U.S. gas prices have hit their highest level ever for springtime, at $3.96 a gallon for regular on average. Yep, higher even than the record surge in 2008, as oil companies reap near-record profits. So what does that have to do with the price of silver?
It’s as though we had another Hurricane Katrina furiously driving up the price of fuel, but without the storm. Which makes it interesting that an indie documentary called “Gas Hole,” (trailer), examining the reasons for our high gas prices in the post-Katrina world and oil company influence on the gas-guzzling engines in our cars, is now getting wider release. You can be sure that Exxon didn’t provide the funding for this funny/weird/disturbing doc. (I love the old desert-rat types with faded sedans that get 100 mpg, and their stories of disappearing clean-car patents.)
While skirmishes in Libya and uncertainty in the Middle East are nice cover for outrageous gasoline prices, the fact is the same old suspects are making a killing from sky-high gas prices approaching $4 dollars per gallon in California: big oil companies and greedy speculators.
Brian mentioned this in the open thread, but it really deserves its own post, it's such a ridiculous column. George Skelton today made a full-throated but deeply flawed argument for offshore drilling that as far as I can tell boils down to "well we did it in the past, and it's not going to help in the future...so why not?!" and winds up arguing that we should sacrifice the future for hardly anything in return. The column doesn't start off on a promising note:
On some beaches around Santa Barbara, you could feel the oozing tar between your toes -- and that was long before a Union Oil platform five miles offshore spilled crud all over 20 miles of coast in 1969. For centuries, the tar naturally had seeped up through the sand, providing the native Chumash with caulking for their canoes.
Calling it "crud" is deliberately misleading readers about what actually happened in 1969. From UCSB:
Animals that depended on the sea were hard hit. Incoming tides brought the corpses of dead seals and dolphins. Oil had clogged the blowholes of the dolphins, causing massive lung hemorrhages. Animals that ingested the oil were poisoned. In the months that followed, gray whales migrating to their calving and breeding grounds in Baja California avoided the channel -their main route south.
The oil took its toll on the seabird population. Shorebirds like plovers, godwits and willets which feed on sand creatures fled the area. But diving birds which must get their nourishment from the waters themselves became soaked with tar....
Grebes, cormorants and other seabirds were so sick, their feathers so soaked in oil that they were not difficult to catch. Birds were bathed in Polycomplex A-11, medicated, and placed under heat lamps to stave off pneumonia. The survival rate was less than 30 percent for birds that were treated. Many more died on the beaches where they had formerly sought their livelihoods. Those who had managed to avoid the oil were threatened by the detergents used to disperse the oil slick. The chemicals robbed feathers of the natural waterproofing used to keep seabirds afloat.
In all 3686 birds were estimated to have died because of contact with oil. Aerial surveys a year later found only 200 grebes in an area that had previously drawn 4000 to 7000.
Skelton's blithe dismissal of the ecological consequences of drilling is appalling. It's not as if our oceans are healthy - oceans face crippling ecological crises and they're in no position to withstand drilling.
Skelton goes on to turn "Big Oil" into a nostalgia piece (I'm guessing someone didn't see There Will Be Blood):
Oh, another thing: My dad was an oil field roustabout, or driller or whatever job he could fill on a given shift. So were his dad, brother and cousins. They left their Tennessee farms and followed the migration to California for the 1920s oil boom.
My first summer job out of high school was in a Ventura oil field, an experience guaranteed to prod a kid into college if nothing else would. (But the oil job paid better than newspaper work, I soon discovered.)
So "Big Oil" never has been a big bugaboo for me. It was the producer of a vital commodity and provider of working-class jobs. Although oil derricks annoy many people as unsightly, I've always marveled at how they work, especially all lighted up at night.
Nostalgic memories do not count as a sound basis for public policy - unless of course he thinks we should go back to the days before OSHA, dump our toxic waste into the drinking water supply, and drive without seatbelts.
Worse is the conflation of Big Oil with working-class prosperity. Perhaps at some moment in the past this was true, but Skelton here merely reveals that he, like all the High Broderists, does not live in the 21st century, instead assuming that the conditions of the 1970s remain true today. They don't.
Here in the 21st century Big Oil sucks precious income away form working-class families while returning hardly any in the form of jobs, taxes, or anything else resembling prosperity. And as anyone living near the Torrance refinery knows, they tend to actually have rather debilitating effect on working-class communities.
