My Desultory Blog

Mr. Corbett.. just as a comparison, gas in San Francisco, CA is now over $4.00 this week for unleaded. It is as high as $4.44 for premium. I would rather be in Ohio with the lower gas prices.

I always make my friends angry thinking this way but I would like to see gas prices shoot up even higher. This will increase the creative minds out there to pursue more alternate fuel options and our elected officials to take it more seriously. I am fed up with being dependent on other countries for our fuel requirements. That’s the main reason I bought my TDI was so I could run Biodiesel but do not have any nearby stations that carry it yet.

I knew California fuel prices were high, but had no idea that they had hit $4.00. Wow … thanks for the update Nora.

As for what we should be paying for fuel … I\’m not sure if I want the economy to suffer significantly … as that\’s what will happen if energy goes higher and stays high. I\’m a pro-market driven kind of guy and want to see the global economy remain important (not go isolationist) — yet am NOT comfortable with being held hostage because of our petroleum addiction? Free trade around the world requires relationships … and IMHO relations with other countries (friend and foe) is the best way to prevent wars.

A friend and I were talking some years ago about changing the way the US protects our oil interests globally … because they are so important to our country … and we concluded that we pay for maintaining ports, the protection of corporate oil interests and the transportation infrastructure on the seaways and pipelines the wrong way. Currently our \’income tax\’ is used to fund all of these vital interests. Our compromise solution (he\’s liberal, I tend to be conservative) was that the cost of this should be priced into the imported petroleum AND an equal reduction be made in our current tax. We coined the term PAA – Petroleum Acquisition Adjustment to avoid just calling it a tax.

Of course this would result in all oil coming from non-domestic sources being more expensive and higher prices at the pump … but alternatives, conservation and domestic energy sources would be stimulated due to higher prices. Slowly we would reduce our need for the imported oil and the higher prices would encouraged domestic alternatives be they renewables, domestic petroleum, coal to oil, fuel celled electric vehicles, hydrogen, etc. The end result would be a zero tax change to our Federal budget … and a stimulus and acceleration of developing a wiser way to use (and perhaps conserve) energy. I believe that giving consumers and \’actually true cost\’ of petroleum would be the best way to move toward more efficient vehicles and alternative energy development … and all of this could be done without subsidies to develop alternative energy.