It is amazing how much ***** you guys will eat so long as you can bash
liberals and environs.



"Steven Litvintchouk" <sdlitvin@earthlinkNOSPAM.net> wrote in message
news:uuDBc.8868$bs4.2111@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...

Analysis: That gas-price 'record' really isn't one
By James Rosen -- Bee Washington Bureau - (Published June 20, 2004)

WASHINGTON - President Bush, Sen. John Kerry and other politicians are
pointing fingers and offering solutions for what they repeatedly claim
are "historically high" gasoline prices.

Bush accuses Kerry of backing a 50-cent hike in the federal gasoline
tax, which the presumptive Democratic nominee did support a decade ago
but now repudiates. Bush also blames Democratic lawmakers for blocking
his "comprehensive energy plan" to spur oil production.

Kerry accuses Bush, a former Texas oil man, of paying off oil companies
for their campaign contributions by backing policies to boost the
industry's profits.

Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, pushed an energy package through the
House of Representatives on Tuesday. Senate Democrats who have stopped
similar legislation before - saying it harms the environment and rewards
Big Oil - are widely expected to do so again.

"With gasoline prices at $2 per gallon, it's time to allow some
drilling," said Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican.

While Senate Democrats oppose the Republican energy bill, some of them
are urging Bush to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve set up after the
1973 energy crisis, even though few economists think that step would
significantly reduce gasoline prices.

Other senators push legislation that would penalize "the OPEC
oil-producing cartel," a venerable whipping boy of American politicians.

News reports have fanned the flames for months with endless articles and
broadcasts about reputed record prices. Gasoline prices have eased a bit
in recent weeks, from a national average peak of $2.07, but analysts
don't expect a substantial decrease during the summer months.

There's only one problem: When adjusted for inflation, gasoline prices
are nowhere near historic highs.

The national average of about $2 per gallon is slightly less than the
average price of $2.07, in today's dollars, going back to 1919. Drivers
in 1922 paid the equivalent of almost $2.85 a gallon; in 1981, gasoline
sold for nearly $2.87, the highest inflation-adjusted price ever.

Despite price increases of 40 cents a gallon or more this year,
Americans are still paying half or less at the pump of what drivers in
most other countries pay, with foreign costs ranging up to the $6 per
gallon in Britain, where an imperial gallon is about one-fifth larger
than a gallon in other countries.

Larry Goulder, a Stanford University professor, said the true costs of
the country's driving-dominated culture are hidden, and that Americans
actually pay much more for gasoline than the price they see at the pump.

Among the hidden costs he cited are military expenses of protecting
Persian Gulf and other oil supplies; health care expenses to treat
asthma, cancer and other diseases tied to auto emissions; and expenses
to prevent or repair related environmental damage.

Richard Heinberg, author of a 2003 book on the depletion of world oil
reserves, said politicians seeking public office in the United States
can't disclose the true cost of gasoline because Americans wouldn't
accept it.

"I don't think any candidate can tell the truth," he said. "It's
terrible, but the American people have come to think of cheap energy as
their birthright. And woe to the messenger who tells them otherwise."

Bush and Kerry, who last month had dueling radio speeches on high
gasoline prices, both preach the need for "energy independence."

Exxon Mobil Chairman Lee R. Raymond, noting that foreign imports make up
about half of U.S. oil consumption, last week dismissed that goal as a
"myth" - now, and for decades to come.

Bush and Kerry offer very different approaches to decreasing American
reliance on foreign oil.

Noting that no new refinery has been built in the United States since
1976, Bush wants to ease environmental restrictions and provide tax
incentives to expand domestic refinery production, and he backs opening
the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling.

Kerry advocates increased funding of technologies to develop alternative
fuels and make more fuel-efficient vehicles, along with tax credits to
lower their costs.