It wasn't too long ago that the McCain campaign tried desperately to mock the Obama suggestion that people would be well served to keep their tires inflated properly in order to get better gas mileage. They went so far as to send out a fundraising email offering a "free" tire gauge in exchange for a donation to the campaign. They asked "[w]ill simply inflating your tires reduce the financial burden of high gas prices on your wallet?"
Turns out, the answer from every corner is yes. To the point that McCain had to back off it entirely and concede that it's probably a good idea to properly maintain one's car.
But as McCain and other Republican leaders continue to push the ridiculous on its face notion that only increased offshore drilling can address the current energy challenges in this country, Automobile Manufacturers and our own Governor Schwarzenegger are lining up to push car maintenance and better driving habits as a simple way to ease the hit at the pump. He was even good enough to put a video together to promote the new EcoDriving campaign. Echoing Obama's statements on the issue, Schwarzenegger says in part, "You can reduce your fuel costs by more than 15%. And I am talking about simple things, like proper tire pressure, avoiding rapid starts and stops, and keeping your engine tuned."
This is admittedly a mixed bag. Better driving habits and car maintenance does have a significant impact on gas mileage, and the more attention this gets, the more likely it is that consumers will receive the message. But it's also incumbent upon auto makers and others to not use this as a cop out on their responsibility to keep working towards more eco-friendly cars. Informing consumers is fantastic, passing the buck to consumers in not. Either way, especially in a car-centric state like California this is a nice step.
I mentioned on Monday that Nick Leibham would be offering gas to residents of the 50th district discounted to the price in April 1996 when Big Oil first started funneling money to Brian Bilbray.
Today, ExxonMobil posted $11.7 billion in second quarter profits, the all-time record for a U.S. Company, so the $182,818 that Bilbray has received from oil companies throughout his career may seem like a drop in the bucket. But he's certainly delivered time and again for Big Oil: Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act (Use It or Lose It): No. Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands Act: No. Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act: No. Energy Independence and Security Act: No.
The response yesterday was- perhaps unsurprisingly- huge. Leibham's campaign manager described to me "lines down the road...people were so enthusiastic." Because pain at the pump is inescapable, it's immediate, it's obvious, and it's not a complicated issue. There's a clear choice being presented between the failed policies of the past- more drilling, and the policies of progress- investment in new and renewable energy, use of existing drilling leases, the elimination of tax breaks for Big Oil.
This is a race that's often flown under the radar in online circles, but with Bilbray refusing to even enter his district in order to defend his extremist voting record, it could get pretty interesting. Bilbray is desperate to avoid engaging on real issues, crowing about a veterans memorial but voting to continue the Iraq debacle and voting against the new GI Bill. Every chance he gets to bring about positive change, Bilbray stands in opposition. But when he can stand far outside his district and lob rhetoric, he's all for it.
While Bilbray continues to work against Americans, Nick Leibham got out, in the district, and did something that would actually help a little bit. It isn't much, but it's not supposed to be a solution. What it was supposed to be- and succeeded in being- is a sharp line of contrast between the priorities of these two candidates.
One of and for the people, the other bought and paid to oppose the people.
It's been more than 12 years since Brian Bilbray first took money from Big Oil to fund his political career. Back then, gas was $1.27/gallon in the 50th district, and after a dozen years of Bilbray and his Big Oil Republican buddies, gas is well over $4/gallon. Bilbray and his cronies think the solution is to give more tax dollars to oil companies, which makes sense since that money comes back as campaign contributions- a convenient way to launder taxes into re-election funds and not actually address gas prices in any way.
Nick Leibham just outraised Bilbray int he second quarter and is spreading a bit of that cash around as direct relief to drivers in the district. This Wednesday (July 30), Leibham will roll back gas prices at three gas stations in the 50th to $1.27, just like it was before Big Oil laid down the money to push Bilbray into office. This was a HUGE success in 2006 when Larry Kissell did it in North Carolina. More than 500 people showed up for the cheap gas, snarling traffic and bringing in police to wrangle the crowds. It's a great time to be punching holes in Brian Bilbray's absurd claim of being good on environmental and energy issues. Just a quick check of his recent voting record exposes how bad it is. Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act (Use It or Lose It): No. Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands Act: No. Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act: No. Energy Independence and Security Act: No.
Bad for the environment, bad for safe energy, bad for energy security, bad for creating new jobs in energy. And this guy's supposed to be a friend of the environment and renewable energy? No.
