How about, for starters, suggesting that all Americans who own a car give up one automobile trip this coming Sunday. Since a good deal of the current price of gasoline is due to speculators' trading, imagine what would happen to the speculators if that happened. The price of gas would drop immediately.

While I support any and all conservation measures as simple common sense, and as being physically and financially healthy for the conserver himself, the above is simply not true, and we shouldn't be parroting right wing talking points here.

The price of oil is driven mostly by the confluence of skyrocketing global demand and shrivelling supply. This is the nature of Peak Oil. Speculation may drive the price up somewhat further, but the main force is simple supply-demand fundamentals, and marginal reductions in American gasoline usage (or meager increases in domestic supply, as advocated by the pro-drilling pirates) cannot significantly affect this.

"Speculation" - have you wondered why the right wing normally denies there's any such thing as "bubbles" (i.e., by definition any price behavior is simply the genius of the market and is automatically correct), but in the current case of oil they're falling all over themselves to blame speculators for bubbling?

It's because the foundation myth of technological civilization, global capitalism, and the growth ideology is that oil will always be cheap and plentiful, and that the supply will always increase. The supply has to always increase, since the whole machine is predicated on demand and consumption always increasing. If consumption ever failed because supply failed, the whole vicious structure would come crashing down.

This prospect now looms, but no one can admit that, since it would shatter the fantasy. So they go looking for phony explanations (speculators are to blame) which can afford phony solutions (hearings and legislative proposals to rein in speculators). So everyone can hide their heads in the sand a little longer.

I didn't say all this to beat up on the original post. Like I said, I like any conservation proposal. But we really need to be clear that oil prices are soaring NOT because of the machinations of speculators, but because of ineradicable Malthusian limitations we are now running up against.

"..the above is simply not true, and we shouldn't be parroting right wing talking points here."

Obama is starting to clear up this controversey.   Is it speculation that is to blame for the sudden spike in oil?  The inevitable oil supply/demand mismatch due to shortage would not push prices up this quickly.

Obama used the word "manipulation" instead of speculation.  Speculation is a normal part of market trading.  Insider trading manipulation is the source of the corruption that has taken over energy markets.

Phil Gramm going way back to the first bush administration is the culprit, McBushs' former economic advisor.  He pushed deregulation of energy markets, then futures markets (his wife was head regulator of futures), then mortgage markets.

Will re-regulation solve the energy problem?  Of course not.  But it will help to get the economy going again so we have the financial confidence and vigor to re-invest in renewable/conservation energy/agriculture revolution.

Re-regulate, get rid of this whisper insider trading that has destroyed any market "efficiency" in addressing changing conditions in energy supply/demand.  Give renewables and conservation a fair and really free market playing field on which to compete.

Wall street rats are squirreling away our capital offshore at record rates because of shills like Phil and his wife watching over supposedly "free' markets.  They are free alright, free sources of cash for the worst kind of market operators.

Close the loopholes, starting with the infamous Enron loophole.  We want to see some people more culpable for these continuing bubbles and bailouts than Martha stewart marched off to a nice golf course white collar "prison", this time around.

Start with Phil and his wife, then keep filling those country club prisons until they are camping out in tents.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

One simple demand would clear this up.  The rank and file of NRDC members, and the general environmentally minded public, could call for RFK jr. to end this assault on the Cape Wind project or resign.

Get your family and friends to back off this bull shit or admit you don't deserve the position or reputation you claim as a real environmentalist.  

If you can't even lobby these people to get with the renwewable energy program, how can you be trusted to do that behind the scene in DC?  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

kicks in, because when the price still doesn't come down, people will have to realize the gravity of the situation -- although I suppose something else besides the dwindling global supply of oil will be blamed.

Close the loopholes, in fact, put in a Tobin tax on each financial transaction (remember that idea?) and use it for solar/wind energy.  While we're at it, create a string of municipal/infrastructure banks, and move the entire financial system over to them.  Nationalize the oil companies, like most other countries.  But it still won't bring back the oil -- we should follow Matt Simmons' suggestion, and put a floor on the price of oil, so people aren't lulled once more, as they were in the 1980s, into thinking that Happy Motoring is here forever.

As for Cape Wind, my suggestion is to put little coal-fired power plants on the beaches in Cape Cod to provide their electricity.

It's anti-corruption, anti-insider trading manipulation legislation, re-regulation to mauintain real free and fair markets that is vital.

Speculation is not the culprit here.  Speculation cushions market shocks, it "hedges" (as in hedge funds) against risk.  The speculators take a gamble, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose.  but they smooth out the shocks for the rest of us, who can't tolerate a sudden doubling of our energy expenses.

For assuming that risk they get a part of the money spent on energy, maybe 5 to 10% would be fair.  By manipulating markets with a cell phone whisper or text message to their fellow crooks, unregulated, unwatched hedge fund thieves have taken maybe between 30 and 50% of what we pay for energy and sent it to offshore havens from legal recovery.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Look, I live thousands of miles from there, and I don't want this project, either.  My opposition to Cape Wind has nothing to do with NIMBYism.  Instead, it's because of my strong objection to destroying yet another natural area with unnatural garbage.

Furthermore, there's absolutely nothing wrong with supporting natural aesthetic values and opposing projects that harm them.  Other animals beside humans have eyes, and these things ruin their views, too.  It's not just about the people who live there.

I find this ignoring of aesthetic harms to be a gross lack of sensitivity and caring toward the natural world.  If you don't know or understand why placing wind generators, solar panels, oil rigs, mines, or any other unnatural objects in a natural area is wrong, you are out of touch with nature.

You are consistent in not wanting any renewables except what will fit on roofs.  Actually that would be enough if people would adapt a bit.  We know they won't of course, that is frustrasting, but also true.

But these Cape Wind opponents who mainly blight the coast with obscene development like mcmansions and golf courses?  Total zeroes as far as any environmental credibility.

Industrial fishing concerns, masquerading behind local fishermen, likewise.  They lobbied to destroy the fish and seafood and fishing families incomes with overfishing, for decades.

You can consistently oppose the secenry being blighted, but not that crowd.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin