OK, people have made valid points here. SOMEWHAT. Yes, eventually we will need to come up with an alternative fuel sorce because EVENTUALLY oil will become too expensive for the average consumer. What we must remember, however, is that the manufacturing cycle for vehicles takes a LONG time to switch anything to mass production and mainstream. Even if we instantly had the technology for say a mass production hydrogen car, they wouldn't make it to production for about 5 years, let alone become a common occurance for at least 10 years. Instituting the infrastructure is a WHOLE different ballgame. Why would you buy a hydrogen car if you can't buy the fuel? And, why would you build a hydrogen fueling station if there are no hydrogen vehicles to fuel? See part of the predicament?
RFMustangGT, your theory is correct. If everyone moved to homegrown biodiesel or something like that, it would drop oil demand and therefore prices. The interesting part though, is once oil becomes cheap enough, the consumer sees no benefit to using alternative fuels and will switch back to oil. Any quick change won't have the type of impact you'd imagine.
Stan, uh what are you talking about? Protective suits? Are you really trying to be serious? You realize China produces more emissions and greenhouse gasses than the United States. When you look at us compared to the entire world, we have a decent, but not huge, impact on emissions. As stated earlier, you are correct: the problem is rapidly changing fuel prices. Slow changes self-correct themselves. Few, however, can cope with a 25% increase in a daily staple over the course of a year. It is not so much greedy people as you state. Saudi's are the only OPEC country that has any significant capacity left. Even if they release ALL oil to the United States, it would only increase OUR supply by 2%. It is simply a combination of the weak dollar and the increased demand for oil by developing nations such as China and India.
Obama WILL make gas prices increase no matter what he tries to tell you. I do not like any of the presidential candidates this term, so I'm not trying to take sides. Obama wants to hit the oil companies with windfall profit taxes. Oil copmanies aren't making any larger of a profit margin (and in many cases a lower profit margin) than most industries. This is not an unreasonable practice, and anything less would be a stupid business practice. Why would the oil companies want to just give away their profit in taxes? As with all taxes, they will merely pass along the windfall profits tax to the consumer and maintain their profit margin.
