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  • Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

    Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

    Increasing energy efficiency the hard way


    Front page of the Wall Street Journal today is a story on impact of the historic breach of $4 per gallon average national gasoline price. Are the UK and Europe laughing?
    U.S. Gas prices climb to record $4; could go higher: survey
    June 9, 2008 (Reuters)

    A gallon of gasoline is costing U.S. drivers a record $4 on average at the gas pump, and prices are likely to keep rising if soaring crude oil prices do not retreat from record highs, according to an industry analyst on Sunday.

    "If crude oil prices stay at nearly $139 a barrel, a 30-cent rise (for a gallon of gas) over the next few weeks is possible," said Trilby Lundberg, editor of the nationwide Lundberg survey of about 7,000 gas stations.

    Higher gas prices are crippling consumers and businesses, and squelching the U.S. economy, which is already under pressure from higher food prices, job losses and sinking home values.

    The average retail price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States hit $3.9985 on June 6, up 20.5 cents from the last tally on May 16, according to the Lundberg survey. Drivers are paying 89 cents more per gallon than they were at this time last year, she said.

    AntiSpin: According to Energy Information Administration of the US Dept. of Energy, here are the prices of a gallon of petrol in five European countries and the UK:
    • Belgium: $9.20
    • France: $8.80
    • Germany: $8.93
    • Italy: $8.93
    • Netherlands: $9.89
    • United Kingdom: $8.74

    How do they do it?
    1. They own one not two cars per household
    2. Their cars are smaller
    3. They don't drive as far or as often
    4. They use public transportation
    5. They walk and ride bikes

    It's not rocket science.

    Unfortunately for most US citizens, there are hardly any alternatives to frequent long distance driving. Worst hit is the rural US where rising fuel costs are adding to housing bubble collapse woes.
    Wealth Evaporates as Gas Prices Clobber McMansions
    June 9, 2008 (Bloomberg)


    Sky-high gasoline prices aren't just raising the cost of Eugene Marino's 120-mile (193-kilometer) round-trip to his job in the Washington area. They're reducing his wealth, too.


    House prices in his rural subdivision beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains in Charles Town, West Virginia, have plunged as commuting expenses have soared. A four-bedroom home down the street from his is listed for $239,000, after selling new for $360,000 five years ago.

    Who could have known?
    During the early growth stage of various regional housing bubbles, housing prices increased first in metropolitan areas, then in the suburbs and finally in rural areas. (These are admittedly crude geographic designations designed to simplify the explanation of the theory without invalidating it.) Prices cascaded geographically outwards from areas of high employment (income) and population density (housing demand) in metro areas to areas of lower employment and population density in the suburbs surrounding metro areas and finally, once demand pushed housing affordability to extremes there, to areas of low employment and low population density beyond the suburbs. This process of geographic price cascading took approximately ten years, from around 1995 to 2005.

    The dynamic that drove prices outward was the need for workers in the cities and later the suburbs to escape high real estate prices, to move to where real estate was relatively cheaper and the cost of living lower, but still within an “affordable” commute. ...as more and more home buyers searched farther away from metropolitan areas, prices increased in outlying areas as well until property values in rural areas reached historical peaks and experienced bubbles of their own.

    Living in rural areas and working either in the suburbs or metropolitan areas increased commute time and expense, but this was affordable with gasoline under $1.50 per gallon as it was before hurricane Katrina. But combined increases in gasoline, heating oil, natural gas and propane prices plus higher interest payment on ARMs combined in mid 2005 to pushed many household budgets past the tipping point for those living in homes purchased in rural areas at or near the top of rural market housing bubbles.

    This change in psychology will start to cause housing bubbles around suburban then metro areas to decline in a reversal of the process that drove prices from metropolitan markets outward to suburban and rural markets. The trigger, it should be remembered, was rising gasoline and energy prices and their impact on rural homeowners who purchased at the top of the market.

    - Housing Bubble Correction Update: Geographic Regions Cascade,Weekly Commentary (iTulip March 29, 2006)
    Since we ran the housing forecast in 2006 and also iTulip's March 25, 2006 - High Commuting Costs Push Rural Property Owners Past the Tipping Point by Down but not Out in Rural U.S.A., several iTulipers decided to put their rural homes on the market and have written in recently to tell us they're glad they did.

