This is a heat map of gasoline costs as a percentage of income. The hardest hit areas are around the 10% of income mark.
I payed $4.45 a gallon today for 91 octane gas. Nearly a 20c jump in the space of a week. We are getting into high inflation territory that places like Zimbabwe suffer from where you have to fill up all your cars at once because it will be higher tomorrow. Not cool. That is a facet of an economy losing control.
The price will come down to an extent, speculators can only survive for so long before any bubble pops, however this inflation is driven by both fundamentals, such as China and India consuming more oil, as well as the US government printing money like there is no tomorrow. When bad policy mixes with known bad circumstances the result is a mess. (more)
The price will come down to an extent, speculators can only survive for so long before any bubble pops, however this inflation is driven by both fundamentals, such as China and India consuming more oil, as well as the US government printing money like there is no tomorrow. When bad policy mixes with known bad circumstances the result is a mess. (more)
Econbrowser: "We've reached the point where American businesses and consumers simply can no longer afford to ignore the price of fuel, and we're getting clear indications of real changes in behavior." (more)
I keep my receipts being somewhat of a data hound. Fueling up the other day I noticed that a gallon of premium gas was $3.92 USD - perilously close to the four dollar mark. I decided to graph my petrol receipts for the last month.
This is a blame the government and oil companies type of op-ed, however it has some interesting figures in it.
In January of this year, the U.S. used 4% less petroleum than we did a year ago. (Oil demand was down 3.2% in February.) Furthermore, demand has been falling slowly since July of last year.In 2003 I payed $1.50 USD a gallon now I am paying $3.50 a gallon. The price increase was both was sudden and constant. It was blamed on a number of issues, Katrina, Iraq, China, India, tornadoes, vacation driving, you name it. However it appears that refineries in the US have twice as much in reserve each month than they did a year ago and ethanol, while putting pressure on food prices, is alleviating demand. This isn't being seen at the petrol pump. (more)
Nanosolar now has their $1 per 1W cells in production. Their first eighteen months of output is already spoken for.
There has been a gas pipeblast in Mexico which local rebels have claimed responsibility for. These are examples of John Robb's global guerillas. Because the cost of warfare has decreased so much, the heavily centralised political, urban and economic structures are unnecessarily exposed to shock and delivery failure. Energy is one of those susceptible systems. (more)
Is Australia in Iraq for oil or is it because of the Great and Powerful Friends doctrine [GAPF] of foreign policy? In my opinion, while energy security plays a minor role, it is predominantly because of the latter. (more)
Joseph Tainter has an interesting essay titled Complexity, Problem Solving and Sustainable Societies. His thesis is that humankind, in order to solve practical problems, increases the complexity of the systems that go toward a solution. Over time this complexity needs to be subsidised by increasing energy - lest they collapse. (more)
Not politics but we do have an energy topic; and energy usage plays in important role in modern social self-organisation. A graph of my household Kwh usage for 2006.
