They do also have these things called “buildings” you can wait in that are often heated.
The US auto industry is a tiny fraction of what it once was - taking down with it good jobs for millions of skilled workers. Doing nothing is like handing another leadership industry to a foreign country, leaving the US economy that much poorer and less skilled.
I view Moore’s suggestions like the WPA programs in the 30s after the depression. The government isn’t interested in running these companies as much as it is funding the kickstarting of these new directions.
For those of you poo-pooing all these ideas, what do you propose? Let the millions in the auto industry’s wake rot in poverty? Or do you have a better alternative?
About that. Weren’t we definitely going to run out oil in the late 1970s? And wasn’t “Peak Oil” supposed to have happened 25 years ago as well? And “Global Cooling” was going to cause us all to freeze to death.
My point is none of these scenarios played out when the “Experts” thought they would. This is just the latest round in the “Sky is falling” train of thought. With that said, oil is finite resource. But it’ll become financially unviable well before we actually “run out”. But that’s not going to happen any time soon.
The idea of peak oil isn’t about running out of oil, it’s when oil production can’t expand any more. When supply starts to go down while demand continues to increase at the rate it has for the last few years, the end of the financial viability of oil could be quite sudden.
In a few ways, peak oil did happen in the 70’s. Firstly, peak US oil production happened somewhere around that time. Secondly, the peak of oil that could be found easily also happened around there, and luckily major breakthroughs in geologic theory and exploration technology bought us probably another quarter century. But there’s no reason to think that that is going to happen again and now we’re starting to push up against the limits of oil that’s easy to extract.
The bottom line is that we from a public policy position can’t really increase supply in any meaningful way, but we can reduce demand. Really, people who are “car people” should be lobbying the hardest for these sorts of things because the transition away from oil can either be a catastrophic price spike that makes anything other than a gas-sipping subcompact prohibitively expensive to run and causes widespread scrapping of older models, or it can be a more orderly transition to alternative fuels that can leave oil still relatively cheap for people who drive cars and trucks basically as pleasure craft.
Apologies to Texases. I should have known you weren’t posting these as ideas that you support.
These things are typical of the ideas I’d expect from Michael Moore. Extremely simplistic “feel good” solutions to complex problems. Solutions that promise a bigger and more controlling government. “Shooting from the hip” solutions.
Let’s hope he doesn’t run for office.
I do know that taking more tax money from society’s producers to support forced production of things that the private sector cannot support and putting it all under government control in order to enable some grand vision of nationwide public transportation and “green” technology is not the answer. It’s been tried in other countries. We fought wars in the 1700s and the 1940s in order that we remain free of that level of centralized government.
My ideas are to free the private sector to determine its own deisred transportantion system. When and of mass transit becomes a real practicality, enterpraneurs (sp?) in the private sector will create the system. We call that a “free society”.
Sorry, Joe, the ideas Michael Moore suggests move us further away from a free society and in the direction of a central government. Whether I have better ideas or not is irrelevant. His are BAD.
We will ‘learn’ to adapt as the time comes to adapt. Moore is not talking about learning to adapt. He is talking about obey or die.
A five hour trip by train is probably a lot faster than a two hour plane trip which requires you to get to the airport 2-1/2 hours in advance, after an hour taxi ride, and then can’t fly because a cloud blew over the sun. And, if it does go, there is another hour or two hour taxi ride at the other end.
Never has the government done a better job of things than individuals can do. Never, and Moore’s folly is no different. He is a moron who gets people to watch his stupid movies.
I am a service tech (piano tuning/repair) who does a lot of driving to different areas of town at different times every day with 50+ lbs. of tools and supplies, thus buses and trains aren’t real practical for me. Given this situation, it infuriates me when multi-millionaire cretins like Tom Brokaw and Michael Moore tell me I should be paying more taxes on fuel. When gas was $4.00+ a gallon it had a pretty big effect on me, as well as others in similar work situations.
