than exporting islam.
3) Opening up of US energy resources for utilization...offshore drilling, ANWR, oil shale, etc.
4) Offer closed military bases for new refineries and put a moratorium on EPA restrictions till capacity is increased.
5) Work with Brazil on developing new oil fields that were recently discovered.
I agree that the West needs to get off of its dependence on ME oil, but cutting of our hands to spite our face is not the answer.
We have a dynamic economy---every dollar increase in the price of gasoline hurts our overall economy by multiples of that dollar. The is a ripple effect---an energy cost multiplier if you will. Increases in gas prices snowball throughout the economy.
In contrast, Saudi Arabia does NOT have a dynamic economy. The multiplier is pretty much close to 1.0 in SA and the ME.
Bottom line: for every $1 we keep from the Saudis, we probably do $8-$10 of damage to ourselves. This is not a winning strategy. Such as strategy is similar to trying to build democracy in Iraq----well intentioned, but poor when one looks to the range of better tactical and strategic options.
How about drilling for oil in North America---on land and at sea? How about building more than a single nuclear power plant every 20 years? How about allowing sugar-cane ethanol to be imported into our country from Brazil without tarriff? How about using clean coal from West Virginia and liquified shale from the Canadian Rockies?
Increasing taxes on gasoline is not the answer. Our economy is one of the strongest weapons that we have. I do not support unilateral disarmament of that weapon.
Mr. Fitzgerald never mentioned the oil companies. They would be a good place to start an investigation of how Saudis and their ilk are dominating this country. But I am afraid a full-court inquiry will reach so far into the core of both parties that it will never happen.
80% of somalians (muslims) in the UK are not working and on social security (without ever having paid a penny in).
Hugh:
The Administration should be figuring out every possible way to diminish the oil wealth of the rich Arab and Muslim states. In so doing, it will necessarily have to tax oil and, especially, gasoline.
How? No American politician would dare raise taxes on Oil for fear of Americans voting them out of office for a generation. To do this would require a bipartisan consensus, continual explanation to the American voter as to why it is being done and consensus on the direction to take the country in. The fact that nothing like this happened after the oil hikes of 1973 speaks volumes about the fear.
Perhap with 9/11, the continual hostility of ME countries to USA and Global warming (as California fires this year being intense) will now concentrate the mind of the American voter about the need for alternative entergy supplies and to start buying products that are less Oil-intensive in consumption. It cannot come too soon.
And it not just the USA: we all need to have this attitude in every Western country. WE all need to reduce our footprint on the Earth.
To Abscedere and JSobieski: honestly, it infuriates me every time I hear Americans complaining about how expensive gas is. Here in Australia we already pay more than $4 per gallon (and last I checked, our economy was growing faster than yours). It's now approaching $5, which the Japanese already pay. Yes, it's a pain in the ass. But it's not the end of the world. We deal with it.
However, you are right that it is not the only answer. The alternatives that JSobieski mentioned are all part of the solution, and there are plenty of others to add to the list as well. We need alternatives, but we also need to ensure that they can compete with gasoline - the current price of which does not reflect the true damage we are doing to ourselves by financing the global jihad.
Unfortunately, we are in the middle of an election campaign over here and I have yet to hear a single word about this issue from either party.
Why should followers of the Master Religion have to work?! It's beneath them.
Hugh said....
...And the same goes for the Emirates and Kuwait and the rest of these places. Every single expatriate who has endured, for the dough, these awful -- morally awful, socially awful -- places knows this, and comes away merely counting the banknotes as the only consolation....
My cousin returned last year from working for an oil company in Kuwait. He said that they totally disgusted him. Whatever they wanted, they took, including women! Work was not on their radar. He was glad to get out!
EnricoDandolo:
Always a pleasure to hear from our allies down under. Yes, Australia, Ireland, Poland, and many other friendly places have strong economic growth--faster growth than the US. However, if the US goes into a significant recession---your countries will be impacted as well. Meanwhile, the bad guys will still make their money selling oil to China.
Cost structures are different in different countries. Australia also has lower corporate taxes and less "opportunistic" internal revenue service. A basket of different attributes make the economy what it is. If gasoline becomes more expensive and nothing else compensates the other way---look out. We are already in trouble from the credit crunch.
