Would you pay more for gas even if it cost more?

i would pay but it would piss me off. its fucking retarded that nuclear power is all taboo'd and shit. if we got some more nuclear power plants we could supply enough electricity for electric cars.

its a shame that where i live public transit is not in service.

Yet this still doesn't justify destroying natural habitat for maintaining a particular style of life.

if gas gets to be $10 a gallon I want one of these...

do you honestly think that gas will ever reach $10 a gallon?  I would imagine that the theories of supply, demand, and profit maximazation will keep oil pricing from reaching that point. 

skiing destroys the enviorment too, you think those runs were  cleared before the resort was there?

id prolly avoid driving as much as possible

Does everyone posting in here realize that the high price of oil in America has nothing to do with there being any shortage at the moment and everything to do with the companies that sell it to us? (And the government.) The companies are about to start realizing that they can't gouge us forever.  Although I said I would probably pay that much for guess, I do not represent the norm as can be seen from the people responding to this thread. Two months ago the national gas consumption actually fell for the first time in, I want to say, history. It only fell 1% but that is still huge.  People are actually starting to change how they do things and live their lives. They are sick of being ripped off by oil companies and taxed out the ass by the government.  Government taxes for infrastructure actually make up a sizeable portion of the amount we pay, and in some European countries it is as much as 75%.  But in oil producing countries gas is absurdly cheap. In Nigeria it is barely .50 cents a gallon.  This is somewhat a reflection on the cost of living in Nigeria but also speaks to the fact that oil producing countries are not worried about any oil shortage.  They have tons of oil.

I am all for renewable energy sources such as wind or water but at the moment and for the foreseeable future such options are not cost-effective nor even viable if we want to power any substantial part of the country. Nuclear energy is the only way to go.  People need to stop being scared.  Knowing the U.S. if it was ever brought back it would be regulated like no other and would be very safe. It already is very safe. It is working great for France. And China is building reactors so fast that the companies who supply the parts can't keep up.  China is the most rapidly developing country and they are thinking about the environment.  It think that says something.  The U.S. is already established so we easily have the ability to jump on the bandwagon. It's about time we did.

when you say that you would have to use nuclear energy which would be an oxymoron, you do realize that nuclear power is the cleanest power source we have in our arsenal, all it releases is thermal pollution and water, the only problem is where to put the waste when its done....btw didnt read any other post so if im repeating anyone sorry

I don't really feel like taking the time to make a coherent argument as to why we should drill in alaska and other places, especially because the points I would make have already mostly been stated.  I just want to say that even if drilling in the caribou's habitat would significantly affect them, which it wont, I would say screw them all.  I would personally fly out there and put a bullet in every caribou's head if it meant we could get the oil.  It boggles my mind as to why the leaders of our country listen the crazy environmentalists, I put a lot more importance on the people in our country than a few thousand caribou in Alaska. 

Does anyone in here have any clue how little oil is in ANWAR? At the absolute most we're talking about 16 billion barrels, which is a two year supply for the US, but it's much more likely that it's six months or less. It really is not a hugely significant resource.

Once gas reaches 6-10 bucks a gallon, then I'd buy a shitty car and start finding a way to fuel it better.  May it be electricity, water, or something else. 

simple solution. i'd sell my car...use that money to buy an electric scooter and some solar panels. free transportation. then i'd take a bus or hitch a ride with someone if i needed to get somewhere far.

Assuming you are talking to me... technically nuclear energy isn't the cleanest because of how radioactive the spent rods are.  Something like wave power would probably be the cleanest and have the smallest effect on the environment.  My main point was that all of those things such as wind and wave power are great but the amount of energy they actually create compared with nuclear power is miniscule.

ya, it's a fucking crazy idea to protect the environment we live in, i mean dude we could save so much energy if we stoped using all the waste tretment plants and sanitation facilities, and think how much fuel we could save if we stop having garbage trucks run routes all the time.

what boggles my mind is that you might actually be that stupid.

I don't understand...

are those not things we sort of need??

You can't be a real person. Because no person on this earth is as dumb as you. I think we just found the bridge between ape and human. Wait... that would probably be giving you a couple trillion brain cells too much credit.

You say that you place more importance on the people of our country than "a few thousand caribou."  You do realize that U.S. decision not to drill out ANWAR doesn't harm anyone who lives in the U.S. in any way. There is NO oil there. The amount is sooo tiny it is essentially useless.  Go do some research, find out how much oil is in the ANWAR fields, then go find out how much oil is produced by the Middle Eastern countries every day, then go find out how much oil the American people consume on a daily basis, then come back and talk to us about shooting caribou.  At least after that we won't be able to call you uneducated. We will of course be able to call you an idiot. But we are doing that already so I guess it would be somewhat of an improvement.

I am in awe.

