Even if Exxon had higher profit margins that McDonald’s I still wouldn’t be that upset, since oil is far riskier than food to produce, not only in terms of capital, but also in terms of an even more valuable asset: human life.

Your argument that we need to decrease demand for oil is spot on. Economists always attempt to remind us that we can say whatever we want, but that when it comes to business, we vote with our dollars. People hate Wal-Mart, yet they are one of the largest companies in the world. Why? Because millions upon millions of people spend a lot of money there, despite what the popular opinion might be. Same goes for the oil companies. As long as we keep buying oil, they will keep selling it. It would be ridiculous to expect them to lose money doing it just because we think they’re charging too much.

If you do want to criticize someone on the supply side, you must go all the way to the source. Take a look at the United Arab Emirates. They are making money hand over fist thanks to us. Countries like the United States and Japan are living solid existences making the most technologically advanced stuff in the world, while the UAE builds palaces because of something that flows out of the ground? THAT, my friends, is TRULY unfair.

Suburbs alone are not evil. But most are designed with a plan of a bunch of cookie-cutter houses and little or nothing else. (Drive down Denver’s expressway if you want to see just how UGLY this can look/be.)

If you live in this type of suburb and want just about anything you must drive. Drive to/from your job, school, the store, etc. More sustainable plans are being created which mix stores, parks and apartments in with the single-home lots. (It looks surprisingly like an old fasioned community actually.) Most things are within walking/biking distance for most

The main point though is that unless we change a lot more than gas prices, we are going to remain at the whims of the big oil companies and the market. While Trent’s (potential) car choice is by no means cheap, it will take more of us doing something like that to fix what is wrong right now.

More of us need to get involved. No bike lanes in your city… start a petition to add some next time the roads are redone. Is there too little public transportation? When is the last time you took the bus? Kind of a catch 22… I don’t take the bus because there isn’t enough service yet the bus lines won’t expand if nobody uses what they have now.

“http://www.revaindia.com/” may be useful.

Satej Datar.

How come you’re OK with installing a big ol’ wind turbine on your property but not a clothesline? Wasn’t your reasoning that you’re trying to look out for your neighbors? Somehow I don’t think they would appreciate a wind turbine if they aren’t going to like a clothesline.

What the Tesla cars have done so far is pretty amazing, though we are clearly still a long way off. I would consider spending more for one of these cars if it helped the production of more of them down the road at a lower cost, but again, I still think we have many years to wait.

Still, I’m curious what the insurance is on something like this.

Google “wind turbine noise” and see what comes up. You claim to want to not make your neighbors unhappy. These things don’t seem like they will help you accomplish that goal if it is truly important to you.

Are you saying, in effect, that you are willing to annoy your neighbors (and yes, the constant noise/blocking their view could potentially drag down property values not only for you but also for your neighbors) because it will bring you money from the utility company?

I have to second what Anitra had to say.

In my case, moving closer to my husband’s job (and thus farther away from mine) would mean moving to an expensive suburb, which is surrounded by more businesses and not so much residential. Apartments in that area run what we currently pay in a mortgage, and the median home price is double our current home. Our goal is to eventually shorten/eliminate the (extreme) commute, but it’s going to take a few more years.

At least for the major city we live near, there are equal numbers of people commuting in both directions from in and out of the city. You have people living in the city who commute to the burbs and vice versa.

Also, I’d have to argue that most people think of cities using the concentric zone model which doesn’t apply to many cities, particularly the non-major (i.e. not LA, Chicago, or NYC) cities these days. Commerce is not exactly centered, but spread out, and downtown areas are dying, if not dead. This makes having an efficient public transport system in place very difficult. The structure needs to change but doing so will take time and efforts from the general public, developers and government. Ending sprawl is a start, but how does it get reversed without turning it into a noveau inner city?

It’s a nice idea, but you are glossing over the significant decreases in lifestyle moving closer to a workplace involves (for most people).

For example: Living in a crime-ridden inner-city neighborhood vs. in a quiet suburb; living in a 600-sq-foot apartment vs a 1200-sq-foot house with a yard; a couple living on two moderate incomes vs. needing to bring one income up far enough to justify the other person quitting their job or vastly increasing their commute…. not to mention amenities like grocery stores and recreational facilities. Very few people are willing to give up all of that to “eventually” get a nice high-density neighborhood.

