$4.00 Gas!?!!

I love this Ed Stein comic. Feels representative of the mindset of today's typical commuter. 

Putting the Gas Tax in Perspective

Pithy as usual, from Atrios:
3 cent increase in the gas tax, at 10,000 miles driven annually in 20MPG car = $15/year.

The True Cost of Gasoline

Ezra very eloquently makes the case that it's much higher then what we're currently paying. He begins:

But as the sludge choking the Gulf of Mexico shows, nothing is easy when it comes to oil. Not even the price. In fact, especially not the price.
Most of us would call the BP spill a tragedy. Ask an economist what it is, however, and you'll hear a different word: "externality." An externality is a cost that's not paid by the person, or people, using the good that creates the cost. The BP spill is going to cost fishermen, it's going to cost the gulf's ecosystem, and it's going to cost the region's tourism industry. But that cost won't be paid by the people who wanted that oil for their cars. It'll fall on taxpayers, on Gulf Coast residents who need new jobs, on the poisoned wildlife on the seafloor.
That means the gasoline you're buying at the pump is -- stick with me here -- too cheap. The price you pay is less than the product's true cost. A lot less, actually. And it's not just catastrophic spills and dramatic disruptions in the Middle East that add to the price. Gasoline has so many hidden costs that there's a cottage industry devoted to tallying them up. At least the ones that can be tallied up.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Just Horrible

The Big Picture documented pictures of helpless pelicans covered in oil on the Louisiana coastline. I can't think of anything more wretched then these poor doomed creatures. Makes me sad and furious, all at the same time.

The Politics of Oil Spils

I've been even more disgusted then normal with the political news lately. (Politics is my reality TV: part of the reason I pay attention is the train-wreck aspect of it all.) Two things stuck out at me recently:

1. The absurd expectations put upon Obama to "do something" about the oil spill, like he could simply wave a magic wand or call upon Aquaman or something and have it all be fixed up. Clive Cook summarizes the inanity here. Money quote:

Apparently it is a great idea to elect a president who is calm in a crisis, except when there's a crisis. Then what you need is somebody to lead the nation in panic -- or, as Maureen Dowd put it, to be "a prism in moments of fear and pride, reflecting [sic] what Americans feel so they know he gets it." What the nation needs at times like this in fact is a daddy who will stop being so remote, and make everything all right. You think I'm exaggerating?

2. Ed Herbert takes the long view of recent political developments:

If a bank is too big to fail, it’s way too big to exist. If an oil well is too far beneath the sea to be plugged when something goes wrong, it’s too deep to be drilled in the first place. ...
Instead of staring mesmerized at the tragedy in the gulf, like spectators at a train wreck, we should be trying to regain that innovative can-do spirit that made America the greatest of nations.
All around us is the wreckage of our failure to master the challenges confronting us. We see it in the many millions of Americans who remain out of work and whose hopes are not rising despite all the talk of economic recovery. We see it in the schools where teachers are walking the plank by the scores of thousands because of state and local budget problems.
We see it in the shrinking middle class and in the black community where depressionlike conditions are fostering not just a sense of helplessness, but despair.
What’s needed is dynamic leadership (it doesn’t have to come from the top) to reinvigorate the spirit of America and turn that sense of helplessness around.

Oil Corruption

There's a lot of amazing information coming out about the horrific regulatory situation in the aftermath of the BP oil spill. This AP report is - to date at least - the most damning. Money quote:

Staff members at an agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography, according to an Interior Department report alleging a culture of cronyism between regulators and the industry.

Seriously? Who looks at pornography at work? What kind of clown show are they running over there?
The sad thing that is that the cozy relations between the oil industry and the federal agency intended to regulate it is extremely damaging in more ways than one, but it’s not surprising considering how addicted the US is to oil. This addiction leads us to subsidize the oil industry, which hides the true cost of gasoline (somewhat analogous to what I was writing yesterday about the true cost of owning a car). As Kate Sheppard writes:

The government spent $72.5 billion on fossil fuels between 2002 and 2008, an analysis from the Environmental Law Institute found last year. The government directly spent $16.3 billion on petroleum, natural gas, and coal products, and gave the industry another $53.9 billion in the form of tax breaks. In the same period, it spent just $29 billion on renewables (and if you subtract the subsidies for corn ethanol, an alternative fuel of questionable environmental benefit, from that figure, the government spent just $12.2 billion on renewables. Shifting subsidies away from oil and other fossil fuels should be an obvious place to start reforming our energy system.