And this ^^^ is what we like to call the beginning of the end folks. The reason why every discussion on NS descends into the world of hate and namecalling.  I love sarcasm don't get me wrong. But this really isn't the thread to use it in if you are trying to make a point... even if it is as ridiculous as his.

if gas was 6 -10 dollars a gallon that would only be a small part of a much larger problem. Think about everything else that is tied to oil consumption (mainly gas, but oil is made for many other products as well). Think about everthing Americans import from other countries, and imagine what costs would be like to ship it here. not to mention that problem is already occuring as we speak. i just read an article today that to ship a freight carrier here from Hong Kong to Califonia costs rougly around 1.4 million dollars in fuel alone.

but to answer your question, i would probably invest in a moped or ride a bike to work. now skiing is a different issue but at those prices....idk, it could be scary.

and plus all our grocery prices would go up too, because in order to get the groceries to the store they have to ship it in a truck and trucks take alot of gas. if the gas prices go to $5 or maybe even $4.50 i wont  drive my car unless i absolutely have too, but bike riding is good for you so its all good.

i would make feul out of weed. that way we could get high and fuel our cars at the same time

Perhaps you are just under the impression that we do not need bio-diversity, and simply because humans might not have a use for the ANWR as it is, that it automatically becomes something we can dispose of.

First

I'm not a conservation eccologist, so i can't provide a strong argument for protecting ANWR, i couldn't tell you that if something goes screw-ball up there, that it iwll have an effect somewhere else.

 But

conservation eccologists will tell you that protecting ANWR is important. It's not too far feched to think that they might actually have some strong justification for this, and that their oppinion is much more relevant than mine or yours. It's also logical to think that a conservation eccologist will have more authority over what would be 'good' than an oil tychoon who wants to make a lot of $$ from the oil.

Second,

Why would we need sewage treatment, garbage removal, etc. because it's shitty/not healthy to live in pollution? It's not like it all just dissapears, we just move it away from us, and stick it in a corner, leave it to effect the rest of the non-human world.  You think it's ok to drill ANWR because you don't have to live with it. If you did, you wouldn't be so supportive (assuming why you haven't responded to the alien annalogy)

I'm an idiot and spelled it ANWAR instead of ANWR. My bad. There went all my credibility haha.

Just pretend it stands for Alaskan National Wild-Animal Reserve instead

A moped works if you live in a city, or someplace relatively rural, but a lot of places by mountains are pretty open. not to mention cold. Hence the freezing guys on the moped in the dumb and dumber.  Granted, they did the smartest thing by taking the moped and doubling up...but we can't all do that.

realisticly speaking, we need to cut down on our carbon emmissions.  It's healthier for everybody, and very doable if you just get rides with other people when you can.  I don't drive to school unless i have to, id rather bum a ride.  I don't feel like using half a tank of gas every week just to go to prison and back

Haha thanks. I swear when I learned about it in high school they spelled it with the second "A" that I was using. O well.

i apologize in advance for what will probably end up being a long rant...



first of all, the price we are paying for gas right now has little to do with what oil companies are currently paying per barrel of oil. (even though the price of crude is over 5 times as much as 6 years ago). the price we pay is dictated by projections of what the oil companies think will happen to oil prices in the future.

exxon/mobil, formerly the two largest competitors in the oil business, now merged into one mega corporation, just announced that it had its largest annual earnings ever last year. now to me and pretty much every consumer in america that makes you go "what the fuck?". how can we be paying almost 400% of what we paid in the late 90s and have oil companies be making the most money they have ever made?

now i don't really have any concrete evidence to back this up, but i am very suspicious of the bush administration on this one, namely dick cheney! his stock in halliburton has gone up over 3000%, yes three thousand percent, thats not a type-o, since 9/11, and as most of you know cheney is a former CEO of halliburton so its not like he only had a small amount of stock in the company... we're talking tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars here. no-bid contracts, corrupt politics, and of course the pre-emptive war in iraq based on lies all play into this. the bush family is basicly family with all the major oil lobbyists (as most of congress is as well because the oil companies have enough money to influence almost everyone in our government). the real reason oil companies are doing so well and why the middle and lower classes are struggling so much now is because of tax write offs. the large corporations and richest people in this country no longer have to pay their fair share, now the middle and lower classes are left with more taxes while at the same time having to pay more for their gas, oil, and energy costs. make sense? i don't think so.

the bush administration will go down in history as being the most corrupt, least intelligent, and hopefully the worst presidential administration in the history of this country. he has squandered our constitution and bill of rights, annihilated our economy, got us into a preemptive war that has killed over 4000 americans and cost us what could end up being over $3 trillion, has ruined the image of america in the eyes of the world, given us our largest national debt ever, and caused many americans to lose faith in their government (as can be seen by his approval ratings).

but the future is brighter my fellow nser... technology, i believe, is going to solve our energy needs. i'm not refering to nuclear power either... nuclear power is great and very efficient but who wants one in their backyard? and we still don't have a safe means of disposing our nuclear waste (sitting on shelves in a closely watched and guarded bunker). i'm also not sure of the safety levels that nuclear power can offer right now. maybe in the future when we can make it safer and when we find a real way of disposing of its waste, it could become an option. but i'm talking about wind, solar, water (including tide and wave harnessing), and geothermal power. most of our energy (70% i think) is from coal. if we could more fully learn how to harness the natural elements that are giving off energy for free everyday i imagine us breaking our fossil fuel addiction while living more in harmony with nature.

as far as our near future, fossil fuel-less car options go, i think electric cars are going to come a long way in the next few years. they already have electric cars that can go over 250 miles on a charge with a top speed of over 65mph. thats not too bad, incorporate some advanced solar panels on that and give it a few more years of research and i bet we'll see 500 miles on a charge or more and 80mph in another 5-10 years. hydrogen is also a possibility but its currently far too expensive and still not completely safe (think "hydrogen bomb"). whatever the answer, it requires us taking our national priorities out of iraq and putting it into our own country and technologies.

thanks for reading my rant... peace.