Gasoline in California costs over $4.50 a gallon now. It's less in other locations, but over $4.00 everywhere. People are beginning to curtail their driving. Demand for hybrids is up. I see fewer Hummers on the road (though I still see some in my town where they used to be everywhere), and truckers are parking their rigs and staying home as they are losing money by working.
For the first time since my first grandchild was born seven and a half years ago, I have to stop and think about whether I can afford to drive the sixty miles to go visit for the day. I'm visiting a lot less than I used to.
No one can claim to know all the reasons for this predicament of oil shortages and high prices, though it is interesting that the much maligned former president Jimmy Carter tried to warn us about this thirty years ago. His proposed solutions may not have been appropriate, but he was smart enough to see a train wreck coming. He ought to get credit for that.
Some say speculators are to blame, others point a finger at the oil companies or oil producers, or the ever-increasing demand from developing countries like India and China. Others say Detroit should have been creating new kinds of cars decades ago, cars that used alternate fuels. All these may be true, but I would like to ask one question that I have not heard asked. Perhaps it is irrelevant, but I want to know how much oil the United States millitary is using in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Surely, those gigantic warships, jet fighters, bombers, Humvees, tanks, etc. are using a lot of gasoline that would not be used had this president not gone to war in Iraq. And now that we know without a doubt we were lied into a war that was completely unnecessary, is anyone angry about the amount of oil that is being wasted there? Could some of this wasted oil be adding to the shortages that are now costing truckers their livelihoods?
Just wondering...
