When I was in college gas was 35 cents a gallon, cigarettes were 35 cents a pack, people made $6,000 a year and houses were $35,000. Now gas is $3.50 a gallon, cigarettes are $3.50 a pack, people earn $60,00 and houses are $350,000. The problem is not the price. The problem is the cost in terms of environmental degradation and human suffering and the corruption of democratic process. And we are paying a price that is about to get a lot higher in terms of true costs. When I was young, the cost of a McDonalds hamburger was 12 cents and the fries were 13 cents. The True Cost today is the entire Amazonian rain forest being clear cut to grow soy to feed chickens for McNuggets. As Esau, we are choosing to trade our birthright of a healthy life on a beautiful planet for a mess of very sickening pottage indeed. And yet i feel almost certain of the ultimate evolution of societal conscience, and of homo sapiens in the process.

This article doesn't strike me as a typical reality sandwich critical inquiry. It sounds more like a New York Times propaganda piece, though perhaps it is merely a result of very lax investigation. While ST quotes Emil Pena about $100/barrel oil prices being "here to stay," the link at the beginning of the article itself says that not only have those prices fallen, but that the high price is a result of a market inflation bubble.  The real question, though, is where do these price predictions come from, and who benefits from reports like these? It is more than a little disingenuous to suggest that Emil Pena has merely a political advisory and consulting relationship to the oil industry: more to the point, he is an oil executive, whose company Genoil has something to gain from people believing that the price of oil is set to skyrocket without end (that company, which refines oil, has a market interest in inflating the price of its refined product by exaggerating the cost of its input). ST uncritically mentions "unrest in Pakistan" and "a series of militia attacks in a key Nigerian oil city" as legitimate explanations of oil price hikes, but this is pure propaganda. Stories vaguely suggesting a possibility of disruption of oil production are routinely used by oil companies (and newspapers that print whatever their PRopaganda office writes) to justify consumer gasoline price hikes, when no real disruption (i.e. cost to the company) has occurred (thus generating pure profit through nothing more than a well reported false news story). Gasoline prices continue to climb, and meanwhile oil companies are posting the highest quarterly profits of in the history of the world.  The point of all this is that, in an environment where there is such an extraordinarily huge financial incentive to manipulate information about costs and supplies, one cannot trust what one reads to be impartial. Especially not this information, when you see where it is coming from. Nobody knows how much oil is left in the earth, but you can be sure the oil companies will milk the Peak Oil story for as much as they can, for as long as they can (just as car companies have used global warming to market hybrid cars that are only marginally better, and sometimes worse, than the fuel efficiency of many standard gasoline cars on the road fifteen years ago).All of this is not to say we do not have an oil problem, but the problem is consumption, not cost, as shamanana points out. Those of us who have the opportunity to do so should make it a priority to live a lifestyle where we do not need to commute large distances to earn a livelihood, or buy food that travels hundreds of miles by truck to make it to our stores. Bicycle coops, food coops, housing coops, and (if necessary) car coops a la Zipcar, if they became a widespread worldwide phenomenon, would do much to eliminate the problems of oil consumption.

The future of the motor rickshaw? 

 

 

The £1,290 car delights Indians but horrifies the green lobby

 

Amelia Gentleman in New Delhi

Sunday January 6, 2008

The Observer

 

 

After years of secret preparation, the world's cheapest car will be unveiled in Delhi this week - delighting millions of Indians as much as it is horrifying environmentalists.

 

At 100,000 rupees (£1,290), the People's Car, designed and manufactured by Tata, is being marketed as a safer way of travelling for those who until now have had to transport their families balanced on the back of their motorbikes.

 

Ratan Tata, 70, chairman of the family-run business, who has spearheaded the race for a cut-price car, wrote on the company website: 'That's what drove me - a man on a two-wheeler with a child standing in front, his wife sitting behind, add to that the wet roads - a family in potential danger.'

 

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2235975,00.html