If we unshackle the energy industry it will generate more fuel sources of all types.
We are suffering the disadvantages of a free society by letting Saudi money come in build madrassas and mosques. Ironically, we are constraining a free society by prohibiting energy exploration and the importing of alternative fuels.
The US navy runs how many nuclear reactors without incident each year? France is powered 75% by nuclear energy. Iran, India, and everyone else is focusing on nuclear power.
Increasing taxes on gasoline is sideshow---it is not a remedy. It is the equivalent of drawing blood using a leech----you might feel like we are doing something productive, but the reality is that harm is being done instead.
If Castro died tomorrow, I would invest in making sugar cane ethanol in Cuba. One could turn Cuba into a larger energy exporter than Saudi Arabia given the high-energy density of sugar.
Instead, the US subsidizes corn ethanol, prohibits nuclear power, and leaves off shore drilling to the Chinese.
"The US navy runs how many nuclear reactors without incident each year? "
Oh, yes, incidents! But they're not about to tell us.
And there are plenty of oil spills but they're not telling.
ANd whales beaching, but hey'not going to tell us.
You know why? Because they're responsible.
Just like Cousteau discovered many years ago (few even remember Jacques Cousteau) , that 80% of the ocean is dead - no life - all fish life is gone, empty. Very few know. And they're not telling us.
"The US navy runs how many nuclear reactors without incident each year? "
A: currently: 105, cumulative since inception: 261
...NO "incidents", 2 close calls but nothing even close to serious, all without a containment vessel.
Now ya been told.
;-)
@EnricoDandolo:
I drive 28 miles round trip, each day, to and from work. Be infuriated, if it suits you.
What civilization? Saudi Arabia was all sand until the oil boom.
johnb, your story doesn't surprise me. I think that it's probably true. What gets me is that the so-called "left" in the West --supposedly devoted to the working class and equality and hostile to parasitic plutocrats-- has nothing to say in criticism of what happens in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, et al.
Some yo yo in France wrote a moonbat screed in the LeMondeDiplomatique lately arguing that the Western Left ought to support Muslim jihad because this jihad will impoverish the Western working class, and being impoverished is the only way they will rise up to create the revolutionary Marxist society. Marx himself was not so crazy. In fact, Marx did not much like Islamic society and was aware of many of the same things about it that R Spencer and Hugh F and Bat Ye'or and many others have written about it.
allat,
My pirate friend tells me that when the U.S. Navy has an incident they sink the ship with all on board. Dead men tell no tales you know. There are special submarines that do nothing but torpedo these doomed ships. That's why 80 percent of the sea is dead. Radiation.
(MontyRockIV is a crank, as anyone with a Geiger counter would be able to measure the radiation and Greenpeace would have screamed about it years ago if it was remotely true. Some things cannot be kept secret, and you'd have to be a fool to believe that anyone would try.)
The following question and statement are closely related, and deserve a thorough response.
Abscedere:
JSobieski:
According to JSobieski's argument, we would achieve huge economic growth by subsidizing gasoline until it is the same as the price in e.g. Venezuela.
Venezuela, unlike the USA, is a net petroleum exporter (for now). It can afford to pursue such policies, but the results are a cautionary tale: the non-petroleum economy of Venezuela is a shambles. Cheap gasoline is clearly NOT a guarantee of economic nirvana, even if you have more oil than you can use yourself.
More to the point, every dollar increase in the import price of oil hurts the US economy. It sucks money out of the country and increases our level of threat and cost of defense. Taxing gasoline cuts demand and REDUCES the import price of oil, and by reducing the income of the hostile oil producers it benefits our security.
Which gets back to Abscedere's plaint. I'll let you in on a little secret: the question assumes a false premise, because it wouldn't unless it was (a) done without warning, or (b) you weren't smart enough to react appropriately.
