OldManOnFire

Gasoline in my little corner of the world today...

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Refuge51

Exactly! How many of us have no excuse once warmer weather gets here to either walk or bike to work? Or carpool if we work far away? It is our fault, just like getting fat from big macs would be our fault, or any other excessive consumption. Up the consumption, up goes the price.

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Refuge51

This article will be two years old on May 12th. and yet....
Gas prices: It's supply and demand, and you wouldn't want the alternative - USATODAY.com

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I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
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aloysious

You do have other options.
Here are a few: Live close enough to where you work so that you can walk or ride your bike. Using the concept of marginal utility , you choose to live far enough away from work so that you must drive.
Buy and use a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. Using the concept of marginal utility, you choose to operate a vehicle that uses fossile fuels. It is cheaper.
Ride the bus. Using the concept of marginal utility, you choose to drive a vehicle and buy benzene because it saves you time, and time is money.
Do not use a lawn mower that needs benzene to operate. Use a hand powered mower. They are cheaper and it is good excersize using them. Using the concept of marginal utility, you choose the easier method of cutting the lawn.
It is clear to me that your understanding of marginal utility is indeed accidental. But unbeknownst to you, you practice marginal utility every day you use benzene. You do have choices.

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OldManOnFire

Last I read, I think the 'world' was consuming something like 76 million barrels of oil per day, and out of this the USA consumes approximately 20 million of those barrels or about 25% of today's oil consumption.

But 'world' production was less at 75 million barrels per day, which is a one-million barrel per day deficit to demand. So on the 'world' scale, as long as supply is less than demand, of which most of the supply is out of the control of the USA, it seems to me that the price we pay for gasoline in the USA will continue to rise at least until, and IF, more oil can be supplied. With China and India industrializing and with over 2 billion people, depending on what their demand is going to be in the near term (for the next ten years), if this demand continues to be much greater than the growth in supply, then gasoline in the USA will easily rise to $5-$6 gallon.

One can only imagine how $6/gallon gasoline will negatively influence all aspects of our lives...

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Did you know both our problems and the solutions can be found simply by looking in our mirrors...and...Never confuse the extraordinary stuff I think and write with that of a well-balanced person...

Refuge51

Well Omof...looks like if I'm gonna have to walk more, I need to move to a warmer state!

__________________
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
~George McGovern~

Rigged

Its not that easy. As I have mentioned many of us live in communities where walking and biking is not possible....I would love to be able to walk to get coffee in the morning but I can't because there are no sidewalks where I live...and everything is miles away...

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OldManOnFire

Just like thousands of others in my area, and hundreds of thousands around the USA, I live where I work--on a farm. Yes many years ago we chose to live here and to create our little slice of paradise...a rural area...a vineyard...a nice home.

Again, like hundreds of thousands of others in my situation, all of the machinery requires gasoline or diesel and stuff like bio-diesel is not available in this area yet.

To my knowledge there are no commercially available hydrogen fuel cell personal cars that are affordable. Further last time I read there are more CO2 emissions given off in the process of producing hydrogen than there are in driving a regular combustion engine car.

Our next automobile will be a Prius.

In this case, just like tens of millions of others in the USA, there is no bus service in my area. When we travel outside of this area to the cities, etc. we always use mass-transit.

If it was practicable we would.

It is impossible for anything about me to be clear to you since you don't know anything about my lifestyle. Whether or not I have a full understanding of marginal utility is really senseless. I understand we all have choices and I preach this more than anyone. In our case, if eliminating CO2 emissions and/or our dependence on oil was our priority in life today, we will sell all that we have created and start from scratch in a new area. Perhaps this concept is easy for younger people, but for those of us who are no longer young, although selling and moving is certainly possible, it's not our priority.

I fully understand the consumption of a product, and how this affects my life, and I fully understand more consumption of the same products, and how this affects my life. Yes there are lots of choices and depending on how certain issues affect us personally, will determine how we deal with those choices. So although marginal utility helps explain consumption, another part of the equation must include the endless supply of that product and/or some information on the potential scarcity of that product. Using water as an example, which we all consume, and continue consuming more quantities of the stuff, many times with reckless abandon, this is simply because it's available and it's relatively cheap. This is utility and marginal utility at work...but when the crisis hits, who cares about why we are where we are...the question is what do we do now???

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Did you know both our problems and the solutions can be found simply by looking in our mirrors...and...Never confuse the extraordinary stuff I think and write with that of a well-balanced person...

OldManOnFire

Refuge...we live in a beautiful place, almost a paradise in rural northern CA with almost perfect weather, and we enjoy walking and riding bicycles but until the city/county/state or whomever does something to provide reasonable safety to pedestrians, it's almost suicidal to do this!

Getting smaller governments to put in bike paths and sidewalks and crosswalks with signals and lighting and having them service the most popular areas is nearly impossible to achieve. First most people don't really care, and even if they do, there's simply not enough money for this--it's not a priority.

I've also blogged about smaller electric cars like the Zap and Smart cars, and one of them would work for our 6 mile trip into town, but these tiny cars don't safely mix with SUV's, pickup trucks, and cargo trucks. So, whether it's for smaller and slower cars or for pedestrians, in order to achieve any reasonable efficiency, this will require a complete redesign of the transportation infrastructure.

Regarding warmer weather, if global climate change is really going to happen, you just need to wait a few years...

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Did you know both our problems and the solutions can be found simply by looking in our mirrors...and...Never confuse the extraordinary stuff I think and write with that of a well-balanced person...

Refuge51

I know...I understand and it's the same everywhere, some worse than others. I wish the solution was so simple, but it's not.
Yes, I hear Nebraska may someday be the new coastline.

__________________
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
~George McGovern~