    Going forward

    More of the same. You see, US demand is not driving energy prices, new demand outside the US is. Energy consumption per capita in the US hasn't fallen at all for decades even with more efficient appliances because prices have remained relatively low so there has been no incentive to conserve. Now prices are rising quickly and there's no painless way to adjust quickly as occurred in other countries over decades where energy was heavily taxed. The US has to make the adjustment quickly and painfully.

    According to a report last year Energy and the Economy by Richard G. Anderson of the St. Louis Fed in 2007.
    As energy costs have risen, so have fears that these higher costs will derail economic activity. Professor James Hamilton of the University of California at San Diego has noted that sharp increases in the price of oil have preceded each post-World War II recession in the United States. Yet, some analysts suggest that energy prices today put less pressure on the economy than they did in the past because less energy is used to produce each unit of GDP; said another way, the economy’s “energy efficiency” has increased. But such a conclusion must be drawn with care.

    The chart displays annual U.S. energy use relative to use in 1970. The top line shows aggregate energy use, which in 2007 was 50 percent more than in 1970. The bottom line shows energy use per unit of real GDP, which in 2007 was 50 percent less than in 1970. Correctly assessing these trends requires adding one more variable: labor productivity (that is, increases in GDP per hour of work). The chart’s center line adjusts roughly for productivity gains by displaying the quantity of energy consumed per capita. Since 1970 energy use per capita has risen and fallen with energy prices and the business cycle, with notable decreases during 1975, 1979-82, 1990-91, and 2001. Yet, the quantity of energy consumed per capita in 2007 was approximately unchanged from that in 1970.

    Energy use per capita is only a rough measure of the economy’s energy dependence because it does not separate the economy’s varied uses of energy. It does, however, emphasize an important underlying theme of America’s energy use: While energy efficiency has improved in almost every aspect of business and life at home, higher living standards have fully consumed that gain—overall energy use per person has changed little during the past four decades. Examples abound. In 1970, the average passenger automobile was driven 10,000 miles annually and consumed 737 gallons of fuel; in 2005, annual mileage was 12,400 using 554 gallons. In 1970, light trucks (then used almost exclusively by business) averaged 8,700 miles annually, consuming 866 gallons of fuel; in 2005, near-ubiquitous trucks and SUVs averaged 11,000 miles annually, consuming 612 gallons of fuel. For the typical household, heating and cooling comprises half of its housing-related energy usage. In 1970, the average new American single-family house was approximately 1,500 square feet; by 2005, the average home was 2,350 square feet. Appliances are more energy efficient, but there are more of them. Survey data for 1980 and 2001 show increases in the share of households with microwave ovens from 14 percent to 86 percent, dishwashers from 37 percent to 53 percent, personal computers from zero to 56 percent, and central air conditioning from 27 percent to 55 percent (the share of households with no air conditioning dropped from 42 percent in 1980 to 23 percent in 2001).

    The constancy of the level of U.S. energy use per capita suggests caution when analyzing the impact of higher energy costs: Per-person energy intensity has changed little during the past four decades.
    Our position is that this needs to change, and one way or another will change, drastically in the US and soon. When US gasoline prices rise to the levels that already exist in the UK and Europe, we'll see per capita energy consumption fall in the US as well – the hard way.

    Is it any wonder that With U.S. in slump, dual citizenship in EU countries attracts Americans? Wars and famine drove Europeans to the USA in the last century. Perhaps an energy crisis will sent them back in this one.

    (Hat tip to eagle eyed iTuliper cmraynew for spotting the story and noting the connection to High Commuting Costs Push Rural Property Owners Past the Tipping Point)

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    Last edited by FRED; June 09, 2008, 04:09 PM.
    Ed.

  • #2
    Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

    Originally posted by FRED View Post
    [B]Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA
    .
    .
    The constancy of the level of U.S. energy use per capita suggests caution when analyzing the impact of higher energy costs: Per-person energy intensity has changed little during the past four decades.
    Fred, first of all, great analysis! in relation to impact on the US economy, wouldn't the key variable be energy use/income ?

