The state is about to vote in some tax breaks for consumers that buy hybrid cars!
If you’re hearing more and more about conservation and alternative energy in the past month, its all because of a flurry of consciousness that comes from the ravaging the hurricanes in the USA have caused. Renewable energy company stocks are soaring, as gas prices soared. Yet what will happen with the gas prices come back down, as they surely will?
My suspicion is that the feeling of needing alternative energies will endure in the US. This is one of those “marking moments” in history, where a people was so affected, that its leaders began to search in earnest for alternatives. Now don’t get me wrong, a leader from Texas is hardly going to run out and become “green” overnight. There’s a reality check that says that when your supporters are enriched by the flow of petrol, you help petrol flow! And yet, in his second term, we see a more modest George Bush ready to embrace alternatives, even to the point of suggesting ways to save gas.
From Amazing Arnie to Marvelous Massachusetts, as long as Americans are moving towards where the rest of the world already wants to go, who cares if its Kyoto or any other event which helps this happen. Of course, it would have been preferable that it not be an event which caused so much destruction. Well, at least its leaders are listening now…
Sass
2 Comments
You said, “Yet what will happen [when] the gas prices come back down, as they surely will?”
I am sure prices will rise and fall somewhat, but is there evidence suggesting we can look forward to fossil fuel prices anywhere near as low as those we have enjoyed in past decades?
I understand that for the past three decades, while new oilfields have been sought with undiminished vigor, the finds have grown progressively smaller or significantly more difficult to extract. If this is true, then the non-renewable energy industry now must deal with declining yields per unit energy invested. This trend is nicknamed “peak oil.” (I hear there may be a serious effort in the industry to produce the first-ever accurate estimate of our planet’s known oil reserves.)
In other words, do you really think the price at the pump will come back down (other than in brief pre-election abberations)?
Maureen from Egmont, BC
There is no evidence that I have seen to indicate that prices will go back to where they were anytime soon. When you consider that “perfect storm” of Hurricanes knocking out refinery capacity, Insurgents knocking out pipeline capacity, and China taking up all it can get (with India not far behind), then the outlook for prices is not a downward momentum. We will however see some relief when one or two of those situations calms down.
Thanks for your posting.
Sass