Among those acting completely inappropriately for the interests of the US public are... the Bush administration. They, and the previous Republican-dominated Congress, passed the gas-guzzler tax preferences in 2001 and then refused to modify them even after 9/11/2001 proved that they gave aid and comfort to our national enemies. If you have been taking your cues from them I'll believe that you're not smart enough to look out for either the national interest or your own. If you bought an Excursion or Durango or Z71 or Escalade or, heaven forbid, a Hummer since that fateful day, I think you DESERVE to be killed at the gas station. What you've done is literally killing American soldiers and threatening the public in several ways; feeling financial pain or even going bankrupt is a very mild penalty.
Taxing fuel gives you a certainty that the price will be at least X high; you can make your decisions about vehicles, jobs, housing and everything else with some assurance that they won't be thrown into disarray overnight. Letting the oil producers cut supply and jack up your price without warning leaves you in a pickle (in other words, what's happening RIGHT NOW). Having the money go to your government gives you much greater assurance that it won't be used to wage jihad against you (and you have more options for changing it).
US taxes have historically been about 20-22% of the economy. Slap another $3/gallon in taxes on a gallon of motor fuel, and the revenue would be about $600 billion/yr at today's consumption. If taxes drove consumption down to 120 billion gallons/year of gasoline and diesel, revenue would fall to $360 billion/yr. That's what, about 18% of the government's revenue? Keep it revenue-neutral with a sliding deductible on employment taxes, and you are "killed" only if you don't get efficient. Drive a Prius and you might even see more money left over every month.
I practice what I preach. I saw the writing on the wall in the 80's, drove 4-cylinder cars most of that time, and got myself a diesel in '04 (could barely catch sight of a Prius in those days). I average about 35 MPG these days (bad traffic-light timing on my new commute cut my average from 38). I make a point of living close to work. I paid more for my car than I had to (roughly $10,000), with the explicit goal of sending as little money to OPEC and the jihadis as I could practically manage. If circumstances permit, my next vehicle will be a 100-MPG plug-in hybrid (which will cut my commuting fuel burn to zero). That will cost me another $20,000 or so, which I will be happy to pay.
What have YOU done, besides complain?
Engineer-Poet:
There is also a negative multiplier impact from taxes, so no, one cannot tax and subsidize themselves into prosperity. A government tax is not the same thing as a free exchange between two free people that is based on their own assessments of their self interest.
I never said cheap gasoline = nirvana. If you read my original comment, I pointed out that Saudi Arabia does NOT have a dynamic economy---so the impact of petro prices is pretty much 1:1. What I am saying is that for a working dynamic economy (like the US economy), fuel prices are an important component and that there is a snowball effect for fuel prices.
I work from at my home (no commuting), drive a 1994 Ford Escort, and use heat and A/C sparingly.
Engineer-Poet:
You spent a lot of time talking about constraining demand, but NO time talking about supply. We have a growing population and a growing economy. Even if every person decreases their fuel consumption by 10%, it will not be that long before we as a nation use more fuel than we are using now. The US has over 300 million inhabitants. Not that long ago the number was less than 250 million. 15% conservation is nice for 1 year, but you will NOT be able to keep that up year after year unless you remove yourself from the 21st century.
Supply is at least 80% of the problem. Focusing on consumption is trying to solve at best 20% of the problem. The phrase re-arranging the tables on the Titanic comes to mind.
What am I doing about the problem? I use my rights as a free citizen to support domestic energy sources. I think nuclear power is the answer except for transportation. Hydrogen is promising, as is suger-cane ethanol.
We are the civilization of ideas the civilization of freedom. People striving to be all that a free people can be. Conserving is nice---but there are limits to what can be achieved through mere conservation.
You
US population growth is almost entirely due to immigration (both legal and illegal). Slash that back to pre-1965 levels and aggressively deport illegals (and expropriate their houses/cars/etc. as proceeds of the crime of illegal entry) and the problem goes away.
Where do you get this 80/20 split for "the problem"? It depends what you're talking about. Most Americans could do just fine with a vehicle using 1/3 of the fuel they use now; we know how to build them, we just aren't doing it yet. Had we done the right thing with building codes etc. after the 70's, we could be using perhaps 10% of the heating fuel we use now. We can cut electric demand by far more than 20% with best-available technology, and e.g. LED lighting is cutting needs even further.