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

      Originally posted by zmas28 View Post
      Fred, first of all, great analysis! in relation to impact on the US economy, wouldn't the key variable be energy use/income ?
      That's the short term hit for sure, part of what's throwing the US into recession. That part of the WSJ articles is correct. The solution, though, is not to browbeat oil producers for more oil but do what Europe has already done: become more efficient. The transition will be ugly.
      Ed.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

        Seldom mentioned in the 'cheap US gas' equation is the financial burden of keeping carrier task forces offshore of the oil providing states. Euroland and Japan don't have to do that. With that in mind, I think we, the US, has the most expensive gasoline on the planet.

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

          it adds a certain something special to be reading this thread when the power goes out, and then returns as a brown out, in my office.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

            Originally posted by jk View Post
            it adds a certain something special to be reading this thread when the power goes out, and then returns as a brown out, in my office.
            Has Enron been resurrected? :eek:;)

            Just because Europe has long been accustomed to higher fuel prices doesn't mean they aren't complaining about it...

            MADRID (AFP) - Tens of thousands of truckers in Spain, France and Portugal on Monday stepped up protests against rising fuel prices, causing mayhem on highways and blocking border crossings.

            Huge tailbacks built up around major cities and on the French-Spanish border as French fishermen in Mediterranean ports ended their three-week strike over the spiralling cost of fuel.

            Spain's second largest hauliers' union Fenadismer, which claims to represent 70,000 out of Spain's 380,000 truck drivers, launched an open-ended strike on Monday. It said it was "peaceful" but followed "massively".

            Talks Monday between the hauliers and the government ended in failure, Fenadismer said.

            "Fenadismer will maintain its national strike" as the government's proposals were "insufficient", it said.

            Trucks jammed several main highways including at the frontier with France, according to traffic officials, who also reported massive snarls in Madrid and Valencia.
            "We are demanding immediate measures" to counter the impact of high fuel prices, said Jean-Pierre Morlin, president of the European trucking organisation for the Aquitaine region.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

              I fail to see why we should have shoveled tremendous loads of additional tax money into the government's maw via high gas taxes. Now gas is becoming scarcer; the price is rising; and people are adjusting. So be it. Why did it need to happen any sooner? It didn't.

              See, cheap gas is GOOD. People like to drive, people like to be mobile, people like their cars. These are things people LIKE. So cheap gas is good, and expensive gas is bad. There's this sort of puritan line of thinking among some that we really needed to be lashed good and hard and for a long time by government-imposed higher-than-market-prices for our gas. These sorts seem to think that being able to drive a car around, a nice big comfortable car, and travel long distances according to your own choices, and to have this affordable for the average man, is somehow a sort of sin that the Enlightened Europeans are so much more virtuous about than us. B.S.

              Then I suppose the argument will be that we could have raised the taxes earlier and smoothed the transition by having made gas scarce, and people poorer, sooner. I trust the marketplace a hell of a lot more than I trust the people who want to take my money away in taxes because they're sure the government will spend it better than I will.

              The key point is this: anyone who was in favor of energy conservation has never been prevented from conserving as much as they wanted. If they didn't want to buy gas, they weren't forced to. They could ride their bikes and take the bus and live in the inner city if they wanted. But that's never good enough for them - everyone else has to be forced to do so too. And it's always couched in terms of the "public good" that people be forced to do what these environmentalist prudes want.

              Look, let the market work. When the stuff gets scarce, people adjust. Let the market raise and lower the prices. You know damned well that once the government raises a tax it almost never goes down again. And government will squander the money.

              So I say, get over this infatuation with using government taxing power to coerce people into living according to your earthy-crunchy, Birkenstock lifestyle.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

                here here.

                You can always move to a castle in an edge city

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

                  Originally posted by Mn_Mark View Post
                  I fail to see why we should have shoveled tremendous loads of additional tax money into the government's maw via high gas taxes. Now gas is becoming scarcer; the price is rising; and people are adjusting. So be it. Why did it need to happen any sooner? It didn't.

