interesting. that was not so obvious to me. i would have thought that all of the western states would be shades of orange (similar to New Mexico) due to the distance between things, and the lack of public transport.
...except that you'd want to map population over this information. the appalachian region (eastern ky/western wv), for example, is one of the highest percentage areas, but it's also not all that populated.
I'm sure Barack can win votes by playing on emotions over gas prices right now, but what's his plan to end that suffering? The typical democrat response, windfall profit taxes & anti-trust lawsuits against OPEC, will do nothing but increase the suffering.
Oil isn't magically going to come down in price unless there is serious demand destruction, enough to lower the demand curve well below the supply.
But nobody is saying what needs to be said - high energy prices are here to stay and it's high time American's start conserving. See how well that plays in West Virginia. Or a politician could propose a Manhattan project to build a nationwide high speed rail network. Don't imagine that would be a major success to the voters either.
Right now people want to keep driving their SUV's at $1.50/gallon gasoline. No politician can make that happen and the one that promises it will be marked a failure when he doesn't make it happen.
Steven, i get that, totally, but the consensus among the punditopolis "seems to be that he suffers lack of support among poor white appalachians, and other less affluent whites....and middle class also needs attention from the Obaminator.
Can somebody tell me why the gas in Missouri is so much cheaper than everywhere else? I mean, its not one county, its a whole state! What makes them so special?
i think you're right, aqua, and i used to also argue that higher prices were a solution rather than a problem (and, yeah, i know how that hurts the poor, etc). we've got to wean ourselves, one way or another.
all that said, while i don't think any action against opec will make any difference at all, i do think that some way of addressing the oil companies' ability to continue to leverage their position for windfall profits is necessary. they're the vampires in the system right now and there must be some way to get them working toward a solution with the rest of us...not in a nicey, nicey way, but with some pressure on them.
sort of beside the point: 'demand destruction' (i like that) is the big-picture answer.
of course gas prices hurt poor people the most...but come to think of it, since when have poor people been able to afford cars? they should probably walk more...and that's the silver lining to higher gas prices, once poor people start walking more and their kids are running 10+ miles per day to school, then i think we'll see american athletes start eating away at the dominance of kenyans in marathons
this will probably take another twenty years those...so don't expect any gold medals in bejiang or london
Looking at the third tab, median income, it says Loudoun County has the highest in the country. That's where I live. It is ALL sprawl and mcmansions and shopping centers, often I get lost in South Riding or Ashburn because everything looks the same. Absolutely NO sense of place. What a shame. Everyone makes so much money, and we live in the most boring place.
i wonder if the silver lining might be that more manufacturing jobs returning to the US, given the nature of transportation costs and the prospects of wages increasing overseas?
i tend to agree that though higher gas prices are really difficult now, they are good for us in the long run. Any extra motivation for better maintenance of our transportation infrastructure, public transit, slowing of sprawl development and more overall sustainable growth is good news. Hopefully this creates a tightening of the suburban belt and a re-densification of our urban centers, which will go a looooong way towards reducing the demand for gasoline.
the tricky thing is that obviously, people HAVE to live in rural areas, and generally those who do make much much less than those who live in suburban and urban areas. Im not sure what relief is in sight for rural residents who are so dependent on their cars, having no other option...
higher prices were a solution rather than a problem
I agree completely that high energy prices will lead to positive things. Notice how sales of SUV's and trucks are plummeting. That's a good thing. And I don't accept the "gas prices hurt the poor" claim as a personal vehicle is a luxury. The poor in the rest of the world would love to be so lucky. High energy prices will lead to increased densification, better mass transit, more local economies, etc.
That said, I don't view Big Oil as vampires. If anything the national oil companies operating in places like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela are the vampires because they are the ones that really control the supply. The likes of Exxon, Shell, Chevron only control 10% of global supply. They have every incentive to flood the market with oil and earn more profits at current prices. They simply don't have the capacity to do so. Taxing the shit out of them isn't going to bring supply to the market. And what they do bring to market will have an increased price to offset said taxes.
