Gas Prices: Come on....seriously?!

I recieved my electricity bill today, and it was $76.38. It was about the same as last month, so I just thoughtlessly wrote the check and enclosed it in the envelope. And then I saw it: My usage profile for the last year. And guess what? Exactly ONE year ago, I used the exact same about of electricity (8.4 KWH/DAY) and yet I paid 26 dollars more than that time! The number of days in the cycle was 3 days more for this cycle, but 26 dollars?! What the hell?

The answer was pretty easy to figure out. While it was $1.74 a days a year ago, this time it was $2.39 a day. That's over a 37% increase in just a year. Can you guess why? Yes, good job! It's GAS PRICES!!!!!! Because electricity in the US, as well as pretty much anywhere else, is mostly produced by burning gas and coal, rising gas prices are driving up electricity prices as well. Obviously that's not the only cost it's driving up, and that adds to the problem too. Let's take coal. Where do we get most of it? Overseas, of course! Well, how do we get it? By boat. What does the boat run on? You guessed it! GAS!!!! And the list goes on. So...is anyone doing anything about it?

Not much, as far as I know. Yeah, Bush gave out like a few hundred dollars per tax payer, big deal. That's nothing compared to what the rise in crude oil prices is costing us overall. Just the affect of the rising cost of SHIPPING alone is already a huge problem. If companies aren't able or willing to absorb the rising cost of shipping, then the cost falls directly on us. And of course production also costs more, from rising shipping, raw material, and electricity costs. That means less money for the companies in terms of profits, since they can't make the customer take all of the rise in costs or they would lose business, and that means SOMEbody is going to get fired, or maybe more. Every person fired or not hired means less money for those people, add those people up and we've got a whole new population of people moving down the already disproportionately bottom-heavy pyramid. Rising costs, less money for the people....sound familiar? Right, it's called inflation and depression. The value of the dollar versus products are dropping, but the people are getting the same to less income, and unable to compensate for the depreciation of their money. Keep that cycle up, and we've got the Great Depression looming ahead of us.

So...what can we do to save ourselves from this situation? Well, it's really not that easy. Let's take a look at the simple solution of lowering gas prices. Why can't we do it? We can all just agree to buy crude oil at lower prices, and then everybody would win, right?

Unfortunately, for various reasons, but mostly because of selfishness, this can't happen. There's a limited supply of crude oil being produced, while demand is shooting up, thanks to developing countries such as India and China. And then let's not forget that America is still a major consumer, meaning demand is already huge even without the other countries. Many different people from different companies and groups need crude oil for different reasons, and they will do whatever it takes to get the job done. Obviously, that means obtaining crude oil at higher than desired prices if necessary. Otherwise, entire operations could be delayed or shutdown, which would result in a LOT more loss in profit than would just spending a few more bucks on crude oil.

And once prices go up, it's hard to get it back down. Because the producers of crude oil know what kind of money people are willing to pay, they will only ask for the same or higher prices, not lower. They are profit-seeking corporations, following the business ethics of "Maxmized profit for shareholders", and also of course the ethics of "As much money as possible for me and not you", so let's not even dream about asking them to lower prices.

Oh, and did you know a lot of crude oil producers don't even take the dollar as a form of payment anymore? Yeah, they don't like us very much over there, and plus since the dollar has been on the drop for quite a while, they feel that it is not a stable standard compared to the Euro. That means that even if the cost of crude oil stays the same against the Euro, it can still rise for the dollar if it depreciations against the Euro. Isn't economics awesome?

And even if we somehow managed to have ALL American buyers to lower their buy limit, that would do NOTHING except shut our country down, because I guarantee the developing countries will buy everysingle barrel that we don't. Countries like India or China are fast on the rise, builing a new factory everyday and new coal-powered electricity facilities every week. They need every ounce of oil they can get their hands on. So be assured that they would NEVER agree to work with us in order to lower the gas prices, since that's not exactly the first thing on their minds right now. With their economies blooming at such a rapid pace, they're just concerned with increasing growth, and if high gas prices is the price to pay, so be it.

Well, then what about alternatives? Can't we use alternative energy resources to offset the rising costs and reduce oil usage? Well, you see, that's not really that simple either. Unfortunately, alternative energy sources are a great idea, but to produce the amount of energy to significantly impact our oil usage would cost a thousand fold or more. Solar, wind, and geothermal power and the like are great sounding, but the truth is that they are just not as efficient, and the base cost is just astounding. I'm not going to go bother looking for exact numbers, but you can guess pretty easily. Think of the resources we'll need to produce all the equipment. Not only is it uber costly, it is also far more harmful to the environment than just buring oil/fossil fuels. We'd be paying tens or even hundreds more for electricity if we were to switch over to alternative power as they are now. But wait, there's ONE alternative power source that is less costly, efficient, AND better for the environment. Want to know?

It's NUCLEAR POWER!! That's right. The amount of energy we can extract from nuclear power is literally thousands of times more than we would from the same amount of fossil fuels. It is also a lot more environmentally friendly, since the only side product from the energy production is WATER VAPOR. The nuclear waste produced can actually be recylced to the point that we can extract 60% of the potential energy, which is a LOT more than we can say for any other energy source we can think of. And once the extraction is done, they are stored safely inside sealed drums in a mountain somewhere far from civilization. And just ONE nuclear power plant can produce about 0.15% of the power the country needs. Sound small, but that means just 1000 nuclear power plants can supply the entire country with cheap and clean energy! Already, only about a 160 nuclear power plants supply about 20% of the country's power. Compared to the thousands of fossil fuel plants....that's not much, is it?

But of course, no one actually wants nuclear power. It's got a pretty bad reputation, and for good reason too. SHOULD something go wrong, we could have total destruction and chaos. Want some good news? It won't happen. It's happened twice, once in the US and once in Chernobyl. But the thing is, the one that happened in the US didn't really do anything, there was an emergency, they let out some steam to prevent the place from, blowing, game over. No effect on the environment whatsoever. And Chernobyl? Sorry for them, but we don't have the design flaws that they did. Each Nuclear reactor has like 3 to 4 different systems designed to operate independantly of each other to shut down the reactor before anything happens. And terrorists? Don't worry, these places are REALLY heavily guarded. If you don't believe me, try to break in to one yourself. And call me if there really is a heaven.

But alas, stigma is a bitch, isn't it. I doubt that we will ever achieve a much higher ratio of nuclear power. People are just too damn scared of it, and I understand it too. So the other solution?

Government. That's right. Pull money out of unneccessary places, and use that money to help finance crude oil buyers so that they'd actually be buying at something like 85 or 95 instead of 115 per barrel. That's a lot of money you say? Well, go to google search and find out how much the war in Iraq is costing us. You'll understand a bit more of why we need to get the hell out of there as soon as possible. But of course, it's not really that simple over there either...

Now, I could go on and on. But the truth is that for everything there is 100 more things connected to it, and then I'd just die of old age before I can discuss everything. The truth is that there is only one TRUE solution to all of this, all these problems that are interlocked with each other. Wanna know what that is? It's simple. All that needs to happen, is for all the people in the world, especially the ones in power but also those would could be doing something but aren't, to PULL YOUR GOD DAMN HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES.

But we all know that's never happening, don't we. Ah, life is so sweet.