                  See, cheap gas is GOOD. People like to drive, people like to be mobile, people like their cars. These are things people LIKE. So cheap gas is good, and expensive gas is bad. There's this sort of puritan line of thinking among some that we really needed to be lashed good and hard and for a long time by government-imposed higher-than-market-prices for our gas. These sorts seem to think that being able to drive a car around, a nice big comfortable car, and travel long distances according to your own choices, and to have this affordable for the average man, is somehow a sort of sin that the Enlightened Europeans are so much more virtuous about than us. B.S.

                  Then I suppose the argument will be that we could have raised the taxes earlier and smoothed the transition by having made gas scarce, and people poorer, sooner. I trust the marketplace a hell of a lot more than I trust the people who want to take my money away in taxes because they're sure the government will spend it better than I will.

                  The key point is this: anyone who was in favor of energy conservation has never been prevented from conserving as much as they wanted. If they didn't want to buy gas, they weren't forced to. They could ride their bikes and take the bus and live in the inner city if they wanted. But that's never good enough for them - everyone else has to be forced to do so too. And it's always couched in terms of the "public good" that people be forced to do what these environmentalist prudes want.

                  Look, let the market work. When the stuff gets scarce, people adjust. Let the market raise and lower the prices. You know damned well that once the government raises a tax it almost never goes down again. And government will squander the money.

                  So I say, get over this infatuation with using government taxing power to coerce people into living according to your earthy-crunchy, Birkenstock lifestyle.
                  but governments never, ever let the market work... most especially governments that pretend to. they go into debt and force you to also... to get an education, to buy a car, etc. then instead of paying taxes to gov't you pay interest on debt. that's the crux of the reagan revolution. pure and simple.

                  in this article ej says: Peak Cheap Oil Diaries: Anatomy of a collapsing government sponsored oil anti-bubble...

                  Before the oil embargo of 1973 to 1974, total US energy expenditures were eight percent of GDP and the share of petroleum expenditures was just under five percent, but spiked to 14 percent and eight percent respectively by 1981. From 1981 until 2001, the share of GDP of energy and oil declined consistently to about 7 percent for total energy while petroleum collapsed to 3.5 percent by 2001 when GDP was $10.1 trillion and petroleum expenditures were $350 billion (source: DOE EIA). We can thank the FIRE Economy for delivering most of this increase in oil price efficiency by shifting the focus of economic growth from high energy intensity production sectors to low energy intensity finance sectors. At the same time, the FIRE Economy enabled the US to increase the purchasing power of the dollar, allowing the US in cooperation with foreign central banks to buy oil at a global money monopoly discount.
                  so it's the fire economy that gave us the 'improvement in energy intensity'. uh, oh. it's melting down.

                  but all of this pale compared to the dollar cartel, that allowed the usa to trade freely printed pieces of paper for oil that's gone forever. more from the same article...

                  Behold the genius of a global monetary system launched in 1971 based on the paper dollar, lamented by the OPEC from day one: “What,” sneered Abdurrahman Salim Atiqi, Kuwait's one-time oil minister in 1973, “is the point of producing more oil and selling it for an un-guaranteed paper currency?”

                  After a decade of currency chaos from 1971 to 1980 following the unilateral abandonment by the US of the international gold standard – itself developed after WWII to avoid the kind of international conflicts that led to WWII – global central banks banded together to assure that just that: oil producers were to accept US paper for oil, and not only from the USA but from all oil importers, thus creating a guaranteed source of demand for dollars separate from that which the US had to earn from trade. Now everyone could exchange finite oil for infinite paper, affectionately referred to as the bonar here at iTulip, its supply limited only by the cooperation of central banks to meet inflation targets. No surprise, then, that a global command economy for dollar monopoly money resulted, with the usual perversions of pricing, supply and demand that all command economies suffer for both the commodity of energy that the world’s economies run on, oil, and the international money they use to pay for it, dollars. By 2004, this one way arrangement allowed the US to burn more than 20 million barrels of oil per day, more than half of them imported, nearly four times the volume of the number two economy in the world, Japan, while spending a mere 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) for it to run the whole economy.
                  the dollar cartel is falling apart & the fire economy disintegrating. we're in a shitload of trouble on the energy front.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

                    Originally posted by grapejelly View Post
                    here here.

