One pound of R134a in the atmosphere has the same effect of 1300lbs of C02. Info source www.presseagentur.com
I’m sure if you said something like “this will help us end our dependence on foreign oil and/or clean our air/reduce global warming” they’d hand you a blank check
The EPA knows what these vehicles will do under normal circumstances. Are you saying that they are driven and maintained abnormally?
#11. The U.S. will remember quotes from the Saudi government like "they'd better get used to it". I hope we can say that someday when missiles are raining down on their heads. Rocketman“Did you miss #1 or did you ignore it on purpose?”
I don’t buy it. That is, $4 gas is a symptom, not the cause. Easy credit is the cause. As credit eased and rates dropped, the only way to sell debt was to devalue the dollar so that overseas buyers would continue to buy. So, I guess I don’t buy any of your reasons if you truly attribute your top ten to $4 gas.
Very inspriring list. I believe we will see some of these benefits arise over the long term if gasoline remains high. I sense a lot of frustration from people, and they have every right to be frustrated (me too). As one person pointed out, we (USA) have had several economic downturns over the last half century and we chose not to change course but stay on the same path of waste and 100% dependency on fossil fuels. Our frustration stems from the fact that we have no alternatives to oil (to power our cars, heat our homes, our businesses, generate electric power, and so on…) Look at some of the other enterprising countries of the world who chose a different path…one of sacrifice and investment in alternative clean energy sources. We should have done this 30 years ago, I remember Jimmy Carter proposing to create an alternative energy policy that was quickly dismantled by Reagan and the oil moguls. To eliminate the frustration of feeling powerless to change big industry and big government…just start locally and change your own small part of the world, and perhaps the rest will follow. BTW, I have seen very little change in driver behaviour even with $4/gal gasoline…still speeding by me in gas-guzzlers as if there were no tomorrow. An old friend once told me of Americans, “we are determined to be starved before we are hungry”. Think about it…we hurry up to wait in line, we stuff ourselves with food and then try to find a magic pill to take the weight off, we complain about government but does anyone get involved? Let us hope we do not go back to cheap oil, we need to make oil go away…and please, do not start drilling offshore or at ANWR…we have made too much progress on the environmental front to let it all slip away for what, 4 more years of waste, sloth, and extravagance.
$4 / gallon isn’t that bad when you consider the total cost of car ownership. Just look at what drivers have to pay for fuel in Europe. We are lucky, really.
Mountainbike, here is the text:
- Globalized Jobs Return Home
By Amanda Ripley
The world suddenly seems big again. A family of four can’t fly cross-country for much less than $2,000. The cost of shipping a standard 40-ft. (12 m) container of couches from Shanghai to New Jersey has tripled since 2000. Trucking carrots from Mexico to Georgia makes less and less economic sense.
When John Smith started a high-end furniture company in Washington in 2003, he couldn’t make everything in the U.S. and stay competitive. So his company, Willem Smith, started operations in Vietnam and Ecuador. He found himself visiting factories 11 time zones away from his four small daughters.
By last year, the cost of making and importing one of his favorite pieces, the Caballero chair, was ballooning. He was shipping Italian leather to Vietnam and then shipping the large chair back to the States. There were other problems too, like inflation in Vietnam. So last January, Willem Smith “repatriated” the Caballero to Hickory, N.C. That shift helps contain shipping costs and has other perks. “People are happy to buy American,” Smith says. “And it felt kind of nice to bring this one home.”
In more industries, such as steel, lawn-mower batteries and upscale furniture, doing business in the U.S. is starting to look slightly more feasible.
? With reporting by Maya Curry
It’s still not happening unless the U.S. gets its labor costs under control (which is unlikely to happen if/when inflation becomes a significant issue, remember the late 70s?). Other than certain specific (high value added) markets, it no longer makes sense to manufacture products in the U.S., especially not cheap consumer products.
I’d like to see a study.
Here you go.
About 2,220 lives have already been saved over the past year because of higher gas prices and less pollution, according to an estimate calculated for TIME by J. Paul Leigh, a University of California at Davis health-economics professor who co-wrote a study on the topic in the March 2008 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. If prices remain high, we can expect some 2,000 people to avoid dying from pollution in the next 12 months.
You know, the article is somewhat thought provoking. You might consider actually reading it.
The problem with European gas prices is that they’re funding social welfare programs with those inflated prices and this should not be the case.
For all of you nay-sayers who think item number 1 will not happen I can tell you that I work in international transportation and many of my clients have already repatriated their manufacturing (partially) or are planning to do so shortly. While labor has not gotten cheaper here it has gotten more expensive in China and other places and an ocean container that once cost less than $4000 to move from China to the US is now over $7000. Add in the trucking cost and for many importers the cost of making the goods here start to make sense. I just spoke with a company that has not manufactured any product in the US for over 10 years and they were dusting off old US production records and preparing to fire up US production once again. Meanwhile our export department has EXPLODED as US manufacturers are shipping up to 100 percent more goods overseas than they were just 3 years ago.
I am not saying I advocate expensive fuel. I am just reporting what is happening as a consequence.
- Less police giving annoyance tickets (e.g. tail light out) due to short budget for fuel.
- Make more money on Govt. road trips ($.53/mile)
Not like they used to - they are very clean today. I hear that the new “blue tech” diesels will actually clean up the air in places like LA as the exhaust is cleaner overall that what is going in the intake. They should pay people to drive these - 
Where I live, the city has already done that for all their own vehicles. The result was a thorough retraining of all their drivers with respect to idling (the biggest waster), driving style, work trip planning, stop using drive through restaurants, etc.
The city wated to both cut emissions and save fuel. Only busses are allowed to idle, and even their idle time is limited at the end of their run.
Thanks for the inside scoop!
Not to mention the fact that we’ll all be too poor to afford new products, hence a significant drop in demand. No demand - no jobs.
Good luck with that; I’ve dealt with enough U.S. (union) labor to know that it’s not something I would want to do again unless absolutely necessary. I simply do not see U.S. manufacturing as having any long term future, send it off where it can be done better and cheaper and let domestic workers spend their time on higher value-added tasks. The U.S. does not want to compete with the developing world for low end work, it’s just an economic race to the bottom that we are sure to lose. Does anyone seriously think it’s a good idea to try to compete with china on price while paying U.S. wages, shipping costs will never get high enough to make that work for most products?
BTW, higher shipping costs will also affect U.S. exports, which is probably a good thing for the developing world (especially if it reduces the amount of cheap agriculture products dumped by the U.S. and EU).
“BTW, “Globalized jobs will return to the US” isn’t happening under any conditions.”
Then how do you explain the new auto plants that Subaru, Toyota, Honda, VW, BMW, Daimler Benz and undoubtedly other are building. And let’s not forget the steel mill buying spree. Mittal and OAO Severstal seem to be buying everthing in sight. Or don’t those count?
I don’t get it, Craig. This thread contains two examples of where this is already happening (if you only count Mr. Knuckles’ examples as one). Is there anything that would convince you?..or does this new idea simply conflict with your perception of reality?
There is plenty of non-union labor in this country, especially in the so-called “right to work” states where it is illegal to require workers to join unions. Your experiences with union labor might not have been indicative of the new economy we could see in the future.