Fuel Prices
The price of everything that is dependent upon crude oil is increasing. Gasoline for your car, diesel for the 18 wheeler truck that hauls your fresh produce and Wal-Mart merchandise, chemical fertilizers needed for food and ethanol production, fuel oil and natural gas to heat your house and work place, and jet fuel for commercial airliners.
Many people are worrying horribly, and some are grinding their teeth in anger. But this sort of reaction is just silly and ineffective. In fact, getting mad just makes one less able to make rational decisions and adequately cope with difficult situations.
The amount of oil and natural gas is limited, and in fact is getting harder and harder to find. The oil companies are having to drill much deeper and in very strange locations (like the sea bed thousands of feet below the floating oil rig), but even so they are not having a great deal of success in finding new sources of crude oil and natural gas.
The vast numbers of people in China and India who have been living in terrible poverty finally are getting the wonderful chance to have refrigerators, regularly eat meat, and even drive their own cars. Their good fortune at increasing their standard of living is causing an enormous worldwide increase in the usage of oil and gas.
One of the reasons that our species has survived and prospered is because of our ability to make rational decisions and our ability to be flexible. Many of the people who have emigrated from their native countries due to famine really like the place they grew up. But when the future prosperity of their children was on the line, the Irish moved to North America because of the potato famine. The Jews who were rational and flexible left Germany during the nazi era.
When people grumble and moan about the price of fuel to me, I ask them what kind of vehicle they drive. In the 1960s and 1970s it was easy enough to see all of this coming. And the rational, flexible ones made changes in their lifestyle. If you drive a car that gets worse fuel economy than 7,8 liters per 100 kilometers, or 17.2 km/liter, or 30 miles per gallon under completely normal, real-life conditions, please excuse me for saying so, but you are a wasteful fool.
The same applies to your house. You should have long ago converted your house to double (or triple) pane windows, added loads of extra insulation, bought new energy efficient appliances, and changed all of your light bulbs from incandescent to compact fluorescent bulbs.
I feel genuine pity for those people who would rather grumble, complain, and grind their teeth than take concrete action to help deal with the rising energy prices. This self induced stress is certainly contributing to their high blood pressure and their early demise. But my compassion and sympathy for them does not stop me from moving on without them. Many of the dinosaurs were probably nice folks too. The latest research indicates that the dinosaurs cared deeply about their young. But when push came to shove they could not be flexible enough to survive the changing situation.
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