you misread my post. climate control for comfort is an issue for sure. but when give a choice of surviving an environment that is within 20º of your body temperature or one that is 80-100º away from your body temperature, the latter will kill you first. now as far as should people continue to spends hundreds of dollars on heating oil??? is all they spend for surivival? my answer to both is a resounding NO there is no doubt that more often than not, the temps people heat their house to is way higher than they need. as i type this, the temp in my house is 59.1º i rarely use heat and it has not been on in at least a month. it simply does not bother me. just as i did when i lived in Riverside for 7 years, i adapt. and it has nothing to do with cost. my electricity rates are one of the lowest if not THE lowest in the nation. and yes, we have killer heat waves. the one in Europe a few years back killed thousands. but that number would pale in comparison if heat was removed. and if the cost of heating oil is already extremely high and a single person dies because of it, makes the oil companies adjust their prices. this isnt a theory. they advertise that they are adjusting energy prices all the time for WINTER, but never for summer. not that they dont care about people in the south, they simply know that you are not nearly as likely to die is all.
Big oil did some polling. They found that Americans will pay up to $5 a gallon before they revolt. That's their target. $5 a gallon. It won't be instantaneous. It will be gradual. We're seeing the gradual progression right now. Slow ups and downs. But the downs are always higher than the previous downs. So you get a gradual increase over years. We saw $3+ for a little last year. We'll see it again for a little longer this year. Next year it will be the average. The following year....$3 a gallon will be the low we're looking for. $5 a gallon by 2010.
It's strange, but nobody ever calls me for a poll. Not CNN, ABC, oil cos., etc. I don't really believe what they say as nobody we know ever gets a poll call. Has anyone on this forum been called for an oil co. poll?
Call it a poll, call it a study, call it anything you want. The oil companies wanted to know how much they could squeeze people for before they had major problems. The figure arrived at was $5 a gallon. It was presented at some sort of summit meeting. A reporter snuck in, heard the speech, watched the powerpoint, wrote an article. And the price of gas has slowly creeped up ever since.
The bad thing about having a Prius is that the last time I looked at the gas station was about 3 weeks ago. I finally drove past one and the prices were about $2.399. The wife said it went up 10 cents in the last week alone. Maybe we do need gas to go up to $5 a gal for everyone to wake up. If it does I am thinking that the plug in battery company will not lower their price.
Weird stuff going on now.. 4 weeks ago gas in SE VA was hovering in the 2.20's/gal then up a little then dropped like a rock to $2.01 eight days ago. Now it's $2.59/gal. HUH???
