On Mon, 2006-01-30 at 12:01 -0500, Grant Shipley wrote: > After much discussion back in August (on this list) over why gas was > so expensive...... > > I think we have the answer now.
What concerns me far more than oil prices (gasoline) are natural gas prices. Natural gas production has nothing to do with oil production (other than the same companies are involved), yet the price of natural gas is always linked to it, which I have a problem with. Certainly supply and demand doesn't seem apply to natural gas. For example, Utah has a vast surplus of natural gas. Yet the gas companies refuse to sell to us at what would be a local market price because they can make a killing selling on the open market. I don't know of any workable solution, however. Natural gas prices effect the economy more than oil prices because the vast majority of our plastic components come from natural gas. Unlike our dependence on oil (for fuel), I don't know of any alternative to natural gas. Clearly recycling plastics is essential. Composting waste to generate fertilizers also helps, but can't eliminate our dependence on synthetic fertilizers without which, we would not be able to feed the entire world (purely "natural" food production hasn't shown itself to be sustainable or viable on the scale needed for world food production). Michael /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
