Pain in the Gas

I guess this is big news. That's all the talking heads on the television, the bloggers who write about what the newsies are talking about, and most everyone else want to talk about. Rising gas prices.

CBS News wants folks to believe that they really don't want to know why the price of gas is high but rather what is going to be done about it.

Democrats have suggested a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax. That's 18.4 cents per gallon. Sounds great. But why make that change temporary? If you believe the costs of taxes are too great for the average consumer to bear, make the cut permanent and make the changes you suggest permanent. Have the courage of the convictions. Temporary solutions are not solutions but pandering.

Nothing is going to bring prices of gas down anytime soon, other than lifting the taxes on motor fuels. Windfall profits taxes do not address the underlying problem, which is greater worldwide demand for gasoline. Period. And they irreparably harm the very businesses that use those profits to conduct research and development of technology used to find new sources of oil.

And investigations into price gouging isn't going to solve anything either. It may be good to be a demogogue, but thanks for wasting tax dollars in an investigation that will result in the same conclusion reached each previous time such investigations were launched - that there was no collusion or gouging by the oil companies themselves, and that some individual independent owners of gas stations took advantage of the situation.

President Bush has suspended oil purchases for the SPR. That's a drop in the bucket. Lifting environmental restrictions to assist the switchover to summer blends are a temporary help, but the price isn't going to drop.

Building new refineries and oil resources domestically are a fix, but those are years off. They do nothing to lessen the oil prices now.

The Anchoress, Don Surber, and Texas Rainmaker are on this story of how the government push to eliminate MTBE and shift to ethanol has resulted in distortions in the marketplace and shortages in some areas.

The temporary changes that Bush suggests aren't a solution either. They're pandering, just as the Democrats are pandering. If the President thinks that the EPA regs on ethanol and MTBE are worth suspending temporarily, make the changes permanent. Request that the states come to an agreement on reducing the total number of blends from 17 down to 6. Not only would that make regional shortages a thing of the past, but would improve the efficiency at already overburdened refineries.

Everyone dances around what needs to be done, but no one has the courage to take the issues head on. And I understand that it makes perfect sense to them. Why put their political careers on the line by pissing off the folks who make their political campaigns possible - the campaign contributors.

Look, the solutions for the American energy problem aren't all that complex though they will, all told, take time to implement if we, as a nation have the willpower to take on not only the government but the various lobby groups that make up the environmental policy in this country. By that I mean addressing government, environmental groups, the NIMBYists, oil companies, and car manufacturers.

Mahablog castigates Bush for not doing enought to lower the price of oil. Well, no such plan can be done overnight - especially when the entrenched interests (oil companies, and more importantly government) refuses to act or let actions occur naturally.

For starters: reliance on oil isn't necessarily bad in and of itself. Reliance on oil obtained from totalitarian regimes, kleptocracies, and Islamist regimes is. That means that finding sources of the black stuff somewhere within our own borders would be preferable to obtaining it from a foreign nation whose interests are antithetical to our own.

And there are a few places where the oil is plentiful within our own borders that would lessen reliance on the most unstable parts of the world. ANWR for starters.

Renewable resources are a help, but only a stopgap measure in the mid-term. We cannot jump to renewable resources to power cars right away because there simply isn't enough of it to make it happen. That's where the conservation comes in. Having a sensible conservation effort includes improving gas mileage on cars.

Not just the showy Prius that few people want or can afford, but on the cars, trucks, and buses that people actually use on a daily basis. A 3mpg increase in gas mileage on 800,000 Toyota Camrys is worth far more than 40 mpg increase on 50,000 Prius driving the same mileage under the same conditions (a savings of 400,000 gallons). In other words - focus on those vehicles that people drive. However, one should lift all boats - but do so that things don't get unbalanced. And increasing gas mileage by 3 mpg is technologically far easier to accomplish than doubling gas mileage.

And lest we forget, but much of the oil that we use doesn't necessarily go for cars, trucks, and buses. It goes into manufacturing plastics, fuelling power plants, and otherwise making and getting the things we want and need.

Environmentalists complain about lots of things - some warranted and some unwarranted. Air pollution is bad, but not allowing new power plants that use modern technology that provide more power and less pollution is also bad. Siting rules and regulations sap the ability to provide new power plants. We can't build hydroelectric plants because they change the ecology. We can't build wind power stations because they might alter Ted Kennedy's views from his family compound. We can't build nuclear power plants because of serious concerns about siting of waste, security, and general safety. Some of those concerns can be addressed through technology. Others require concerted effort (like addressing where nuclear waste should go as a permanent secure repository), which aren't insurmountable - and the payoff is energy that doesn't require burning fossil fuels, cause air emissions and pollutants.

The Moderate Voice has another one of his excellent posts. Sometimes it really feels like we've got the Three Stooges running things in government, although I usually think of them as named Pataki, Silver, and Bruno.