Maybe Michael Moore (who I doubt has ever produced anything of any real value to society) should try struggling to pay his bills for awhile and see what we go through when these SOBs raise our taxes. Geez Louise, isn’t 40-50% of our income enough?!
I propose user fees and more private roads.Around here the cash strapped highway depts, take care of some little deadend roads-that are essentially driveways.Its ridiculous, little .09 mile strips of asphalt,50+K bridges to someones farm,etc-
“Vast” is, if anything, an understatement. Those petroleum imports are responsible for about half our persistent balance of trade problem.
The problem is that Moore wants to pack 30 years worth of changes into five years. Furthermore, I doubt he has spent more than a couple of weekends of his entire life in rural America. His changes (except for the high speed trains) are probably the wrong ones. And even the high speed trains will take a couple of decades what with right of way issues, what to do with freight traffic (which currently has priority over passengers on most of our rail lines) etc, etc, etc.
On the other hand, the era of cheap oil is almost certainly coming to an end in the not too distant future, and many folks here are going to have a lot of trouble adapting to that. The problem is that there is only a finite amount of petroleum and countries like India and China are going to be using more and more of it. The 80 million barrels of oil a day that are being used worldwide now will become 100 … 120 … 140 within a decade or two. Didn’t like $4.00 a gallon gas? What are your plans for dealing with $10.00 a gallon gas? Don’t have any. Might want to start making some.
***Texases, are you aware that Amtrak has lost $23 Billion? ***
Just to clarify, that’s $23 billion OVER FORTY YEARS, not $23 billion last year.
Train travel uses about one third fewer BTU per passenger mile than other forms of transportation. If one assumes that energy prices are going to increase in future years – and that certainly seems the way to bet – Amtrak should become more competetive and likely even profitable in future decades.
I view Moore’s suggestions like the WPA programs in the 30s after the depression. The government isn’t interested in running these companies as much as it is funding the kickstarting of these new directions.
For those of you poo-pooing all these ideas, what do you propose? Let the millions in the auto industry’s wake rot in poverty? Or do you have a better alternative?
Try looking at WHY the auto-industry is failing. So we should give BILLIONS of dollars to a industry run by the SAME IDIOTS who destroyed the US auto-industry…and WHY do you expect it to work this time???
I wasn’t trying to imply that Peak Oil meant anything about running out of it. If someone believed the folks that claimed peak oil was going to happen in the late 70’s then that person would’ve been wrong. Oil production has continued to expand well past the dates that the “experts” claimed would indeed be “Peak Oil”.
There is nothing to prevent you from owning and operating a 50mpg vehicle.
And yes, before we give them MORE money, we should demand a public accounting of how our money is being spent NOW. Paying people to sit around and drink coffee just doesn’t get much done…Has anyone ever seen a public employee road crew actually working, accomplishing something?? Standing around pointing at pot-holes and crumbling bridges does not get them fixed. I’m getting tired of paying a dozen men to stand around holding up their double chins with shovel handles while two cops sit in their cars watching them…
So all those who live out are not that important, are they? Shame on you.
Caddyman, I have noticed you tend to reply to my posts in kind of a “curt” manner and I have no idea why. Is there a reason or am I just imagining?
Are you suggesting that M.M. install heated buildings for everybody who waits for a bus? While your post reeks sardonic I am sure you realize that would be grossly cost ineffective.
The difference is that in the 1970’s we didn’t have a clear picture of the total amounts of available oil reserves because oil exploration at the time consisted of basically drilling next to where oil had previously been found. These days, we have a fairly complete picture of world oil reserves-- though some of the harder to extract oil might become viable which might buy us another decade or so, the end of economically viable oil is nigh.
Why do all these great ideas involve spending my money…not their money?
Right on,the Earth is not a oil machine.Our standard of living is very high and everyone should have a chance at a decent standard of living,but folks there are so many of us-I do believe our fat days are about over.We probaly cant hurt the Globe,but we sure can foul up the skin of the peach we live on-Kevin