                    You can always move to a castle in an edge city
                    yes, you can buy a dream home in the romantic rough hewed desert landscape...

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

                      Very keen analysis and comments here, with one possible exception. (Metalman, I'm a patient guy, but you must have more patience than I do -- for trying to explain the situation to somebody who rails against the "government maw" and "environmentalist prudes" in response to an article that did not actually mention taxes, the government, nor environmentalists... let alone recommended any Birkenstocks or granola... yeah, like iTulip members really need to be lectured about the power of markets...!)

                      But perhaps Fred's article is more pessimistic than it really needs to be. The least painful way through this transition, I think -- which I hinted at in a previous post, and also which EJ discusses when he predicts an "alternative energy bubble" -- is if each citizen and business begins to take an interest in his or her own personal energy generation. Personal energy consumption wouldn't necessarily have to go down, it's just that we have reached the limits of our current energy system... and growth from this point onwards needs to be in other directions, ones that are considered "unconventional" right now.

                      Just imagine if alternative energy companies showed the same steadfast determination to put a solar panel or windmill on every roof, as the auto companies showed to put a car in every garage in the 1920-30s, or a second one in every garage during the 1980s! Including factory roofs, and wind farms layered on top of animal farms. Certainly wouldn't resolve the mainstay of our energy woes overnight. But it might just take care of the growth-vs-supply problems we are experiencing.

                      Admittedly, that won't do a whole lot to ease prices at the pump, but actually Petroleum still generates something like 2% of the nation's electricity, so watts produced at home do in fact contribute towards keeping our transportation costs lower.

                      Just to placate our 2-post Junior iTuliper up above me, that doesn't necessarily have to be accomplished through government mandate. If alternative energy companies had a bit more capital to play with... (which is why I keep bringing up this idea among the iTulip investment community)... plus a little bit of creative financing, like car loans today... Private industry could meet our unconventional energy growth needs, while creating jobs and shoring up today's unreliable centralized power grid. The environment doesn't even enter into the picture: we simply can't rely on hostile countries, multinationals, or indifferent government to provide us with cheap energy anymore. So we have to do it ourselves at an individual level. Actually today's automobiles are an helluvalot more complicated, technologically, than most types of alternative energy, yet still everybody has one. Cars got us into this mess-- still, the Henry T. Ford automobile business model may yet get us out of it.

                      But on the other hand -- U.S. auto firms didn't gain their former worldwide dominance without a hefty dose of subsidy and protectionism from the government, and they threw that dominance away during the era of 'lassiez-faire'. Given their example, I personally doubt the U.S. can grow/invent our way out of the energy transition which Fred envisions, without some serious heavy-handed interference by government... and in the transportation sector most of all, since that's the area where individual citizens have the least number of options available to them. Currently. This is what us Birkenstock-munching, granola-wearing progressive types are all about: more choice, not less. If I'm sick of paying $4, $5, $9 for gas, then I want to set up new conditions where it's feasible for me not to. I want more options, new options, I don't want to be lectured for the umpteen millionth time about how the Market always makes the right decisions.
                      I only pray that I don't die of old age before this situation changes... Flexibility is the way to survive such a crisis, and America's transportation flexibility, in comparison to Europe's, is practically nil.

                      No matter how often I see it, it is always amusing to read such a spirited paean to free markets and free choice... in the service of such a centralized, top-down, bureaucratic, unaccountable, unresponsive, cabalistic, government-subsidized power and transportation monopoly as our current fossil fuel cartel. If any historians are alive a thousand years from now, they will read comments like our 2-post junior iTuliper's up there, and scratch their heads, "What were these people thinking??"
                      Last edited by necron99; June 10, 2008, 02:57 AM. Reason: hyperlink & bad energy statistic

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

                        Originally posted by FRED View Post
                        Is it any wonder that With U.S. in slump, dual citizenship in EU countries attracts Americans? Wars and famine drove Europeans to the USA in the last century. Perhaps an energy crisis will sent them back in this one.
                        It will not be the energy crisis but whether or not you have a government which has kept the basic nescessities of it's citizens in good condition over the years.
                        The big difference between the EU and the US is not the energyproblem, it is the amount of influence which the governments exercise concerning infrastructure/elektricity/water supply/public transport etc.