In the view of most economists, neither would have much effect on
gasoline prices, at least in the foreseeable future. In fact, experts
say the recent spike has a range of causes that are mostly beyond a
president's control - from escalating demand in India and China to
terrorist attacks on oil facilities in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The current histrionics over gasoline prices are hardly the first time
the issue has intruded on presidential election campaigns.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan ridiculed Jimmy Carter's admonition to Americans
to set their thermostats higher to conserve energy and his warning that
world oil reserves could run out by century's end.

As part of his anti-tax drive during his successful White House run,
Reagan also rejected independent candidate John Anderson's proposed
50-cent gasoline tax hike.

Four years ago, during an earlier spike in gasoline prices, Bush chided
President Clinton for briefly tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,
accusing him of trying to help then-Vice President Al Gore's election
prospects.

Now, Kerry is urging a temporary halt to new contributions to the
reserve, though he doesn't advocate drawing from it. Saying it was
created to supply oil during national emergencies, Bush is still against
both tapping the reserve or suspending additions to it.

Although his stance on the oil reserve hasn't changed, Bush's current
rhetoric about gasoline prices doesn't entirely square with some of his
administration's policies.

Despite calling for domestic refinery expansion, he has allowed a large
increase in oil refinery mergers, according to Bloomberg News. The
approval of 33 mergers - compared with 21 such deals during all of
Clinton's eight years in office - has contributed to the spike in
gasoline prices, in some analysts' view.

Kerry, too, comes in for criticism, at least in some environmental
circles. During his nearly 20-year Senate career, he has compiled a
voting record that makes him the darling of most environmental
organizations. The League of Conservation Voters, for instance, gives
him a career rating of 92 percent, higher than all but a handful of
lawmakers.

But on the edges of the environmental movement, some activists are
troubled by Kerry blaming Bush for gasoline prices - and the implication
that Americans are entitled to low prices.

Such a stand, they say, contradicts Kerry's longstanding support for
development of alternative fuels, fuel-efficient vehicles and
mass-transit systems.

"Unless you admit that gasoline prices have to go up - and go up a lot -
the free-market system is not going to encourage the development of
renewable energy," said Julian Darley, founder of the Vancouver,
B.C.-based Post Carbon Institute. "Kerry is plainly a man of physical
courage, but he's not showing much political bravery now."

For the most part, though, environmentalists are loath to criticize

Denis Hayes was in charge of developing alternative fuels in the Carter
administration. Now head of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental
philanthropy in Seattle, Hayes said Bush has pursued disastrous
environmental policies.

"I may disagree with various things that Kerry says on the campaign
trail, but the last thing I'm going to do is attack him," Hayes said.
"My job is to do everything I can to make sure he gets elected."

http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/9722623p-10645666c.html

[
"In 1980, Ronald Reagan ridiculed Jimmy Carter's admonition to Americans
to set their thermostats higher to conserve energy and his warning that
world oil reserves could run out by century's end."

Reagan was right, Carter was wrong. We've now passed the end of the
20th century and there's still plenty of oil out there. It's just that
some of it is in the hands of Arabs who never found it in the first
place, who hadn't a clue how to drill for it, or how to refine it. The
West did all that while they were still riding camels.

The Carter Administration's alternative fuels program was an utter
disaster. Its PROPONENTS admitted that even if it had succeeded, these
alternative fuels would have cost double what our current fuels cost, to
get the same energy content.

Julian Darley is actually looking forward to the day that the world
becomes a less mobile and less prosperous society:

"This process will require that we rebuild our cities to severely reduce
transport needs and support localization of essential systems. To
effectively address energy scarcity and curtail biosphere destruction,
relocalization must occur globally. Essentially human civilization needs
to prepare itself to do less with much less with the ultimate goal being
sustainability."

http://www.postcarbon.org/index.php?page=relocalization

That is an example of the loony enviros that have endorsed kerry.

Here's the chart of gasoline prices in the last 80 years, after taking
inflation into account:

http://www.sacbee.com/ips_rich_content/213-0620gas01.gif


--
Steven L.


"Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy,
and he achieved his goal."
-- Gennady Gerasimov (top spokesman for the Soviet Foreign
Ministry during the 1980s)