If every household had at least one hybrid...

If you drive a lot, a hybrid makes sense. If you only need a car to grocery shop, not so much.

I drive 30,000 miles a year, for me a hybrid makes financial sense. If I drove 3,000 miles a year, a Nissan Versa might be a wiser expenditure.

 

I can't see how consumers buying more efficient vehicles would help bring fuel prices down. If anything, oil companies would probably raise prices to offset the lost revenue. However, if we ended our subsidized romance with oil, if we had European gas prices here, everyone would buy efficient, and more and more efficient choices would be available.

I don't see petroleum getting cheaper (I bet on that when I bought a hybrid).

 

If you could magically flip a switch and all of a sudden every household had one hybrid, that would soften demand temporarily. However, if the price came down below a profitable price for tar sands, then tar sands drilling would stop, and prices would go back up. At best, more efficient cars will help slow down the increase in prices.

 

Factually, our 'subsidized romance with oil,' costs taxpayers considerably less than our subsidized marriage to 'renewables.' (Figures from 2010 - it's worse now.)

 

If it indeed happens overnight, I personally think that the government would have to scramble to make up for the lost revenues (gas taxes) because that money would have already been spent many times over.

In fact, the conspiracy-theory side of me wants to link California's war on carbon dioxide to the fact that it will guarantee a continuous source of revenue regardless of "what" is being burnt. After all, even clean burning fuels produce CO2.

 

If every household had a hybrid... the cost of lithium and nickle would be through the roof.

 

You get your information from the American Petroleum Institute? Do you suspect it might be a little biased and/or misleading?

 

Hmmmm.
If Everybody bought a hybrid???

You mean like an Cadallac Escalade Hybrid?
Or.... a BMW "Activehybrid"7 hybrid?
Or...maybe a Mercedes Benz S400 hybrid???

The bottom line is that sticking a hybrid badge on a vehicle is kinda like putting sprinkles on a turd.
It may look prettier and make your overall turd experience a little more palatable (YMMV) but it's still a turd. Even our humble Prius is a gas burner some 13 years after its worldwide debut, unless you count the first 10-15 miles in a Pip.

If everybody bought a Pip...do you know how much oil would be "saved"?
Riiiiiiight!

Not. One. Drop.

They're still going to get and burn all the frackin oil that they can possibly drill down to (and even some that's a little bit beyond their ability to safely reach.) All of it!! ...And do you know what? I don't claim to be a petroleum expert but I seem to recall that in addition to oil you get gas from hydraulic fracturing, which is pretty handy if you want everybody in the United States to plug in a 12-amp car before they go beddy bye so that they can go to work in the morning.
Patting yourself on the head for driving a gas burner that's a little bit more efficient that the other gas burners (or the coal burners) seems a little bit to me like putting a hybrid badge on an Escalade.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a Prius driver, and I believe that more fuel efficient vehicles are a good thing, but the most effective way to "save" oil (which is eco-geek-speak meaning: temporarily reduce the use of) would be to impose about a $5/gallon tax on the stuff.
Save the planet?
Nope.
You'll just be able to run the clock out a little more until they figure out the "Mr Fusion" gizzywhopper.
Let's just hope that they don't turn the earth into a ball of plasma while they're tinkering with it....

 

Ha! When I typed the above words, I was referring to subsidies to consumers in the form of artificially low fuel prices by virtue of low taxes. The costs of running our economy and transportation system on oil vastly exceed the revenue levied on the users of the system via licensing and fuel taxes. Wanna see people quit burning sh!t in inefficient single occupant ICE vehicles? Make gas $10 a gallon. The same economic forces that make marginal tar sands oil deposits profitable apply to alt energy as well.

All of this assumes that you believe that burning fossil fuels should be minimized (I do). If you don't (for whatever reason), then you will apply logic to support your goals / values.

 

Renewables do not produce CO2. Yes burning wood does release CO2 but re-growing that same wood back concsumes the same amount of carbon. OK, wood is a silly renewable example but algae, cord and other obi products are the same thing

Back to the question of fues prices going down. No, it hardly matters what Americans do for two reasons (2) China and then India will both grow their economies and billions of people will be able to afford cars. the USA has only a few hundred million people. We are tiny. and (2) the people who pump oil from the ground control the rate they pump such that the price is about where they want it. Using less might even cause them to pump less.

 

I got this via twitter, was looking at it, and then you ask a question:

A clickable guide to the world's energy use

 

The little gas pumps come from the API. If you have a better source, please feel free to post a link.
The graph comes from an even more evil source.

 

Not understanding what your definition of "renewable" is here...

If you are talking about bio-diesel or ethanol, then yes, I'm afraid burning those still produce CO2. Ethanol is C2H6OH and Diesel is a soup of various longer hydrocarbon chains, so they will produce H2O and CO2 when burned.

On the other hand... Hydrogen... H2 + O2 = H2O, so that doesn't produce CO2.

This is off topic to the price of gas and everyone owning a hybrid, but I don't get why everyone's getting a wedgy over CO2, when water vapor is more of a player in global warming (in an actual greenhouse, the major player of the "greenhouse" effect is humidity, which is water... surprise!).

Quote from NASA: NASA - Water Vapor Confirmed as Major Player in Climate Change
Water vapor is known to be Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.

 

How do you explain the large drop in prices in 2008? The demand curve for gasoline seems to have some steep sections, a small decrease in demand (around 2%, I think) was enough to drop prices by 1/2. This doesn't mean it will always happen that way, but simple application of the law of supply and demand indicates that some effect in that direction should be seen.

So, everyone dropping their consumption by a significant margin (by whatever means) would likely drop the price of oil and do wonders for the economy.

 

And they all CONSUME CO2 when created. CO2 in = CO2 out. If done sustainably that is.

 

So... we're waiting for some genius process that will economically enable us to create hydrocarbons from CO2, right?

I like it.

Edit: Just figured out you meant the growing of the corn, etc... I'm still waiting for something that won't take quite so long (plant, harvest, process into fuel) for an end result that will last a micro-second (fuel burning in the combustion chamber). Still seems like a lot of energy needs to be expended to convert one form of energy to another.