                        In the EU taxation is far heavier than in the US. But as the various country and EU governments are controlled more intensely than in the US, taxpayers money isn't misused very much (depending in a sense on your political outlook).
                        Therefor in most parts (some better than others depending on it's history) of the EU bridges/roads/public transport/elektricity/water supply/public health care are in a overall better condition than in the US.

                        At a cost off course.

                        It is more or less the question about how much influence you want your governments to have (concerning these basic living nescessities) and how much you are willing to pay for it.

                        Jeroen
                        Last edited by Olduvai; June 10, 2008, 03:19 AM.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

                          A few months ago, I had looked into solar power for my house. The payback on investment was a whopping 30 years, and that was with government tax rebates. Wind power is much cheaper, but you need to be in an area where you can erect the tower and don't have neighbors complaining (NIMBY!).

                          In any new technology, there is no economy of scale without volume. If the technology is prohibitively expensive to start with, there is no volume without government subsidy. I'm reasonably confident that there will be more economical alternate energy systems eventually, but probably not as inexpensive per unit as a $20 barrel of oil. There is certainly nothing anywhere on the horizon to replace gasoline or diesel for powering motor vehicles.

                          The era of cheap energy is, therefore, coming to a close. I believe that we will eventually transition to a system of self-sufficient small towns interconnected by mass transit rather than the massive city/suburb system we have now. It's not that unpleasant a scenerio, but the transition period will be hell, with massive dislocations running in the reverse of what happened in the 30's, i.e. from the city to small towns rather than from the farms to the cities.

                          - Pete

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

                            Originally posted by zoog View Post
                            Has Enron been resurrected? :eek:;)

                            Just because Europe has long been accustomed to higher fuel prices doesn't mean they aren't complaining about it...
                            Given all the chatter about the "death" of the American suburb due to high fuel and commuting costs, I cannot help but recall that, during my time spent in that country, every weekday morning southwest Britain, with its $8.00 a gallon gasoline, seems to be criss-crossed with motorways, jammed with cars (albeit smaller cars) all heading into London, and almost all with but one person in them.

                            Me thinks the end of commuting and the American suburb or rural area due to $4.00 gasoline is much exaggerated. Painful transition? Quite likely. Death to America (as we know it)? Hardly.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Gasoline still dirt cheap in the USA

                              Originally posted by FRED View Post
                              • Belgium: $9.20
                              • France: $8.80
                              • Germany: $8.93
                              • Italy: $8.93
                              • Netherlands: $9.89
                              • United Kingdom: $8.74

                              Don't these prices include a good dose of taxes to pay for all manner of non-driving related government functions? What would per-gallon prices be without the tax component and wouldn't that be a more legitimate and telling comparison?


                              How do they do it?
                              1. They own one not two cars per household
                              2. Their cars are smaller
                              3. They don't drive as far or as often
                              4. They use public transportation
                              5. They walk and ride bikes
                              You left out motorcycles which are more popular and numerous in other countries than in the USA. My primary non-winter transportation cost me $2200 in '89, weighs a tad over 400 lbs. fully fueled, will effortlessly run at freeway speeds, I have my pick of choice parking and all the while getting between 50 and 60 mpg. I'll even ride in the winter when the roads are clear with electric grip heaters and vest but mileage does drop when powering the heated apparel.

                              The best thing about high gas prices is all of the cars and general low driving skill cell phone yakking riff-raff that'll be priced off the roads making my two-wheeled travel much more pleasant.


                              It's not rocket science.
                              That's right, it's Thermodynamics:

                              1. You can't win
                              2. You can't break even
                              3. You can't stop playing the game


                              If anyone is truly interested in meaningful energy use and policy solutions, they had better look to the engineers because they are the only educated professional class that don't suck at thermo.

                              We won't get there leaving it up to the lawyers, politicians, economists or environmentalists ...

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