This not my position, but was suggested by someone I know...

Someone, somewhere in the world, is going the burn through gasoline like there is no tomorrow until it becomes prohibitively expensive. If an "environmentalist" avoids using it, the reduced demand will only make gasoline cheaper for those who don't care. They will buy and burn even more. Since it is inevitable that all that CO2 will be released by someone, we all might as well drive as much as we want to. On the bright side, the faster we use it up, the sooner our civilization will have to adapt to a life without oil. The sooner we drive the price up -- due to scarcity -- the sooner alternative energy becomes economically viable. Indeed, the faster we use it up, the more likely that OUR generation will have to live with the consequences.

Again, this is not my position.

Please discuss. I'll check in Monday to view your opinions.

Forward!

Tar sands in Venezuela and Alberta, unproven reserves off the Taiwanese coast, biodiesel, ethanol, fuel cells, and umpteen GM hybrid cars aren't going to help one bit in August 2007. It takes months to get from oil well to gas pump, and right now the really big bottleneck is that the USA is short on refining capacity, not oil extraction. Lack of spare refining capacity, not lack of crude, was behind most of the recent runups in gas prices.

We don't have enough refineries because, well, I'll note that most of our existing refineries are in the part of Texas and Louisiana lovingly called "cancer alley."

I'm not particularly looking forward to $4/gallon gas -- well, actually, I am, but I don't want to hear the TV pundits, newspaper headlines, and windbag politicians all loudly whining about it 24/7, which they inevitably will.

I'm with BioD,  though I think the "peak oil" timescale will be long.  Catastrophists who yearn for sudden and dramatic outcomes will be disappointed.

I still like the book "A Thousand Barrels A Second" for its description of the global oil supply chains, their sheer size and production.  As we peak through one sort of oil or another (first land-based light sweet crude, then sours, offshores, etc.) we'll see the spiky climb BioD describes.

Those of us already on the road to lower CO2 emissions will probably weather that OK.  We've got bicycles and efficient little cars.

And, I guarantee, a $4 summer will start to make more folks look like us.

But 3% of the world still controls 84% percent of all resources.

Still -- save your pennies kids.   That's what Grist tells you to do.

The Texeme Construct

Regardless of whether you think of CO2 as a pollutant, you can think of it as a measure of economic power, and "control of resources."

If China passes us in CO2 as is predicted, what happens to old rubrics of who controls the resources?

hey, jabailo! Take your stupid t-shirts and your flat-earth naysaying somewhere else. It's really getting annoying and your posts can't even stay on topic.

Don't be a troll. (Troll: Commenter who makes outrageous or provocative statements purely in order to derail discussion.) You know who you are.
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