Instead the middle east and others are the vampires making all the real $$$. Then again, it's their resource to nationalize. In the 1950's the USA sold their oil for next to nothing. In hindsight it was a foolish move. I have no problems with them not pumping full blast to keep Americans motoring along in suburbans.
drill in anwr. resume drilling off the east coast that was suspended in the 70's. expand drilling in the gulf. take advantage of the possible 10 billion gallons of oil shale in north dakota and colorado. we have plenty of oil to lower gas prices in america, and now its in the proper price range to be economically viable.
no one to blame for imported gas and higher gas prices but the people who refuse to allow expanded drilling in america.
anwr is 19 million acres. drilling would be 2000. screw the deer. i want cheaper gas and we have the ability to provide it for ourselves.
And I don't accept the "gas prices hurt the poor" claim as a personal vehicle is a luxury
What an elitist, out of touch remark.
In many parts of the country but particularly in small rust belt towns that formerly depended on manufacturing, the choice for many working poor is either a long car commute or no job. There is literally no public transportation infrastructure in these places, very few jobs to be had locally, and no possibility of these workers picking up and moving closer to where the jobs are. In countries where the poor don't have personal vehicles at all, the entire structure of the society and economy is different. Maybe we can change to make personal autos less necessary for the poor, but for some it's really the only lifeline between working and being out on the streets.
putting aside all debate as to how much oil is actually available domestically, even if more drilling (including in ANWR) were approved by congress today, the mobilization effort would take 5-10 years before any oil from those efforts would start to enter the supply chain. by that time prices will likely be more stable as the result of decreased demand smoothing out market volatility. also, by that time we will be used to the higher prices. we would be better off by far to put the investment that would go toward domestic exploration and production into increased efficiency and alternative energy.
actually, it's funny how people are demanding lower gas prices rather than higher efficiency. if you trade in your 15 mpg vehicle for a 30+ mpg vehicle your gas cost will effectively be cut in half, bringing your fuel budget back to what it was 2 or 3 years ago.
from all i've heard, what's available in anwr would be short-lived, over_under. that's a bandaid, not an answer, and it potentially spoils something that can't be unspoiled back.
I would like to see a map of who voted for Bush in 2000/2004 superimposed over this map....to see how many people ended up fucking themselves in the ass
americans during the past twenty years or so have been remarkably spoiled when it comes to prices. courtesy of wal-mart and other large corporations nearly everything in the us has been available at rock-bottom prices.
i have little sympathy for all of the incessant crying about rising costs that's now being reported in the american media outlets. alot of people of dubious talent and value have been able to enjoy the spoils flat screens, suvs, and expansive foyers with air conditioning. the current market correction is all for the better
i personally belive an investment in mass transit is the proper solution, but that is for another thread on this site i believe...
and yes it will take 5-10 years for an impact to be felt if drilling in those sites was to happen,
it, however, is another step toward energy independence. oils role in automobiles will most likely diminish, but its role in manufacturing, farming and all other other areas where petroleum is used will not. and our ability to secure our own source seems incredibly logical as a part of a larger economic solution to transportation which for the forseeable future will involve gasoline.
probably going to be an unpopular statement on here, but "let the market decide"....?
And I don't accept the "gas prices hurt the poor" claim as a personal vehicle is a luxury
What an elitist, out of touch remark.
I think puddles sums it up pretty good. Americans, including our so called poor, are out of touch with reality. We've been spoiled into thinking cheap energy is our birthright. Or that a personal vehicle is a necessity because you live in an lower income rural area with few jobs.