SRI International has a process for turning a waste product of phosphate production (sodium fluorosilicate) into solar-grade silicon ready for casting. Evergreen Solar has a process for continuous-casting silicon into polycrystalline ribbons as little as 100 microns thick. You want to talk about addressing the supply end? That's the kind of thing that'll do it.
Solar is good, and so is making more efficient vehicles, but if ME oil really is killing US soldiers, why not also . . .
drill in ANWR?
drill off-shore like the Cubans have retained the Chinese to do?
build nuclear power plants?
Drop tariffs on sugar cane?
The demand side of the equation is subject to a law of diminishing returns that many items on the supply side are not.
Solar is good at heating water in your home, but is not so good at shouldering electricity needs on a reliable basis.
My disagreement with you is one of emphasis.
I take the jihad threat very seriously. Many environmentalists use the jihad threat opportunistically advance their environmental agenda and have no real concerns relating to jihad. A failure to even address topics such as the burning of clean coal, build more nuclear power plants, etc. is generally suggestive of someone less concerned about the killing of the American soldier and more concerned about shaping the US domestic policy to meet their particular vision of how things should be.
In other words, when someone speaks primarily of conservation, and then throws in a follow-up reference to solar and/or wind power, I am generally skeptical.
of course, you probably assumed I drive a Hummer . . .
What would we have to do get oil out of ANWR? We'd have to make huge investments in drilling rigs, gas/oil separation plants, and all the other hardware required to set up new fields. The cost of these has been going up steeply of late. This would have to be done under some of the most difficult conditions, especially because the working season is during the winter when the ground is frozen and can support heavy vehicles — and that period is getting shorter every year.
To be worthwhile, we'd need to operate the equipment for at least 20 years. 5.7 billion barrels divided by 20 years is 285 million barrels/year, or a bit under 800,000 barrels a day. That's spit. And the only thing we'd be doing it for is to continue Business As Usual just a little longer. Most people would take the go-ahead to drill ANWR as reason to do nothing. You and I both know that.
The US burns about about 9.2 million barrels/day of gasoline alone (diesel is about another 2.9 million bbl/day in the transport sector). If US vehicles increased their economy from our ~25 MPG level to a more European 38 MPG, we'd save about 3 million barrels/day of gasoline. That's 4 ANWRs at the 95% confidence level, and still more than ANWR at the 5% confidence limit.
On top of this, it would save us money. It costs less to build smaller vehicles. We could use the extra iron and whatnot to fix some of our more bone-headed moves of the last 20 years, like ripping up so many of our rail lines and shipping them to China as scrap. Electrify those lines, and you've got heavy freight transport that needs no oil at all.
We're doing as much of that as is practical, but it generates more hype (like the "Jack" find) than oil. It also leaves our oil supply vulnerable to hurricanes (remember the pics of the Thunder Horse platform, and the rig washed up on shore?) and perhaps novel forms of attack. On top of this, it is extremely expensive in both material and energy. This means that the cost escalates along with the price of oil.Hell, yes. But without electric transport it doesn't affect the demand for oil. You need a firm set of policies to push PHEVs out to the consumer to complete the other half. PHEVs will evolve to EVs over time.
There's not enough to make a difference. Brazil's "miracle" is about 5% cane, 30% Petrobras and 65% Brazil having a vastly lower per-capita fuel consumption than the US. If US per-capita fuel consumption was the same as Brazil's, the US would still be an oil exporter.
Emphatically not true, as shown by the diesel VW Lupo, Loremo and Prius on the demand side and the rapidly escalating cost of oil projects on the supply side. Further, once you've pushed economy up to the 50-60 MPG region with a hybrid, conversion to all-electric becomes relatively simple. Battery technology has made great strides in chemistry and mostly needs more volume production to push the price down. The future of ground transport is electric.
Solar water heating displaces mostly electricity (making more available for other things!) and natural gas (which goes to cooking, home heating, and the chemical industry). All worthwhile things, and it's got one of the fastest payoffs of all AE investments.
