Gas Price Equivalents in The Netherlands
New York Times columnist and foreign policy expert Thomas Friedman has written another gem about our oil addiction. He’s long advocated for higher gas and oil prices over the long term to force us to drive less and live more sustainably.
Here are a couple snippets from his most recent column, which I highly recommend reading in its entirety, titled Truth or Consequences:
Cynical ideas, like the McCain-Clinton summertime gas-tax holiday, would only make the problem (America’s oil addiction) worse, and reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounter cigarettes to teenagers…
…What our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Phillip J. Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gas tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.
Photo: Paul Garland’s Flickr
Image: Carfreeusa.blogspot.com
Remember the debacle which erupted in Palm Beach when attempting to identify a location for the massive Scripps Institute? Mecca Farms and Boca Raton were all suggested as alternative sites for the massive Bioresearch center, however in the end, a location in Jupiter near FAU’s campus was selected. In the end, here is why the Mecca Farms site fell apart:
The plan came to a halt two years later when a federal judge sided with environmentalists and ruled that the project’s potential environmental impacts hadn’t been adequately studied. Under deadline pressure, commissioners moved the Scripps Florida headquarters to a smaller, urban site at Florida Atlantic University’s MacArthur campus in Jupiter.
Somehow, the voice of reason prevails over absurd westward development, even if it was for a monumental institution; this project had absolutely no reason to pave over thousands of acres of farmland. Palm Beach County paid $60 million for the Mecca Farms complex and is now trying to figure out what to do with the rural designated land. Considering the reasons why the institution was blocked from building here, their “ideas” may surprise you:
More than four years after the county bought the 1,919-acre property with a sprawling Scripps Florida science campus in mind, commissioners are taking steps to usher in a new reality: suburban home development.
Suburban home development? How is this environmentally friendly? Well, it isn’t but they have some ideas which are actually worse:
County administrators want to use about 100 acres for a landfill, set aside land for water marshes and environmental improvements and package the rest for home builders.
Palm Beach County has the unique opportunity to conserve thousands of acres as farmland, able of producing enough goods to satisfy the needs of much of the South Florida area. This is a pristine opportunity to make our region sustainable, by actually producing food locally and Palm Beach County commissioners are looking to throw it away on yet another ridiculous sprawled out single family home compound. With oil recently reaching $100 a barrel, I am shocked to see still autocentric development mindset…
Today’s Transitography comes to us from It’s Knuttz and really puts US oil consumption into perspective. Keep in mind, these figures are nearly 5 years old…
Energy and oil is the dominant theme this week, however the articles about the Everglades and affordable housing in Miami are very troubling.
- NY Times: Efforts to save the everglades are faltering
- Newsday: Gas prices affecting community, car use
- NY Times: Rising demand for oil provokes new energy crisis
- KITV Honolulu: Gas prices have reached $5 per gallon in parts of Cali
- Miami Herald: Housing crunch (lack of affordable housing) hitting low-income residents hard
- NY Times: High gas prices and long commutes having an impact on the sprawl market
Recent Comments