Wednesday, February 23, 2005

High oil prices

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I really hate paying $50 or more to fill up my truck. On the other hand, economic incentive is probably the only way we'll ever get weaned from oil.

If gasoline prices stayed at very elevated prices for a few years, I suspect entrepreneurs and inventors all over the place would be coming up with clever ways to increase fuel efficiency (such as the new hybrids) or to switch to some alternative power source (such as hydrogen derived from solar power). I have no idea what these new inventions might be, but I have a lot of confidence in the cleverness of inventors highly motivated by the profit opportunity. That's the problem I see with low gasoline prices — there's no profit in an alternative that can't be as cheap as that fermented dinosaur you're filling your tank with...

The picture is ripped from the Drudge Report; it's a collection of oil traders gone mad. I suspect this is how they look every day, but how would any of us know?

No comments:

Post a Comment