What the hell, can't we be glad for anything?

CNN... whatever

Link to article

Is this for real? It makes sense I guess, but still...

The pundit class makes its living coming up with things that people click on or buy papers to read. This is just the "well here's a headline that's so counterintuitive, people will just have to check it out" approach, and it worked on us.

I see nothing in that article that suggests lowering oil prices are a bad thing or a double-edged sword. Maurice's summation is pretty spot on.

I figured as much, too...

The thing is, it made the wheels in my mind turn. So a CNN writer is making us feel bad for the poor oil companies? Uh oh, look out: sure gas prices will be lower, but it's just going to make things worse for big business and in the end for everyone else. It's good for the economy that big oil is robbing us blind!

Obviously I'm cynically exaggerating, but it still irks me.

Is there a good, free site about economic/business/financial matters?

Any recommendations?

Greg Palast's site has (or had) some interesting info on the economics of oil production and 'peak oil'. Check it out here.

I'm pretty sure there are links from that site that will point you to other worthy sources.

Thanks - good link.

I'm fine with high gas prices. The only thing that speaks to the public is the dollar bill. These high gas prices start to spawn research into previously "uneconomical" technologies and past due competition in industry. I'm also hoping the Government pulls their head out of their ass and starts funding ITER, and possibly more research for fission reactors as well.

The pending energy crisis is a multifaceted front. The only way we are going to battle it is by fueling research into materials and techniques to minimize energy consumption. Since the current administration and house/senate have launched all but a full on attack on things like NSF funding, it's made corporate research much more important, but corporate research also doesn't get funding until things start to seem reasonable. With gas prices as high as 4.20+ a gallon, research into anything beneficial starts to seem reasonable.

Artifically lowering gas prices can even increase consumption as well, and really, that's the last thing we need.

juice wrote:I'm fine with high gas prices. The only thing that speaks to the public is the dollar bill.

Yeah, freezing shivering babies in apartments where the famlies can't afford to keep the heat on. No stove to cook dinner on.
Yeah. That'll teach them.

juice wrote:I'm fine with high gas prices. The only thing that speaks to the public is the dollar bill. These high gas prices start to spawn research into previously "uneconomical" technologies and past due competition in industry. I'm also hoping the Government pulls their head out of their ass and starts funding ITER, and possibly more research for fission reactors as well.

The pending energy crisis is a multifaceted front. The only way we are going to battle it is by fueling research into materials and techniques to minimize energy consumption. Since the current administration and house/senate have launched all but a full on attack on things like NSF funding, it's made corporate research much more important, but corporate research also doesn't get funding until things start to seem reasonable. With gas prices as high as 4.20+ a gallon, research into anything beneficial starts to seem reasonable.

Artifically lowering gas prices can even increase consumption as well, and really, that's the last thing we need.

Nothing presonal Juice, but boy, I get tired of this line of thinking. Technology does not equal energy, and assuming 'they' will 'figure something out' to allow us to continue to live as we have since WWII (the dawn of suburbia) is simply wishful thinking at this point.

The systems now 'trapping' us were all built around oil, because of its easy access and, most important, the ease of refinement, transport and safe storage (below gas pumps and in your car) specific to this substance.

Hoping for another miraculous energy source is fine, and of course some combo of various alternatives will play some role in our future energy diet. But to make no attempt to decrease energy use -- I mean in a big way -- is damn near suicidal thinking at this stage. We are on the economic warning track, and still Amtrak cannot get decent funding? Scandalous. Families are putting off dentistry to fill their tanks (their Tank's tanks, in cases of SUV ownership) but cannot envision moving to smaller quarters someplace where driving is not mandatory for most of life's daily activities? Insanity.

Techniques for reducing energy consumption are known -- they're in the stories of our grandparents' lives on the farm, or in musty books on urban lives of 100 years ago.

There is nothing in the entire history of mankind to suggest that our current way of living will remain possible -- because we invented it only very recently. To make no plans to return to more locally-based, walkable communities is very dangerous. To ignore Amtrak and to defer upgrades/expansion of other public transportation in favor of road-building is folly.

And to grow monocrops, dependent on ever-higher amounts of oil/natural gas-based fertilizers to compensate for utterly destroyed topsoil nutrition, is to place our very survival in the hands of a handful of quite mendacious agribusiness giants. (Let's not even get into the fucking net-energy-losing ethanol scammery.)

Drill, drill, drill is not the answer. Neither is research, research, research. Both have their place in a larger pool of efforts but must take a back seat to immediate, sober plans to shift the entirety of society toward an actually sustainable model -- a model already proven for, like, thousands of years, before suburbia.

I didn't write that