Or so says Pete DuPont, who dispatches the myth that gas is more expensive now:
“….its current inflation-adjusted price of $2 a gallon is about its median price over its 85-year existence, and with the exception of the 1980s spike, it has been steadily declining over the decades.
Better still, improving technology has increased the number of miles one can drive on a gallon of gasoline, to 22 in 2000 from about 13.5 in the early 1970s . So the cost of gasoline per mile driven has fallen nearly in half, from more than 13 cents to a bit more than seven cents. Meanwhile median income for a family of four (in inflation-adjusted dollars) has increased to more than $63,000 today from less than $46,000 in the 1970s.
Family income is up, and the cost per mile driven is down, so as a percentage of income, gasoline costs are substantially less and are an economical bargain for all of our families. ”
He also agrees with me that oil supply, per se’ is not the issue.
The good news is that the world is not running out of oil. In spite of such predictions that it would–in the 1880s, after both world wars, by the wildly inaccurate but politically correct Club of Rome in 1972 and by today’s pessimists–oil reserve estimates are increasing. Offshore drilling is producing oil that wasn’t there a few decades ago. Alaska has untapped oil reserves; more oil is being found in Russia, the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Technology is making products available from oil sands and liquids derived from natural gas.
In short, we have access to oil; what we need is the ability to refine it, and that is a major political problem.
So what are the real problems? Read the whole thing; you’ll find he pretty much agrees with my call of the other day….
Tags: BitsBlog
