President-elect Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress seem to have a clear vision of the auto industry they think the country needs. It must be financially self-sufficient. It also must be capable of producing highly fuel-efficient, next-generation vehicles that can help the nation cope with climate change and finite supplies of oil.
Yet for all the conditions attached to it, the multibillion-dollar aid package for Detroit’s carmakers approved by the White House (with Mr. Obama’s support) fails to address one crucial question: Who will buy all the fuel-efficient cars that Detroit carmakers are supposed to make?
The danger is that too few will, especially if gasoline prices remain low. Therefore, it might be time for the president-elect and Congress to think seriously about imposing a gas tax or similar levy to keep gas prices up after the economy recovers from recession.
Retail gasoline prices drift to 58-month low
Retail gasoline prices tumbled Friday to the lowest level in nearly five years. And while crude futures rose, analysts believed it was a temporary pause in an extended, downward arc as the recession spreads.
“We’re paying about a billion dollars per day less than we were in July” for gasoline, said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. “We could probably bail out some banks and maybe even some of the auto companies with the savings.”
Saudi must urge Russia to join Opec: Experts
Saudi Arabia will have to take the lead in ensuring that Russia becomes a member of Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), analysts and recent reports from think tanks in the sector suggest.
Russia has not only stubbornly set aside a possibility of joining the Opec, but it has also not announced an anticipated cut in its production to bolster the 2.2m (4.2m if cuts since September 2008 are considered) barrels a day Opec cut that takes effect from the first week of January 2009.
Iraq Basra oil exports plunge 68pc
Iraq’s oil exports from its southern Basra terminal fell by 67.5 per cent to 552,000 barrels per day (bpd) on Saturday, from 1.7 million bpd on Friday, said a shipper.
Chances of gas cut ’50-50′, Russia warns Ukraine
MOSCOW (AFP) – There is a “50-50″ chance that Russia will cut off gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1 over Kiev’s failure to pay its debts, Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Saturday.
Gazprom says Ukraine has non-cash options to pay gas debt
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Crisis-stricken Ukraine may count its $2 billion debt for Russian gas deliveries against future fees for Russian gas transit to European customers, a Gazprom spokesman said on Saturday.
…Kupriyanov said another option for Ukraine to pay its debt would be to hand back gas it had stockpiled in underground gas storages to help it live through the winter in the event Gazprom turns off the gas taps.
Release the Stranglehold on Domestic Oil
Pelosi’s plan landed in the headlines just as the oracles of “Peak Oil” were again predicting the demise of petroleum. World production capacity appears stuck at 85 million barrels per day against growing demand in China and India. Until very recently Americans had been paying a heavy price to import 70 percent of our current oil consumption, while Democrats continued to chant: “We can’t drill our way out of the problem.”
YET GEOLOGISTS report that huge quantities of hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas) still lie buried at various locations around the globe. A recently released international study estimates more than 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil remain in the Arctic alone.
China to offer incentives to scrap old cars: state media
China plans to offer incentives for car owners to scrap their old models in favour of new ones, in a bid to lift the auto industry as it enters a period of crisis, state media said Saturday.
The measure is part of a new package being prepared in Beijing aimed at avoiding a US-style collapse of the local auto sector, the Xinhua news agency reported.
WHEN Toyota, the auto industry’s financial Godzilla, forecasts its first operating loss in 70 years, you know times are tough. When senators suggest that General Motors (of “What’s good for the country…” fame) should be left to collapse, you know the ground has shifted.
This combination of boldness in catering for cars and shyness with public transport, walking and cycling could propel Melbourne down the list of the world’s most liveable cities and cancel out its multiple advantages. It will also add to the burdens of poor health, especially through low levels of physical activity, obesity and early onset diabetes. The time is right to make sure that Melbourne’s budgets and policy priorities contain a clear map of how the city can celebrate the virtues of walking, cycling and public transport, reduce car trips and reward its residents with cleaner air, less noise, lower greenhouse gas emissions, fewer deaths and injuries and a calmer, more child-friendly and more economically successful city.
The electric car that can break the speed limit signals a new road order
Forget milk float. Forget golf buggy. The tarnished image of the electric car is about to be smartened up. The first proper-performance, four-seater electric car from a major manufacturer is about to be launched on the UK market.
The i-MiEV – pronounced eye-meev – from Mitsubishi, is a saloon car which will carry four adults and reach a top speed of 87mph. It will be available in the UK, initially for leasing, from the middle of 2009 and can travel up to 100 miles without charging.
Nicaragua Plans to Reduce Dependence on Oil-based Energy to 3 Percent
Few decades ago the share of renewable energy in Nicaragua’s power generation was 70 percent but with growing ties with Venezuela and availability of cheap oil that number declined and now the country gets just 34 percent of its energy from renewable sources. But with the rising oil prices and increasing blackouts the government now seems to be falling back on the locally available and reliable renewable energy sources.
It was a gas – and that was the trouble
It seemed as if the prophecies of Thomas Malthus, the doomsayer of overpopulation, were coming true. A century ago, the world faced a crisis just as severe as the energy/ global warming conundrum that confronts us today: Pundits predicted millions of people would starve as farmers’ yields dropped because of a shortage of natural fertilizers, such as manure, guano and Chilean nitrates.
The news set off the equivalent of a nuclear arms race — the search for a chemical process that could extract nitrogen from the air and transform it into fertilizer. Essentially, atmospheric nitrogen had to be persuaded to combine with hydrogen gas to form ammonia.
Groups spend millions in ‘clean coal’ ad war
Interest groups spending tens of millions of television ad dollars in a fight over carbon emissions and the existence of “clean coal.”
Coal industry magnates, who would lose big if new pollution standards are signed into law, spent between $35 million and $45 million on advertising this year – most of it on television ads aired during the 2008 campaigns – pitching “clean coal” as a new environmentally friendly fuel.
No Quick Or Easy Technological Fix For Climate Change, Researchers Say
ScienceDaily — Global warming, some have argued, can be reversed with a large-scale “geoengineering” fix, such as having a giant blimp spray liquefied sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere or building tens of millions of chemical filter systems in the atmosphere to filter out carbon dioxide.
But Richard Turco, a professor in the UCLA Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a member and founding director of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment, sees no evidence that such technological alterations of the climate system would be as quick or easy as their proponents claim and says many of them wouldn’t work at all.
‘Japanese Inuit’ warns of climate change danger
As the fields of ice surrounding his home rapidly become thinner, Ikuo Oshima knows firsthand that the effects of global warming are not a problem of the distant future, but a present danger.
It was the vast fields of the Arctic ice where Oshima, 61, managed to feed and raise five children, hunting walruses and seals and riding his dogsled. And that self-sustainable life has allowed him to become a member of the Inuit indigenous community in Siorapaluk, Greenland, the northernmost inhabited settlement on the planet.
Climate change refugees seek a new international deal
Millions of people are predicted to become climate refugees as global warming increases. A new international pact will be needed to protect their rights to live.
Exxon may emerge as leader in CO2 capture
While Exxon Mobil Corp. has been among the most vocal skeptics of man-made causes of climate change, the company has spent the last two decades forging an expertise in one of the key technologies to combat the problem: capturing and storing carbon-dioxide emissions.