My husband and I WANTED to live close to his job (I bounce around from job to job, so his workplace is more of an anchor for us) – we could not afford to live closer than 10 miles away unless we wanted to make the trade-offs I listed (high crime area, living in an apartment half the size, no access to amenities). And even when we lived 10 miles away, there was no reasonable way to get public transportation to where we needed to go. Trains ran from our town, and trains ran to our workplace(s), but the two trains only met 50 miles away.

We now own a house 30 miles from his job, but it’s a straight shot on the expressway; and now we can walk to the grocery store, restaurants, and the mall (an option we didn’t have before).

Your argument assumes that public transit, or lack thereof, is a given – that it’s either there or it’s not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it – which is not the case. If there’s more demand for public transit that can be satisfied in an efficient way, communities will provide more public transit. If there’s less demand, or if satisfying the demand becomes less efficient, then communities will provide less.

The way I see it, the reason that public transit is not a practical option in so much of the US is that over the years, many individual people have made many individual decisions to live in lower-density residential areas, to claim “their own space” in the suburbs and live far from their neighbors. So it will take many individual decisions by many individual people to reverse that trend. You can be one of them.

I don’t know where you live, but I bet that you could move closer to your workplace if you made it a priority. Probably you could move to within a mile or two (i.e., not too far to walk) if you really wanted to. If everybody did that, then eventually we’d have higher-density communities that could be efficiently served by public transportation.

And then when no one adopts an electric car, it flops. You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything, Carl. I choose to stand for getting us off of oil dependence – and that adds a lot of value to purchases I make that fulfill those ends. It’s much the same as the reason people would choose to buy organic foods – there is more to value than dollars and cents.

Tesla has currently been building a $100K roadster for about two months; quality, dependability and longevity are unknown. The company says the battery pack (about 7000 Li-ion laptop battery cells) weighs about 1/2 ton and estimates the replacement costs $20K at around 100,000 miles.

I think the social statement of owning the car would say status.

For example: Back in ’99-’00 a US dollar was worth about 1 Euro. But today a dollar is only worth 0.64 Euro So if a barrel of oil went up from $30 in 99 to $120 today it only went from 30 Euro to about 77 Euro. Thats a 300% increase in US dollars but only a 157% increase in EUros.

If the US dollar gets stronger in the future, then the oil prices will look much better to us here in the US.

Jim

I live in Iowa. Iowa is rapidly moving to wind energy. There are wind turbines all over the place. Iowa is the top wind-energy producing state in the country (note when you read this article that I live in northern Iowa): http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=1020566A-0974-9C95-ACA39A101E5425D6

I’ve even discussed installing my own personal wind turbine and selling the excess energy generated back to the grid:
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/04/21/looking-at-the-costs-and-benefits-of-installing-a-windmill-wind-turbine/

The solution to renewable energy is in things like that. I’m proud to be living in a place that’s actually doing it.

“I don’t get it. You adequately explain how/why the drama regarding Big Oil is overblown, and explain why excess taxes on them would lead to disaster, and then advocate supporting those groups (the green party) that would do just that. Please explain further, as I clearly must be missing something.”

I encouraged people to look beyond the two major parties when researching issues. The Green Party is the first place I’d look if I were researching candidates for strong stances on green issues.

Besides, I’m not sure your stance is right on the Greens. This article seems to imply that they oppose the windfall tax:
http://www.alternattiva.org.mt/page.asp?p=12867&l=1

A quote: “While the Greens can understand the sentiment of people like Dr Frank Portelli, who recently argued in favour of the imposition of a windfall tax, we do not favour such because windfall taxes should be levelled on windfall profits that must, by definition, be extraordinary in nature. The record profits of public companies are structural in nature, not extraordinary.”

There may be local Green candidates or national Green parties who are in favor of windfall taxes. Do the research and find out what your national and local Green candidates think about such issues, and don’t overlook those parties because they’re not “viable.” You won’t get the change you want unless you vote for it.