You need electricity on a fairly reliable basis, but the actual extent is much lower than most people think; a few techno-tweaks can change it quite a bit. On the domestic end, if your refrigerator could make and store a few pounds of ice, it would only need to chill the freezer section during peak hours. Air conditioning is the same, only bigger. On the transport end, if your car used electricity you really wouldn't care if it got charged in the morning or the afternoon, just as long as it got you home. Power companies could easily read the weather forecasts to see how much extra they'd need to fill in for the absent PV on cloudy days.
I'm not one of them. One of the reasons we should be changing all our coal-fired powerplants to IGCC with carbon capture is to get CO2 to perform CO2 flooding on all the old, abandoned fields which have no drive pressure but plenty of bypassed oil. We could radically improve our domestic oil production, slash greenhouse emissions and eliminate ash, sulfur and mercury pollution. It would cost us, but not as much as fighting Islamists paid for by our oil addiction.I made no such assumption. I just wish pain (both fiscal and guilt) upon the people who do.
I enjoyed reading your post. Makes a lot of sense to me, although I still think that there is a diminishing rate of return on efficiency/conservation front. I also think that the market should handle the transition---don't subsidize oil drilling, but also don't subsidize corn-based ethanol which we both know is a loser.
There are diminishing returns on most things, though the Loremo and VW 1 liter car show just how far away some of them are on the efficiency end. But we have already seen peak energy return from coal in the USA (we mine more tons, but they are low-energy western lignite instead of high-energy eastern anthracite). Peak oil in the USA was way back in 1971; peak oil in the world was in 2005, in the rear-view mirror and receding.
IMHO, no person alive today is likely to see a peak in energy from these sources:
- Wind (never gonna stop blowing in the next billion years)
- Solar (never gonna stop shining ditto)
- Fission (it would take thousands of years to cut the uranium content of the oceans in half, and there's 4x as much thorium in the world as uranium)
Fossil is going downhill, and biomass is subject to the mercies of the weather and climate. A set of BP solar panels carries a 25-year warranty and will likely be useful for twice that. A123Systems, Firefly Energy and AltairNano are re-writing the book on batteries. What's the smart bet for the long term? More to the point, what freaks out the Islamists and their paymasters and will get them to do their best to drive oil prices down again to try to forestall the inevitable? (Which will put them in the position of putting all their money into production gear and none of it into madrassas.)As someone on TOD writes, "If you want change, keep it in your pocket." Your spending is your most important vote. If you refuse to buy anything less than a VentureOne or a Chevy Volt or a Tango because you won't send any more money to people who support jihad against you, there isn't much that even the most pro-Saudi administration can do about it.
Boy, that just makes me want to drive my post 9/11 “American solder killing” over the top lifted 4x4, Z71 American muscle 330HP, iron V8 that gets 12 MPG while going down hill, and hook up my 4 ton boat that gets 1 MPG on a good day.
Who knew I was killing American solders and supporting jihad just by going fishing?
Thanks for the feedback JSobieski. If my post before seemed a bit reactionary/inflammatory, I apologise - my goal was simply to demonstrate that the sort of gasoline tax system Hugh is advocating can be achieved, given enough political will. You correctly point out that we can quite easily shoot ourselves in the foot if this is done recklessly.
With regards to the China issue, I still think we can do ourselves a big favour by increasing our independence from countries like Saudi Arabia in any way possible. Even if they are still making money, it will be easier to hold them accountable for distributing anti-Infidel books, training hate-spewing imams, etc. if our economic well-being is not tied to them. Our governments' current reluctance to do so underscores this need.
Also you mentioned hydrogen - has there been much talk about it over there lately? I work in a lab developing hydrogen production sources, but I haven't heard much news about it from across the Pacific in a while.
Hydrogen is a boondoggle. There are two basic ways of producing it:
- Reforming of fossil fuels (which leaves you stuck with the decline in supply), and
- Electrolysis of water (which is on the order of 25% as efficient as using the same electricity to charge batteries)
To top it off, hydrogen would require a completely new infrastructure for production, storage, shipment and fueling. It also requires completely new vehicles. Since we already have the infrastructure for 80+% penetration of electric vehicles (the grid is under-utilized at night), going electric is the path of least resistance (pun intended).