What is out of touch is the idea that fossil fuel based personal travel is necessary. Some of the richest people I've met owned no car, lived in rural areas, lived off the land and were part of a tightly knit local community. They've made the best of things where life put them. Not accepting how society wanted to structure society and not letting themselves become victims. According to the IRS they aren't rich, but I'm not fooled.
mdler i think you need to contact the blackbox voting people and offer them a bribe, they rigged the elections so they have the most inaccurate information on that, and i would guess that it was not real people doing most of the key voting but right wing well payed conservative hacks, oh and people of color vote caging list builders
now that we have to plug in our cell phones, pdas, ipods, and laptops almost daily, maybe plugging in a car would seem like less of an issue to everyone. why not float that idea out there again? (some people are already doing this, but it's not at critical mass yet.)
The big problem with plug-in cars is that it doesn't work very well with on-street parking. A plug-in would be absolutely perfect for me, but I live in the city so it would be kinda hard.
Problem with plug-in cars is where is all the extra electricity gonna come from? Solar and wind can help but we'd need one heck of a lot to power all the vehicles on the road. We need new baseload power plants, i.e. nuclear, coal or hydro.
To hell with the towers, let's just put PV cells on the roofs of all those banal, cookie-cutter housing developments in the Pheonix suburbs and power the whole region or maybe even try to harvest the heat off the thousands of square miles of black asphalt in the Valley.
lletdown - whats up with those solar chimneys - it seems IIT people know a lot about that company. Your the 3rd IIT grad to mention them I know. Is there an IIT connection perhaps?
its more an interest in the structure and shlaich in general.
i became interested in it while taking peter land's studio... perhaps i started a mini trend, because when i was working with the concept, i introduced it to a lot of people.
i personally discovered the tower when researching other heat engines.
its a incredibly interesting idea though... one with i think a ton of potential. especially when there is a working full size model. There is some really interesting research being done in conjunction with that particular tower as well.
one of the greatest inefficiencies about the solar chimney is that once the suns energy heats the air under the glass apron, it simply rushes up the chimney and is expelled back into the atmosphere. While its silly to say that energy is wasted (because its free), a system that could exchange some of that heat back to the incoming air could dramatically improve the efficiency of the tower.
one could imagine a sort of reverse radiator like system, where the outgoing hot air, preheats the incoming cool air...there by making the temperature difference less, and less sun light required to get the cool air hot enough to rise with sufficient speed.
i'm going back a little ways into the thread, but i have always wondered the same thing, 4arch.
people can cut their gas in half or even more by switching the car they drive. it's quite simple. but nobody ever talks about that.
if i were using a product that suddenly doubled in price, I would simply STOP using that product, or use much less of it. I would not complain about how expensive it is while continuing to buy more and more and more of it.
Why should oil companies lower prices? The public is buying gas in record breaking volumes!
i understand that the gas issue is a bit more complicated than standard products, but this is certainly one step people can take to help themselves.
maybe i need to search out some non-ecologically-minded friends, buy 'em some beers, and hash this out because i feel very stupid about this whole issue.
i simply can't understand why anyone thinks it's ok to ruin a protected region FOREVER when it only has the potential to provide maybe a few years worth of 'energy independence'.
of course, as has been stated before, energy independence is a fallacy because any oil from here will be traded on the global market, but that's not what mr bush wants you to hear.
Gas Spending Map
Cool map showing the percentage of income spent on gas accross America courtesy of the NYT
Gas as Percentage of Income by Region
a nice way of presenting obvious information...
interesting. that was not so obvious to me. i would have thought that all of the western states would be shades of orange (similar to New Mexico) due to the distance between things, and the lack of public transport.
the percentage of income is fascinating. if Barack needs an indication of where to campaign hard this year, map is a road map to victory.
...except that you'd want to map population over this information. the appalachian region (eastern ky/western wv), for example, is one of the highest percentage areas, but it's also not all that populated.
except poor people don't vote as vigorously as the middle/upper class beta
they might if they were courted. that part of the puzzle seems like an issue obama has been well-suited to address, apu.
