Comments on: One Person’s Oil Addict is Another’s Intelligent Consumer

By: Nick de Cusa

Nick de Cusa — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:21:26 +0000

I took the liberty of translating this article into French and posting it here : http://www.contrepoints.org/Accros-au-petrole-ou-consommateurs.html (free market news site), to spread the word. Hope that’s not a problem. Otherwise let me know.

By: brad tittle

brad tittle — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:41:46 +0000

I have heard environmentalists lambast the Truck. They look at the Semi and see a great waster of resources. “Why don’t they use the railroads?” Railroads are ever so much better on resources.

What they can’t understand for some reason is that “They do use the railroads”. They use trucks. They use boats. They use planes. They use them in the most efficient manner possible. The means of determining this is based on a very simple model. MONEY. That semi represents a long tradition of delivering goods to people. It also represents an amazing versatile mode of transport. While there are many things a Semi with a 48 ft trailer can’t move, what it can, cannot be enumerated in an encyclopedia (although an encyclopedia might be a good starting point, since most things listed in an encyclopedia can probably be move by a semi). The semi can make it into the most amazing places. It can deliver it just as many places as it can pick up.

This doesn’t mean that they don’t use railroads. If it makes sense they do it in a heartbeat. There are products that come into Seattle, get put on a train, get off the train in New Jersey (or some other east coast port) and get back on a ship to Europe.

And they make those decisions base on time weighted money.

By: Ferdinand E. Banks

Ferdinand E. Banks — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 06:26:11 +0000

Only one thing missing in this article, Mike. Your usual claim as to how the price of oil will soon fall to the price of snot-rags. As for the addiction to oil, I seem to remember telling the completely dumb Ms Jaffe in Rome that I had once seen a map, published in Washington, which outlined landing zones in the Gulf for marines and paratroopers. American marines and paratroopers, that is. I don’t understand why a map like that would be printed and circulated if there wasn’t an addiction to something by the voters.

The oil thing is too important to start a big philosopical debate featuring a dialogue about ‘choices’ and the like. The price of oil is almost dollars now, and if the global macroeconomy is put in order – which may not happen – our friends in OPEC will see that it exceeds 100 dollars. I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for OPEC, but not when there is a chance of the oil price being boosted to the level it was in 2008.

By: Paul Driessen

Paul Driessen — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:38:19 +0000

This superb column ought to be required reading for every member of the Congress, White House, news media, state legislatures and bureacracy. As Mr. Lynch observes, we are no more “addicted” to oil than we are to food, water, clothing and shelter. But our activist and political classes seem to be determined to send us back to some “idyllic” bygone era — and to make us completely dependent on foreign sources for whatever oil they permit us to have … and whatever rare earths and thus “eco-friendly” “renewable” resources they might likewise allow us to enjoy (intermittently of course).

As to carbon footprints, I’d like them to compare our average “gluttonous” footprint to Al Gore’s carbon butt print, or to the total ecololgical footprint of wind turbines, car batteries, solar panels and corn-based ethanol — including lands plowed or mined, water consumed, and all other inputs.

My grandmother used to tell me, “The only good thing about the good old days is that they’re gone.” I for one am not about to trade my lifestyle and comfort for the one she “enjoyed.”

By: Kennedy Maize

Kennedy Maize — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:42:11 +0000

Would that our policy makers read this work (and Bryce’s latest, Power Hungry). The amount of misinformation, mythology, and fuzzy thinking that pervades most of government (and in both parties) is staggering. Almost nothing that comes out of Washington with regard to energy and power makes any sense, and, frankly, never has. From at least Nixon on, it has been, to quote the Bard, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

By: Charles G. Battig, M.D.

Charles G. Battig, M.D. — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:04:30 +0000

Unmentioned in all of the above is our growing addiction to lithium, as well as a number of rare earth elements. The lithium addiction is expressed in the battery addiction. The rare-earth-elements addiction is expressed in all the various electric motors addicted to their lithium batteries.

Wall Street has taken note of this and has started a lithium EFT.

Oh yes, lithium is used as a treatment for mental depression, a condition easily slipped into by reading too many blogs.

China will replace the mid-east-oil, dollar sink hole, as we send our borrowed dollars to China to purchase the rare earth elements which they alone seem to have in abundance. The mother lode of lithium seems to be in Peru or Bolivia.

By: Steve C.

Steve C. — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:56:45 +0000

Not an original thought, but I’ll start being concerned when the critics of my energy choices start living their rhetoric. And I’m not talking about electric cars. I’m talking about living in 1000 sq ft homes off the grid, taking public transportation ALL the time and taking the train, not aircraft. Plus, devoting most of their time to growing their own food.
Our ancestors worked hard and in some cases died in wars to bequeath us a better life with the freedom to make choices. If our “betters” want to go back to living like people did at the turn of the 20th century, they are free to do so. But don’t expect me to go with them.

By: Jon Boone

Jon Boone — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:35:01 +0000

As the journalist Robert Bryce has said, the ubiquity of oil suggests we are addicted to prosperity…. And, except for a few Mullahs around the world and even fewer luddites in various environmental enclaves, everyone else wants on board.