As we're all painfully aware, during the '00s the US media have become ardent defenders of the status quo, generally unwilling to discuss harsh realities that might threaten that status quo unless absolutely forced to do so - Hurricane Katrina, for example, or the reaction to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps the most significant issue not being discussed in the media is peak oil - which, in its simplistic form, explains why the high fuel prices we are seeing today are going to be a permanent feature of life.
Gas prices are NEVER coming back down - rising demand is meeting a shrinking supply and the result is the end of the cheap oil that modern America was built upon.
As gas prices remain high more media outlets are discussing energy policy but only lately are they beginning to acknowledge that the era of cheap oil is over. Today's Los Angeles Times starts examining the topic with a front-page feature, Envisioning a world of $200-a-barrel oil. It focuses on how consumers, transportation, and global trade will be affected, and even tries to examine the "upside" to this, particularly the eventual localization of American life, perhaps the closest a major American media outlet has come to embracing the ideas of Jim Kunstler.
The article is a good beginning, but it avoids the key question of how we ought to respond. Videoconferencing and staycations are not substitutes for statewide initiatives to deal with the crisis. The article discusses the airline crisis but doesn't discuss ways to provide alternative forms of transportation such as high speed rail. Nor does it discuss ways to encourage more renewable energy sources, or local food production, or urban density.
Still, just as it took Al Gore's movie to convince Californians to take even the small step of climate change action embodied in AB 32, so too will it take the media's willingness to tell Californians that cheap oil is over to produce action on shifting our state away from an oil-based economy.
Cheap oil was responsible for much of the prosperity of the postwar era, especially in California. It enabled people to find an affordable home to purchase, even if it was distant from their workplace. It enabled them to buy inexpensive food without needing to grow their own. It enabled the development of global trade networks that provided markets for Californian products and services.
The end of cheap oil is welcome from an ecological perspective but it will finish off working Californians if we don't proactively work to build a post-oil infrastructure to provide for prosperity, just as we spent the 1950s and 1960s building an infrastructure around oil to provide for prosperity.
Newspapers like the LA Times could help show Californians the need for and value of such projects. It will require them to break with the status quo - but Californians are already doing so in practice, riding mass transit and even their bikes in much higher numbers than ever before. In the absence of media coverage of our changing state, we in the blogs will do what we can to keep up.
Across the nation, the realization is taking hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a change with lasting consequences. The shift to costlier fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs.
In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody's Economy.com....
Basic household arithmetic appears to be furthering the trend: In 2003, the average suburban household spent $1,422 a year on gasoline, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By April of this year - when gas prices were about $3.60 a gallon- the same household was spending $3,196 a year, more than doubling consumption in dollar terms in less than five years.
Which is exactly what we witnessed here in California. The housing bubble began to burst here in CA in mid to late 2006, when gas prices first broke $3 for a sustained period of time. And the areas first and hardest hit were those dependent on long commuters - Riverside County, Stockton, Modesto.
It's a phenomenon we're witnessing here in Monterey County. Home prices have held fairly steady here on the peninsula, but in the new suburbs such as Marina and Greenfield sprawl has ceased. Several major developments have been put on hiatus or canceled outright, even though the cities have already built the roads.
The deeper problem is that California has spent far too much time and money promoting a failed urban model. The time has come to Redefine the California Dream for the 21st Century. We need to reinvest in our city centers and provide the infrastructure - especially the mass transit infrastructure - to bring folks into the urban centers. But we must also provide the housing capacity for them. The 20th century homeowner aristocracy has to give way to a 21st century middle class that will be fundamentally urban, not suburban.
People have a funny way of adapting. They know that the oil companies are as far from committed to lowering gas prices as possible, so they'll look to lower the cost of commuting rather than search for useless answers to drop gas prices like offshore drilling, which would do absolutely nothing. The Metrolink rail system in LA isn't perfect and doesn't work for everyone, but people are making it work more than ever before.
Commuter rail ridership broke an all-time record this week, and Caltrans reported a dip in freeway traffic as commuters across California struggled with record gas prices.
Metrolink recorded its highest number of riders in a single day ever Tuesday - 50,232 - a 15.6% increase over the same amount of business last year on June 17. Metro Rail ridership last month shot up 6 percent over May 2007, said Dave Sotero, a Metro spokesman.
Meanwhile, Caltrans officials said today that traffic on California freeways dropped 1.5% compared with last year - or the equivalent of a billion fewer miles traveled, said spokesman Derrick Alatorre.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today he opposes lifting a ban on new oil drilling in coastal waters, breaking with President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
He called California's coastline "an international treasure" that must be protected by a federal oil-drilling moratorium that has been in place for 27 years.
