Focus on vehicular efficiency, which addresses the problem at its source. Then everything else can follow its natural progression of competition and the resulting lower overall cost.

We hypermilers are the revolutionaries of the energy conservation corps. The people who clearly demonstrate that you can make it more efficient even though vehicles are very poorly designed for efficiency, and every argument about the state of the status quo being acceptable is ludicrous.

We prove it every day.

Automate hypermiling in the near term and eliminate the speed variations we find essential by hypermiling the storage capacity of the vehicle itself. The transition is much simpler than many would believe.

regards
gary

All these silly schemes to lower gas prices are getting annoying. But I guess it is just it is a part of the process of America coming to grips to the fact that oil is a finite resource. Sooner or later (if not already) supply of oil has to peak, and increasing demand will only exacerbate the problem. The political reactions as a consequence are predictable and unfortunate: politicians will feed into the peoples short-sighted fears, and offer illogical but comforting "solutions" as opposed to logical but more painful solutions that actually address the core problem.
Albert Einstein once said ?Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.? This is applicable to this situation. People are stuck in the same old way of thinking, they are too focused on the price of gas. The price of gas is only a market mechanism that illustrates the problem, that is, that we rely on an unsustainable and volatile source of energy, AKA "we're addicted to oil".
So even if the government artificially lowers the price of gas, it will not address the the underlying problem. In fact, by removing this incentive to invest in alternative technologies coupled with higher oil prices in the future, it will only push the consequences into the future and make them worse when we finally have to face them.
So, be careful what you wish for.

the gov't need not "artificially" lower prices, just allow domestic drilling and let supply and demand actually lower them. that's to say nothing of eliminating speculators and putting pressure on the middle east to lower their crude to stay competitive.

most or all here that support domestic drilling also support alternative fuels and conservation.

in case not everyone has heard, the US economy just lost MILLIONS of dollars as another company went under(Benigans/Steak and Ale). this is not even to mention the individuals who are in dire financial situations.

if we don't impliment a comprehensive plan for present and future energy, that includes extracting and refining more of our own oil, we will go beyond recession into a depression.

US oil production peaked in the 70s. US production is now only 30% of it's consumption. We'll be lucky if new drilling in US could just offset the decline from existing fields. Don't count on miracles, last of the giants been discovered in the 70's, we need to drill to slow down the decline. The only way for US to become energy independent in the next 15-20 years is a miracle technology or 70-90% reduction in demand, e.g. stage 5 die-off.

World wide production peaked in 2005 and now is being supplemented with unconventional sources, so total liquids production 05'-08' look like plateau, but we are now spending more energy to produce those sources, so net energy for end consumption is dropping.

Demand in oil producing countries is skyrocketing - they are keeping more oil for themselves, so net oil exports are dropping even faster then production.

The government will not solve this problem, their taxation and redistribution schemes will choke off remaining supply.

Energy and liquid fuels are important not only for transportation, but also food production, heating and manufacturing - e.g. battery powered cars, solar panels, wind turbines, infrastructure

I follow this site for discussion on energy: https://www.theoildrum.com/
A lot of great articles by folks with scientific background, substantiated with quantitative analysis. It's really a great resource.

For political/social outcome scenarios, check out Dmitry Orlov's new book - "Reinventig Collapse", or just some of his articles here:
The five stages of collapse
Here:
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US

And his blog here:
https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/

Enjoy
Ross

outstanding links!!! too much info to even begin to discuss.

no doubt that one could NOT read these comprehensively and still conclude that we should not drill for new oil!

Drilling for more oil to solve the problem is like giving a cocaine addict more cocaine to help with his problem. We need to be more energy efficient. We need to buy locally when we can. Our dependence on oil no matter where it comes from is our problem.

what will replace oil TODAY for our entire energy needs? we need to drill now while developing alternative fuels, PERIOD.

I like your cocaine analogy... Its more true than you think....


Ok, so we're addicted, and there isn't a specific treatment for it. Yeah, there's some experimental stuff in trials, but it won't help us with our problem right now. We need to regulate our use of cocaine (oil), and continue to produce it until we can get our treatment (alternative fuels) into full scale production and distribution, otherwise you will have the public going through oil "DT's".

-Jay

I'm not sure drugs analogy is valid. For decades, oil allowed more and more people to experience better quality of life. Fighting this "addiction" would be like fighting one's addiction to breathing air or eating food.

Resource depletion will require corresponding reduction in population. This could be done gradually through attrition (e.g. birth/death ratio), if depletion is slow and there is support from population. Or we could have a repeat of Rwanda 1994 Genocide (too many people, not enough land) on the global scale.

Miracle technology might save the day, but being that peak oil is happening right now, and major infrastructure upgrades take 15-20 year to implement... looks like we are in for some pain in the coming years.

Ross

We can cut back on oil use in so many ways beyond driving. Plastic water bottles and soda bottle, plastic walmart bags, stryofoam fast food containers and coffee cups. Oil is very useful, don't get me wrong, but were using it like it's the only rescource we have. This leads me to an "addiction" analogy. It's all a matter of changing bad habits we have acquired living in a throw away society.

I know I sound like tree hugger.