Since the price of gas has become a political issue, here's a roundup of media stories addressing some of the ideas floating around:
Evan Dawson at Rochester WHAM-13 talks to an economist about a gas tax holiday. It turns out that the way the gas market is structured in New York, any cut in gas taxes could be swallowed up by middlemen, and we would also probably see a rebound shock at the end of Summer.
McClatchy has a round-up of things President Bush could do to cut the price of gas. One thing Bush didn't mention yesterday might work, and everything he did mention won't work.
Reuters analyzes the claim that a 2002 authorization drilling in ANWR would have solved today's problem. It wouldn't, and at maximum production far in the future ANWR would have only accounted for 2% of our total oil consumption. It's a oft-mentioned drop in the bucket.
Comments
Hillary is trying to outpander McCain on this one. Fortunately nothing is likely to happen to the Federal gas tax -- wiser, quarreling, procrastinating heads will prevail in congress.
Great links. Thanks.
I'd gladly pay the extra for gas if only I saw the government trying to take advantage of other power sources that are (and have been)available.
We have a 600 year supply of coal in the ground, yet we seem to be making little effort to develop the technology to make it burn clean. I started to burn coal five winters ago and have saved thousands of dollars.
I can't understand why we gave up building new nuclear power plants a few generations ago.
It is nice to see wind power being taken advantage of - there are hills full of windmills north of Cohocton that can easily be seen from Interstate 390. There should be more of this
Maybe it is because of the climate we live in, but I haven't sen much progress as far as solar power goes.
I also think it would help if the government helped re-develop inter city rail travel.
And yes, it would be helpful if some of the drilling bans are lifted until other power sources are more fully developed.
I don't have a big issue with drilling in ANWR if it's in the context of a total energy plan with solar, nuclear, clean coal, mandated higher gas mileage, etc.
I think a lot of the stalemate and deadlock over ANWR is because it's pitched in the context of "all we need to do is find and drill more oil". We've only seen lip service to alternative energy in the past few years.
Luckily, $120/barrel oil will make a whole lot of technologies cost-effective.
The ANWR issue is blown out of proportion by both sides - the conservatives say it will solve all of our problems, the liberals say it will kill every animal within 500 miles of the place.