"We're serious about that, and we're not going to change that," he told reporters and business executives at BIO International, an annual biotechnology industry conference in San Diego.
Schwarzenegger, who has endorsed McCain's presidential bid, said the federal offshore drilling ban was not to blame for soaring gas prices. In a statement issued earlier in the day, the governor said technological innovations and expanded fuel choices for consumers ultimately will lead the way to reduced fuel costs.
"We are in this situation because of our dependence on traditional petroleum-based oil," Schwarzenegger said in the statement, which referred only to Bush's call for lifting the ban and did not mention McCain.
He missed mass transit and smarter, more dense development, but in the main Arnold is right. Sen. Feinstein and Speaker Bass are quoted in the article as well dismissing the notion of offshore development as a stunt. GOP wingnut-in-charge Dave Cogdill, on the other hand, has a catch phrase:
"Personally, yes, I believe we need to be drilling in our own reserves," Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, said today during a news conference related to the state budget. "We need to use the resources available to us in this country."
He said it would reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil and would help drive down the cost of gasoline.
"So I am a very strong supporter, as I think most of my caucus is, in the catch phase 'Drill here, drill now, pay less,'" Cogdill said. "It's certainly a better energy policy relating to the needs of the citizens of the United States."
Except there's little to drill, the oil companies don't want to do any drilling but want the reserves to line their pockets, and the structural problem with a carbon-based economy lingers.
So the real slogan is, "Drill here. Drill now. Run out sooner. Get no benefits for 10 years."
When you drive along Highway 101 near Santa Barbara, or Highway 1 in Huntington Beach, it's hard to miss the many oil rigs on the ocean's horizon. They are relics of a bygone age - not just the 1960s, when they were constructed, but an age in which California believed that cheap oil would always be plentiful and available. We built an entire infrastructure around that and neglected trains, walkable neighborhoods, and lagged behind the rest of the world in developing solar and wind power.
Now the consequences of that misguided belief in the permanence of cheap oil have become clear. Gas prices are nearing $5, causing economic distress and sending Californians flocking to mass transit. For his part Barack Obama is proposing massive new investments in sustainable energy and rail infrastructure.
It's obvious that Republicans see opportunity in high gas prices to roll back sound environmental policies, such as the offshore ban. But for what gain? Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would take 10 years to deliver oil to American pumps and would only meet about 4-6 months of US domestic demand. California's offshore oil pools would probably not produce much more than that.
Like McCain's gas tax holiday, offshore drilling is a gimmick designed to avoid the necessary fixes. Americans need to understand that gas prices will never come back down, and that cheap oil is a thing of the past. It's not something we have a right to - it's something we had for a few decades, but now it is over.
Republicans don't have a solution to high oil prices. Drilling in ANWR and off our coast would not ameliorate prices now, and wouldn't do so in 10 years - the rate of decline in North Sea and Mexican oil exports will far outweigh the new drills and rising global demand will continue to drive up prices.
Democrats would do well to follow Obama's lead and firmly reject McCain's drilling plan. It's time we accepted the fact that cheap oil is a thing of the past, instead of looking for more sources like a junkie desperately seeking another fix. We need to build a sustainable transportation infrastructure that will provide green jobs and economic development for the 21st century - instead of trying to string out the obsolete 20th century any longer.
I'm heartened by the fact that there's a sharp and pronounced move toward mass transit nationwide (the ridership levels are the highest since 1957) in the wake of $4 gasoline. So heartened, in fact, that I wanted to join the movement. My current commute to work is a straight line, rare in Los Angeles, where I could conceivably take Santa Monica Boulevard all the way from my house to the office. I calculated the options for bus service, and figured I could save $2 a day and a gallon of gas worth of carbon emissions (L.A. buses are, for the most part, clean-air vehicles) without an appreciable increase in my commute time. I went on the Metro website and located the proper bus route, and made out this morning to catch my ride.
It never showed up. The bus route initially offered on the site was inaccurate, and a separate bus didn't pick up at the stop offered. There was no corroborating information at the bus stop, and after about a half-hour I just walked home and got in the car.