I'm sure Barack can win votes by playing on emotions over gas prices right now, but what's his plan to end that suffering? The typical democrat response, windfall profit taxes & anti-trust lawsuits against OPEC, will do nothing but increase the suffering.
Oil isn't magically going to come down in price unless there is serious demand destruction, enough to lower the demand curve well below the supply.
But nobody is saying what needs to be said - high energy prices are here to stay and it's high time American's start conserving. See how well that plays in West Virginia. Or a politician could propose a Manhattan project to build a nationwide high speed rail network. Don't imagine that would be a major success to the voters either.
Right now people want to keep driving their SUV's at $1.50/gallon gasoline. No politician can make that happen and the one that promises it will be marked a failure when he doesn't make it happen.
Steven, i get that, totally, but the consensus among the punditopolis "seems to be that he suffers lack of support among poor white appalachians, and other less affluent whites....and middle class also needs attention from the Obaminator.
Can somebody tell me why the gas in Missouri is so much cheaper than everywhere else? I mean, its not one county, its a whole state! What makes them so special?
i think you're right, aqua, and i used to also argue that higher prices were a solution rather than a problem (and, yeah, i know how that hurts the poor, etc). we've got to wean ourselves, one way or another.
all that said, while i don't think any action against opec will make any difference at all, i do think that some way of addressing the oil companies' ability to continue to leverage their position for windfall profits is necessary. they're the vampires in the system right now and there must be some way to get them working toward a solution with the rest of us...not in a nicey, nicey way, but with some pressure on them.
sort of beside the point: 'demand destruction' (i like that) is the big-picture answer.
sarah - are their state-levied gas taxes lower?
of course gas prices hurt poor people the most...but come to think of it, since when have poor people been able to afford cars? they should probably walk more...and that's the silver lining to higher gas prices, once poor people start walking more and their kids are running 10+ miles per day to school, then i think we'll see american athletes start eating away at the dominance of kenyans in marathons
this will probably take another twenty years those...so don't expect any gold medals in bejiang or london
Looking at the third tab, median income, it says Loudoun County has the highest in the country. That's where I live. It is ALL sprawl and mcmansions and shopping centers, often I get lost in South Riding or Ashburn because everything looks the same. Absolutely NO sense of place. What a shame. Everyone makes so much money, and we live in the most boring place.
i wonder if the silver lining might be that more manufacturing jobs returning to the US, given the nature of transportation costs and the prospects of wages increasing overseas?
i tend to agree that though higher gas prices are really difficult now, they are good for us in the long run. Any extra motivation for better maintenance of our transportation infrastructure, public transit, slowing of sprawl development and more overall sustainable growth is good news. Hopefully this creates a tightening of the suburban belt and a re-densification of our urban centers, which will go a looooong way towards reducing the demand for gasoline.
the tricky thing is that obviously, people HAVE to live in rural areas, and generally those who do make much much less than those who live in suburban and urban areas. Im not sure what relief is in sight for rural residents who are so dependent on their cars, having no other option...
I agree completely that high energy prices will lead to positive things. Notice how sales of SUV's and trucks are plummeting. That's a good thing. And I don't accept the "gas prices hurt the poor" claim as a personal vehicle is a luxury. The poor in the rest of the world would love to be so lucky. High energy prices will lead to increased densification, better mass transit, more local economies, etc.
That said, I don't view Big Oil as vampires. If anything the national oil companies operating in places like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Venezuela are the vampires because they are the ones that really control the supply. The likes of Exxon, Shell, Chevron only control 10% of global supply. They have every incentive to flood the market with oil and earn more profits at current prices. They simply don't have the capacity to do so. Taxing the shit out of them isn't going to bring supply to the market. And what they do bring to market will have an increased price to offset said taxes.
