DO not concur. I'll pay a fair price for gasoline rather than willingly give money to war criminals just "to keep it affordable." BY FAR the deadliest war that the US has ever waged was with OURSELVES over keeping certain agricultural commodities in the South...."affordable." Until VERY recently the casualties in the US Civil War were higher than all other wars combined. Somehow? That does not seem very....."affordable." NO THANKS. The US has a long and lamentable history of doing unwise things to keep energy "affordable." Sometimes? We simply HAD to. I'm thinking that this time we do NOT. In 2019 we produced more energy as a nation than we consumed (if not exported) for the first time since 1957....due to a large number of factors like renewables, fracking, import/exports..etc.....despite the fact that coal use was trending sharply downward because of social and actual cost.....(unlike NOW!!!) It would take little more than a a willingness to endure short-term pain and some long term leadership to make us energy independent AGAIN. Right now our "leadership" is focused on what EVERY first-term administration REALLY wants. ....a SECOND term. I'm thinking ALSO that the current high prices can be used as an incentive for investment in renewables - meaning PRIVATE investment. Government uses "investment" as a label for increased taxes. It's entirely possible for us to expand current production and use it as a bridge to a real-world common sense investment in renewables (as in NO Solyndras) and an expansion of OTHER TRUE zero emission energy sources. You just gotta WANT to. ACTUAL mileages WILL vary.....
Produce more in USA like we were two years ago. Makes driving a Prius almost free. And Eliminates a whole bunch of consequential problems that we are witnessing now. Hopefully enough people will remember in November who got us into this mess over the past year. God Bless the Frackers. I know more than a few of them and they are great people. For folks that want to read an interesting story on the subject I recommend the book The Frackers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frackers
Florida's median age is one of the highest in the country. And the deaths per 100,000 so far are only slightly above average. PLUS! We didn't get put under house arrest. That crap Gavin did to you guys, would never have flown here. Our economy kept right on chugging along even though it did take a bit of a hit in the early panic phase. CDC COVID Data Tracker https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/median-age-by-state Maine is the outlier. Oldest median age and fairly low death rate. Maybe the fairly low population density is a factor.
It is not due to the low population density perse. In general, the death rate (per given population) is higher in sparsely populated counties than in more densely populated counties in Maine. It is more positively correlated to the vaccination rate. More densely populated counties and cities have higher vaccination rates than rural low population areas. Overall statewide, the state of Main and all of New England states are among the highest vaccination rate in the nation. Source: Covid-19 Vaccinations: County and State Tracker - The New York Times The map shows the percentage of fully vaccinated, 65+. As you can see, the rate is higher in the southern cities along the coast of Maine where the population density is relatively high compared to the rest of Maine with lower population density.
bring on $10. gas! i've been waiting almost 20 years for this florida authorities take on vaccinations and masking: florida-health-department-official-suspended-sending-vaccine-email-rcna12751 cdc-ron-desantis-covid-florida-surgeon-general-says-masks-are-not-saving-lives
I can live with high gas prices as long as I keep my driving distance within my PP's EV range. The tank I filled at the end of Jan @$3.299/gal will last several more months. If I run out of that, I have ~15 gals of ethanol-free gas I bought several months ago for the gas generator. Although the high octane-rated ethanol-free gas was @ ~$4/gal two months ago. Thus, it is not much saving from today's regular gas price. What hurts us most is the heating oil price increase. We were down to a quarter of the tank on our 275 gal tank. We could go at least a few more weeks on that remaining oil, but if the cold snap comes back and we run out of oil, then I may be forced to buy oil no matter what the price is. I decided to order the delivery now than wait for a couple of weeks. That was last week. The delivery did not happen until today... Last week when I called to schedule the delivery, the price was $3.89/gal... But I get charged the spot rate on the day of delivery. Today's rate was $4.72/gal!!! I miss-timed this one really bad. By far the historically highest price on the heating oil I have ever paid. The thing is, I don't understand how residential heating oil which does not have any tax can be higher priced than gasoline which is currently at $4.25 locally???
I don't know what is now. I have not gone out to check it, but diesel usually runs $0.25 to $0.50 higher than regular gas, but cheaper than the premium high octane gas.
As in the story I told several years ago, I prepared for my very first Prius purchase (in early 2008) by computing a best-fit curve to the gas prices on my several years of gas receipts I had entered in my computer to that point. Extrapolated into the future, that same curve looked to intersect $7 / gallon within the time I might still be driving the Prius I was looking at. The amount that I offered the seller was calculated from that result. In the first 3 months after I bought the car, gasoline here broke $4 / gallon, which was an even faster increase than my model had predicted, meaning it would have continued to $7 even earlier than I had thought. Of course, the rest is history; the global collapse drove the price down down down later in 2008, and it has stayed significantly below that old curve ever since. Admittedly, just fitting past gas receipts to a curve and projecting it out is very simpleminded modeling: it doesn't account for extraneous things changing, like new technology, alternative sources, economic crashes, or wars. But it's interesting to recall that $7 by a few years ago was already where a simple projection of my gas receipt prices from the early 2000s pointed, as of early 2008.
i see crises everywhere, but not in gas prices. seize the moment, rebuild the grids, install more alternative power, and build more electric transportation. if not now, when?