I believe I've remedied the situation and now see a way clear to using the proper transit system. But the arduousness of the task is the real point. At a time when gridlock is literally making Angelenos insane, and the reduction of just a tiny percentage of cars on the road would alleviate it, at a time when gas is so expensive that violence is breaking out as gas pumps and fuel thieves are resorting to siphoning gas out of engines, the structure of mass transit in the nation's second-largest city is a total embarrassment. I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford the high cost of gasoline and don't need to use public transit; furthermore, I am able to stagger my schedule and the commute is not even that taxing. But I want to ride clean, out of a sense of social responsibility and simple peace of mind. Somehow the entire Northeast corridor can be lined with all sorts of rail systems and we can't get a bus to stop every few blocks on a major artery serving multiple communities (Santa Monica, West LA, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Hollywood, Los Feliz). The city of Los Angeles actually has more density per mile than Portland, Oregon, which has an excellent public transit system. There's no ingenuity put into transit, or resources for that matter, and the overlapping jurisdictions of public officials just dissolve any policy prescription into a squabble among supervisors and city councilmen and the like. They don't even bother to update the signs; guess it's too costly.
On the other hand, there's a freeway in Marina del Rey that's 2 miles long. It's probably the most unused freeway in America. But it had a federal stamp of approval and was an accomplishment local pols could point to, so up it goes.
What character remains in L.A. is being crushed by endless parades of cars and the honking of horns. The society has become hyper-local out of necessity (and actually the best transit systems, like the Big Blue Bus in Santa Monica, serve a small, local area). But that could all change so easily, with a little personal responsibility and a bus that runs on time.
The eyes of the nation are upon Pennsylvaia, but there's still a lot going on right here in California. So, here are a few stories of note:
(SacBee) Remember that big plan to privatize the lottery that was going to bring in billions upon billions of dollars? Well, it turns out that potential bidders don't really like the way our lottery works, and want us to make some changes before they'll pony up. Of course, that requires a vote of the people, so it might be a while before Arnold's billions come rolling in.
(LA Times) A federal court is hearing a class action lawsuit against the VA alleging gross incompetence. Over 120 veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan commit suicide, while the backlog for services grows. Good to see that the Bush Administartion supports the troops on TV, too bad they don't do it in real life.
(SF Chron) The fight between CNA and SEIU continues in court today, with SEIU arguing that CNA's restraining order violated the rules against SLAPP suits, thus infringing their first amendment rights.
The board (CCCC) that regulates salaries for elected officials meets at 10AM in Van Nuys. A note to you legislators out there, don't expect big pay hikes today. (h/t CapAlert)
Arnold has now dropped over $1.25 million into the redistricting initiative, and is hosting a fundraiser tonight. And, of course, he convinced his good friend "independent" Michael Bloomberg to drop $250K in as well. And oh, by the way, he still clings to the notion that McCain can win California. I think he should have a chat with Maria.
(SR P-D) Gas is expensive. Thanks for the insight there. I couldn't tell that by looking out the window, I need the media to confirm it for me. Incidentally, McCain's Dole-retread idea of pausing the gas tax would be disastrous for our infrastructure needs, and it's not clear that the oil companies would even pass the savings on to the consumer. Obama calls him out on it.
And I don't disagree. I just heard a new Cheveron Ad, and they were super-psyched about finding some new oil field that will allow us to continue to pollute for generations to come. Yay!! Well, Field Research has just released one of their awesome Field polls, this time on how gas prices are affecting ordinary Californians. Apparently, 70% of Californians see gas prices as a "serious" situation (either very serious or somewhat serious), with the amount of people saying "Very serious" up to 35% from 32% in August 2005.
And I'm not going to quibble with that. Adjustment to a new price condition is ahrd. DUde, I saw $4 regular gas for the first time yesterday. $4.09.9 to be exact. Yowsers! (I won't go to that station, it's an outlier b.c of it's convenience to the highway. But, folks, yeah, you are going to have to adjust to these new conditions.
If you look at this cool graph (right) from the Department of Energy, you'll see that, oh, um, yeah we are the green line on the bottom $4 cheaper than European prices. Don't you think they are hurt by these energy prices too? Well, instead of just blaming Chevron (and ya, i'm cool with that as well), what else can we do to make our economy more competitive in a market that is just going to have expensive gas prices? How about adding more rail services and other public transportation? Increasing the CAFE standards? Taxing gas hogs?
Look, gas ain't going to get a whole lot cheaper, so how about spending a little more effort to address conservation and replacement technologies? And sure, keep blaming Chevron...they can handle it.
Today's Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Feingold in LA, CA-11, CA-50, CA-36, gas gouging, a little on the Dem Gov Primary, and a lot of neat stuff in "Other".
