apple juice

Great article in Slate magazine about the demand for oil in developing countries. What I always find ironic about the “drill, baby, drill” nonsense is that it basically won’t work to lower our energy costs. If a higher price will be paid for the gas outside of the US – that’s where it will go.

I read elsewhere that the natural gas hoopla is the same situation. That natural gas will come out of the ground (fracked or otherwise) and head straight overseas if someone is willing to pay more.

I’m 100% behind one of the conclusions of this article: raise the gas tax. It will drive our consumption down and prepare our infrastructure for the near future where gas is likely to be a LOT more expensive anyway.

I’d tune up those bikes and move to the city if I were you…

The New Gas Guzzlers

In the real world, nothing magical will occur when the lines between rich-world and developing-world oil consumption cross in the near future. But the shift is emblematic of a changed reality that hasn’t yet been fully processed by Americans. We’re used to living in a world where rich countries were the whole ballgame and the American economy was so much bigger than Germany’s or Japan’s that we could afford to treat the global economy and the American one as largely coextensive. Those days are gone. In the near future, trends in global commodity prices—most of all the highly variable price of gasoline—are more likely to be driven by policy changes in Asia than in the United States, making America’s perennial game of political whining about the price of gasoline even more ridiculous than usual.