Take a break and...
Read again carefully.
1)Our constant rise in oil consumption causes global warming.
2)Global warming causes more and more catastrophes.
3)The increasing rarefaction of oil (a resource that required millions of years to create, and which we will deplete in 150 years), which means we're at the point that, shortly, demand will exceed supply for the first time in history, and will be irreversible. And what happens when demand exceeds supply? An increase in the price of the derived products, whichever they should be.
4)Geopolitical uncertainty (the rising attractiveness for potential profits with black gold becomes the cause of conflicts) and increasing catastrophes also causes the oil stock market to keep rising.
5)The rise in oil prices affects our lifestyle. As used as we are in living in a world where engine mechanisms are based on low-priced oil, we react and want to pay less in order to continue consuming as much as before. In short, we don't want to change our routine, and we're asking authorities to help us so we can carry on with our bad and ruinous habits on this planet.
6)So, the rest of the story should be... return to point #1!
This downward spiral can't have a happy ending for the present generation and the upcoming one. Let's hope that what's happening in Louisiana, Mississippi and our gas station will wake us up, because we're up to the point of a pathologic dependency on oil, just like others are addicted to drugs or alcohol. And just like junkies, we deny the evidence that our destructive lifestyle is bringing closer and closer to our loss, a day at a time.
It's not time anymore to lower taxes on oil, it's time to reduce our need of it. Public transport, bicycle, walking, carpooling, working from home, a less gluttonous vehicle. You don't feel ready for it? Then, continue just like nothing happened. The events will help you.
The recession
How can we be cheerful, seeing a recession coming straight as us? By relevantly knowing that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, including a big part within the American automobile industry. How can I be cheerful knowing that cupidity, a lack of a long-term vision and the obsession with short-term profits from the part of the heads of companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler, will cause drama within the ordinary workers of these companies? Yet that's where we're headed.
1973... but worse
In 1973, the American automobile industry produced American automobiles very, too powerful. Most enthusiasts were thinking about one thing: 0 to 60 miles an hour in X seconds; quarter-mile in X seconds; X horsepower. That's how that period was. When the oil embargo arrived, they weren't at all prepared. They were literally caught with their pants down!
In those first times (I can still remember it like it was yesterday), my uncles, my neighbours and just about everybody that I knew repeated to everyone that listened that they would never be caught alive in those little imported vehicles. They said that they were ugly; they were ridiculous; they were judged as being way too small and much too dangerous...
As a matter of fact, one of the jokes of the time was: Do the dealers of these cars (the Japanese) provide can openers so we can get inside them?
Then one day, my cousin Marcel who was driving a Ford Mustang at the time, arrived behind the wheel of a Datsun 240Z! My cousin Johanne bought herself a Volkswagen Rabbit! High crimes! No need to tell you about the reaction of my uncles. Between the sarcasm and the impression that they betrayed their continent by buying vehicles made by enemies (don't forget that within the older generation, many went out to war and it was exactly those two countries that they were fighting against: Japan and Germany), and those elders considered that they made a flagrant absence of judgement, gratitude and memory towards the efforts that they, the elders, have done for the next generation.
Yes... that was the speech that dominated. Patriotic, sometimes racist, the heads of the American automobile industry, supported by the governmental and union authorities of Canada and the United States would play that card profusely. But the breach was created... and it would never close again.
Read again carefully.
1)Our constant rise in oil consumption causes global warming.
2)Global warming causes more and more catastrophes.
3)The increasing rarefaction of oil (a resource that required millions of years to create, and which we will deplete in 150 years), which means we're at the point that, shortly, demand will exceed supply for the first time in history, and will be irreversible. And what happens when demand exceeds supply? An increase in the price of the derived products, whichever they should be.
4)Geopolitical uncertainty (the rising attractiveness for potential profits with black gold becomes the cause of conflicts) and increasing catastrophes also causes the oil stock market to keep rising.
5)The rise in oil prices affects our lifestyle. As used as we are in living in a world where engine mechanisms are based on low-priced oil, we react and want to pay less in order to continue consuming as much as before. In short, we don't want to change our routine, and we're asking authorities to help us so we can carry on with our bad and ruinous habits on this planet.
6)So, the rest of the story should be... return to point #1!
This downward spiral can't have a happy ending for the present generation and the upcoming one. Let's hope that what's happening in Louisiana, Mississippi and our gas station will wake us up, because we're up to the point of a pathologic dependency on oil, just like others are addicted to drugs or alcohol. And just like junkies, we deny the evidence that our destructive lifestyle is bringing closer and closer to our loss, a day at a time.
It's not time anymore to lower taxes on oil, it's time to reduce our need of it. Public transport, bicycle, walking, carpooling, working from home, a less gluttonous vehicle. You don't feel ready for it? Then, continue just like nothing happened. The events will help you.
The recession
How can we be cheerful, seeing a recession coming straight as us? By relevantly knowing that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, including a big part within the American automobile industry. How can I be cheerful knowing that cupidity, a lack of a long-term vision and the obsession with short-term profits from the part of the heads of companies like GM, Ford and Chrysler, will cause drama within the ordinary workers of these companies? Yet that's where we're headed.
1973... but worse
In 1973, the American automobile industry produced American automobiles very, too powerful. Most enthusiasts were thinking about one thing: 0 to 60 miles an hour in X seconds; quarter-mile in X seconds; X horsepower. That's how that period was. When the oil embargo arrived, they weren't at all prepared. They were literally caught with their pants down!
In those first times (I can still remember it like it was yesterday), my uncles, my neighbours and just about everybody that I knew repeated to everyone that listened that they would never be caught alive in those little imported vehicles. They said that they were ugly; they were ridiculous; they were judged as being way too small and much too dangerous...
As a matter of fact, one of the jokes of the time was: Do the dealers of these cars (the Japanese) provide can openers so we can get inside them?
Then one day, my cousin Marcel who was driving a Ford Mustang at the time, arrived behind the wheel of a Datsun 240Z! My cousin Johanne bought herself a Volkswagen Rabbit! High crimes! No need to tell you about the reaction of my uncles. Between the sarcasm and the impression that they betrayed their continent by buying vehicles made by enemies (don't forget that within the older generation, many went out to war and it was exactly those two countries that they were fighting against: Japan and Germany), and those elders considered that they made a flagrant absence of judgement, gratitude and memory towards the efforts that they, the elders, have done for the next generation.
Yes... that was the speech that dominated. Patriotic, sometimes racist, the heads of the American automobile industry, supported by the governmental and union authorities of Canada and the United States would play that card profusely. But the breach was created... and it would never close again.