How To Solve The Oil Dilemma

Well, price matters. We see that today, consumers are buying and they are not buying. The trend is away from the big truck and big SUVs toward smaller cars. Price matters because it is the only thing that is going to lead us away from using fossil fuels until to something else. We are only going to switch away from the fuels we are using now, when we find something that's cleaner, cheaper, more convenient, faster, etcetera or all of the above. Right, we are not going to quit using fossil fuels just because we decide, "Oh well, I want to run my car on brokly or whatever, it doesn't work that. We have to have an alternative that is workable. So I think the price, the higher price is while painful, are maybe part of the transition to something else, and what is that something else, I can't say, but we clearly see a whole lot of money going into alternative energy now. Look Google is investing in the solar business, the best performing stock in 2007 according to Wall Street Journal was for solar incorporate up 800% last year. So price matters. Investor thinks that that's the bet on solar and they maybe right, they could be wrong, but the point is, we are not going to quit using what we are using now. I think for decades to come because it has taken us a century or more to get where we are. So if the transition is away from oil or another fossil fuel is going to be a protracted transition because we have so much infrastructure already in place to use what we have.

Well, I think so, one of the things that I think would be smart move is to encourage more use of natural gas particularly in terms of natural gas filled vehicles. Natural gas filled vehicles are -- they make less greenhouse gases than do gasoline or diesel vehicles. They make virtually no air pollution, and they are on BTU basis, their fuel is about third cheaper than gasoline. So that's the positive things, I think that government can do by providing incentives but clearly that hasn't happened and one of the amazing things is that today Brazil which we are going to talk about ethanol and Brazil, well at Brazil -- has ten times as many natural gas vehicles as the US even though the US has more than ten times as many motor vehicles as Brazil. So yes, government could be providing incentives if it wants to reduce oil consumption but instead it's providing mandates and the ethanol mandate being clearly one of the pernicious of the mandates that are now in place.


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