A great, and frightening article: http://www.energybulletin.net/15126.html A quote: I think I remember that prediction, and yes it did happen before Dec 2005.
bush could drop gas prices tomorrow by 50 cents a gallon. all he has to do is sign an executive order under his emergency powers to roll back the environmental regulations for 2 years. that would allow the us to import gasoline. that is what they did after katrina hit and gas did fall until they reinstated the regulations.
so many building products, used here and abroad are petroleum based in origin that just eliminating vehicular usage would not dampen the overall global demands curve also, think of the PVC revolution in piping compared to the previous generation of metal and composite based piping.... also, think of your building wraps (Tyvex, etc.), plastic bags and tarps, etc... its not just for Americans, its for whomever purchases these fabricated products, and those consumers are without borders, as this is global in demand and nature.... conversion to alternative fuels, removal of the prohibition from imported gasoline.... two immediate solutions, as others mentioned..... where's that phone number to my State Senator's hotline?
until electricity is packaged into its plasma form and transfered to the vehicular sector, then alternative power generation plants (nuclear, wind, solar, water based power generators) will serve to address the demand curve components that use their source of power. simply put, until powerful enough and stable enough or inert batteries are made available to consumer automobiles, trucks and transportation fleets, other than just transportation fleets in major cities, then this switch off of petoleum based products will have little effect on the "prices at the pump" you can't convert MPG's from Nuclear generation... you can't convert solar, wind or water generation into driving patterns, whether to the shopping mall, to the bank, to the job, to school or otherwise...
huh? gasoline imports are not banned. After Katrina, a fair number of overseas refineries sent their product to the US.
vhehn Registered: Nov 1999 Posts: 4862 New Post 04-22-06 12:47 PM bush could drop gas prices tomorrow by 50 cents a gallon. all he has to do is sign an executive order under his emergency powers to roll back the environmental regulations for 2 years. that would allow the us to import gasoline. that is what they did after katrina hit and gas did fall until they reinstated the regulations.
http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2005-02.htm Electrification of Transportation as a Response to Peaking of World Oil Production Commentary by Alan S. Drake November 2005 (rev. December 2005) just made significantly comments on this conversion earlier
Sorry for double post. A large fraction of petroleum use is burned as transportation. I found a 2004 publicatoion from the EIA. Transportation use is 13.6 mbpd (million barrels per day), all industrial uses (unclear what this means) is 5.1, "residential/commercial" 1.3, and Electric power. Later on it says that chemical manufacturing uses of petroleum (including natural gas liquids) are 1.5 mbpd. So that's about 10% of transportation use. We ought to save petroleum for chemistry---it is really useful for all sorts of great things.