Automakers impact gas prices
With a 90-mile round-trip commute each weekday, I doubted there were few as happy as I was to see the price of gas drop below $2 a gallon.
Apparently I was mistaken.
When gas was more than $4 a gallon just a couple months ago, there were fewer vehicles on the road. SUVs, vans, pickup trucks and other gas hogs were replaced by more practical modes of transportation.
T. Boone Pickins was going around pushing his wind-energy plan down everyone’s throats. Presidential candidates were promising that their plans would free us from dependence on foreign oil.
My, what a difference a few bucks at the pump can make. The SUVs and giant pickup trucks are back with a vengeance. Pickens has put his plan on hold and, now that the election is over, no one is promising to break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil.
Hello!? Did somebody forget that we’re not growing anymore oil? Does anyone remember how just a year ago we were screaming about how outrageous $2 a gallon gas was? Now that it’s down to $2, we’re forgetting what life was like in August.
If we quit conserving just because the price drops, the oil barons will get greedier and the price will shoot back up, way past the $4 mark for sure.
During the presidential debates, I found it annoyingly humorous to hear Barack Obama and John McCain go on about eliminating our dependence on foreign oil by developing alternative energy sources domestically. Do these men think the American public is that stupid?
Apparently so.
We do not use foreign oil to heat our homes, produce electricity or to provide for any of our energy needs. We use it almost exclusively in our vehicles. Most of it is burned up as fuel for our cars. If we truly want to slake our thirst for oil, we need vehicles that don’t use it, or much of it. Drilling for more domestic oil, building nuclear power plants, developing wind energy and putting clean-coal plants online will do nothing to reduce our dependence on oil.
What will free us from the chains of dependency is the same thing that will help the Big Three automakers: developing and producing vehicles that run on something other than gasoline.
Ford, GM and Chrysler need to stop going to the government with hat in hand looking for a bailout and start looking toward their own scientists and engineers to come up with practical, affordable cars that do not depend on fossil fuels.
Show me a car that will carry my family of six that retails for less than $15,000 and uses no gasoline and chances are I will buy one, along with a few million of my closest friends.
That doesn’t mean we should no longer look to develop alternative sources of energy. By all means, that should be a national priority. But so should development of gas-free vehicles. That’s the only thing that will truly allow us to stop nursing from the spigots of the Middle East. And it will put America back to work building those cars and put more money into our pockets that would normally go into our gas tanks.
Apparently I was mistaken.
When gas was more than $4 a gallon just a couple months ago, there were fewer vehicles on the road. SUVs, vans, pickup trucks and other gas hogs were replaced by more practical modes of transportation.
T. Boone Pickins was going around pushing his wind-energy plan down everyone’s throats. Presidential candidates were promising that their plans would free us from dependence on foreign oil.
My, what a difference a few bucks at the pump can make. The SUVs and giant pickup trucks are back with a vengeance. Pickens has put his plan on hold and, now that the election is over, no one is promising to break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil.
Hello!? Did somebody forget that we’re not growing anymore oil? Does anyone remember how just a year ago we were screaming about how outrageous $2 a gallon gas was? Now that it’s down to $2, we’re forgetting what life was like in August.
If we quit conserving just because the price drops, the oil barons will get greedier and the price will shoot back up, way past the $4 mark for sure.
During the presidential debates, I found it annoyingly humorous to hear Barack Obama and John McCain go on about eliminating our dependence on foreign oil by developing alternative energy sources domestically. Do these men think the American public is that stupid?
Apparently so.
We do not use foreign oil to heat our homes, produce electricity or to provide for any of our energy needs. We use it almost exclusively in our vehicles. Most of it is burned up as fuel for our cars. If we truly want to slake our thirst for oil, we need vehicles that don’t use it, or much of it. Drilling for more domestic oil, building nuclear power plants, developing wind energy and putting clean-coal plants online will do nothing to reduce our dependence on oil.
What will free us from the chains of dependency is the same thing that will help the Big Three automakers: developing and producing vehicles that run on something other than gasoline.
Ford, GM and Chrysler need to stop going to the government with hat in hand looking for a bailout and start looking toward their own scientists and engineers to come up with practical, affordable cars that do not depend on fossil fuels.
Show me a car that will carry my family of six that retails for less than $15,000 and uses no gasoline and chances are I will buy one, along with a few million of my closest friends.
That doesn’t mean we should no longer look to develop alternative sources of energy. By all means, that should be a national priority. But so should development of gas-free vehicles. That’s the only thing that will truly allow us to stop nursing from the spigots of the Middle East. And it will put America back to work building those cars and put more money into our pockets that would normally go into our gas tanks.
posted by Joe Southern | 10:55 PM
1 Comments:
Hello Joe.
It is up to us to keep reminding people and pushing the point.
This is a big problem because many Americans have an attention span of about five seconds.
PS. What is wrong with the Hereford Brand website?
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