I overheard someone in a gas station railing against Wall Street over the price of gas. They were claiming oil speculation was the only reason prices were so high, and that these speculators should be thrown in jail.
While I have no love for Wall Street speculators, the fact remains that they are essentially correct in their pricing a barrel of oil. Part of it is the devalued dollar, part of it is turmoil in the middle east, but the biggest factor remains a constant.
We are either on or near the downslope in oil production.
Why can't people get this through their skulls already?
This isn't a surprise. Two years before I was born scientists were testifying before congress on this very subject.
In the 36 years since, we have become more not less reliant on oil. Anyone reading this diary simply needs to take a quick look around their room, and realize that nearly every item they see is a petroleum byproduct.
Fibers, plastics, medicines, food and much much more all require some oil well somewhere on the planet. Even products which don't directly use oil as an ingredient, more than likely rely on oil for both production and transportation. Feel free to purchase an all electric vehicle, but know that hundreds of barrels of oil went directly into manufacturing that car.
Every time gas prices spike, people go into fits over the unfair burden at the pumps. These tirades are about as ethically sound as a crack addict complaining about the high cost of cocaine.
I don't know the solution to the energy crisis we face, but there is something that people need to accept before we can solve it. Oil byproducts such as gasoline are expensive and will keep going up in price. A barrel of oil isn't an orange grove hit by a late frost. There isn't a next year, when the commodity might have a surplus.
Everyday that passes, there will be less oil than the day before.
Speculators might be greedy and ruthless, but they aren't stupid. Perhaps the public needs to start thinking more like the speculators and less like a crying child being weened.
If this all seems to lack sympathy, it might because we had this same conversation two fucking years ago.