Instead the middle east and others are the vampires making all the real $$$. Then again, it's their resource to nationalize. In the 1950's the USA sold their oil for next to nothing. In hindsight it was a foolish move. I have no problems with them not pumping full blast to keep Americans motoring along in suburbans.
drill in anwr. resume drilling off the east coast that was suspended in the 70's. expand drilling in the gulf. take advantage of the possible 10 billion gallons of oil shale in north dakota and colorado. we have plenty of oil to lower gas prices in america, and now its in the proper price range to be economically viable.
no one to blame for imported gas and higher gas prices but the people who refuse to allow expanded drilling in america.
anwr is 19 million acres. drilling would be 2000. screw the deer. i want cheaper gas and we have the ability to provide it for ourselves.
What an elitist, out of touch remark.
In many parts of the country but particularly in small rust belt towns that formerly depended on manufacturing, the choice for many working poor is either a long car commute or no job. There is literally no public transportation infrastructure in these places, very few jobs to be had locally, and no possibility of these workers picking up and moving closer to where the jobs are. In countries where the poor don't have personal vehicles at all, the entire structure of the society and economy is different. Maybe we can change to make personal autos less necessary for the poor, but for some it's really the only lifeline between working and being out on the streets.
over_under,
putting aside all debate as to how much oil is actually available domestically, even if more drilling (including in ANWR) were approved by congress today, the mobilization effort would take 5-10 years before any oil from those efforts would start to enter the supply chain. by that time prices will likely be more stable as the result of decreased demand smoothing out market volatility. also, by that time we will be used to the higher prices. we would be better off by far to put the investment that would go toward domestic exploration and production into increased efficiency and alternative energy.
actually, it's funny how people are demanding lower gas prices rather than higher efficiency. if you trade in your 15 mpg vehicle for a 30+ mpg vehicle your gas cost will effectively be cut in half, bringing your fuel budget back to what it was 2 or 3 years ago.
from all i've heard, what's available in anwr would be short-lived, over_under. that's a bandaid, not an answer, and it potentially spoils something that can't be unspoiled back.
i watch gasbuddy for the 'temp' too
http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx
I would like to see a map of who voted for Bush in 2000/2004 superimposed over this map....to see how many people ended up fucking themselves in the ass
americans during the past twenty years or so have been remarkably spoiled when it comes to prices. courtesy of wal-mart and other large corporations nearly everything in the us has been available at rock-bottom prices.
i have little sympathy for all of the incessant crying about rising costs that's now being reported in the american media outlets. alot of people of dubious talent and value have been able to enjoy the spoils flat screens, suvs, and expansive foyers with air conditioning. the current market correction is all for the better
i personally belive an investment in mass transit is the proper solution, but that is for another thread on this site i believe...
and yes it will take 5-10 years for an impact to be felt if drilling in those sites was to happen,
it, however, is another step toward energy independence. oils role in automobiles will most likely diminish, but its role in manufacturing, farming and all other other areas where petroleum is used will not. and our ability to secure our own source seems incredibly logical as a part of a larger economic solution to transportation which for the forseeable future will involve gasoline.
probably going to be an unpopular statement on here, but "let the market decide"....?
What an elitist, out of touch remark.
I think puddles sums it up pretty good. Americans, including our so called poor, are out of touch with reality. We've been spoiled into thinking cheap energy is our birthright. Or that a personal vehicle is a necessity because you live in an lower income rural area with few jobs.
What is out of touch is the idea that fossil fuel based personal travel is necessary. Some of the richest people I've met owned no car, lived in rural areas, lived off the land and were part of a tightly knit local community. They've made the best of things where life put them. Not accepting how society wanted to structure society and not letting themselves become victims. According to the IRS they aren't rich, but I'm not fooled.
Puddles gets the Most-Politically-Incorrect-Post of the Day award
mdler i think you need to contact the blackbox voting people and offer them a bribe, they rigged the elections so they have the most inaccurate information on that, and i would guess that it was not real people doing most of the key voting but right wing well payed conservative hacks, oh and people of color vote caging list builders
Why don't we do this, why don't we make a diesel-electric pickup that get 100+ mpg, and sell it to working class Americans at $10K a pop.
Whoever could do that would put the big three in bankruptcy overnight.
now that we have to plug in our cell phones, pdas, ipods, and laptops almost daily, maybe plugging in a car would seem like less of an issue to everyone. why not float that idea out there again? (some people are already doing this, but it's not at critical mass yet.)
from what i hear the Chevy Volt will change everything, 2010. only one problem, at least short term; it's a fucking Chevy.
The chevy volt won't change a thing, just like the EV-1 didn't change a thing. They set these things up just to watch them fall.
The big problem with plug-in cars is that it doesn't work very well with on-street parking. A plug-in would be absolutely perfect for me, but I live in the city so it would be kinda hard.
Slate must've been eaves dropping on our site. At least now we know.
Problem with plug-in cars is where is all the extra electricity gonna come from? Solar and wind can help but we'd need one heck of a lot to power all the vehicles on the road. We need new baseload power plants, i.e. nuclear, coal or hydro.
nuclear fusion baby.
spain is doing some amazing things with large scale solar.
nice...i guess the truth is politically incorrect...or maybe it just depends on the audience
why dont we try this out...
no one should be living in arizona anyway. build a dozen solar towers in the desert and power the whole south west.
To hell with the towers, let's just put PV cells on the roofs of all those banal, cookie-cutter housing developments in the Pheonix suburbs and power the whole region or maybe even try to harvest the heat off the thousands of square miles of black asphalt in the Valley.
whatchew talking bout willis?! AZ rules
i do want me a small scale solar tower thou, i bet you could put a net in it and do simulated free falling with all the vacuum effect generated.
pavement that is full of Diodes and makes power that would be a great idea.
lletdown - whats up with those solar chimneys - it seems IIT people know a lot about that company. Your the 3rd IIT grad to mention them I know. Is there an IIT connection perhaps?
I suspect if they factored in expenditure on aviation fuel and we'd see a very different picture.
evil...
its more an interest in the structure and shlaich in general.
i became interested in it while taking peter land's studio... perhaps i started a mini trend, because when i was working with the concept, i introduced it to a lot of people.
i personally discovered the tower when researching other heat engines.
its a incredibly interesting idea though... one with i think a ton of potential. especially when there is a working full size model. There is some really interesting research being done in conjunction with that particular tower as well.
one of the greatest inefficiencies about the solar chimney is that once the suns energy heats the air under the glass apron, it simply rushes up the chimney and is expelled back into the atmosphere. While its silly to say that energy is wasted (because its free), a system that could exchange some of that heat back to the incoming air could dramatically improve the efficiency of the tower.
one could imagine a sort of reverse radiator like system, where the outgoing hot air, preheats the incoming cool air...there by making the temperature difference less, and less sun light required to get the cool air hot enough to rise with sufficient speed.
http://www.globalwarmingsolutions.co.uk/
i'm going back a little ways into the thread, but i have always wondered the same thing, 4arch.
people can cut their gas in half or even more by switching the car they drive. it's quite simple. but nobody ever talks about that.
if i were using a product that suddenly doubled in price, I would simply STOP using that product, or use much less of it. I would not complain about how expensive it is while continuing to buy more and more and more of it.
Why should oil companies lower prices? The public is buying gas in record breaking volumes!
i understand that the gas issue is a bit more complicated than standard products, but this is certainly one step people can take to help themselves.
maybe i need to search out some non-ecologically-minded friends, buy 'em some beers, and hash this out because i feel very stupid about this whole issue.
i simply can't understand why anyone thinks it's ok to ruin a protected region FOREVER when it only has the potential to provide maybe a few years worth of 'energy independence'.
of course, as has been stated before, energy independence is a fallacy because any oil from here will be traded on the global market, but that's not what mr bush wants you to hear.
what are we doing?
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