Americans want to wait in gas lines...

From Breitbart.com [with snide commentary by yours truly]...

Eight in 10 people say it's important for Americans now driving sport utility vehicles to switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles to reduce the nation's dependence on oil, a poll found.

[So much for freedom of choice]

With gas prices hovering around $3 a gallon nationally and the price of natural gas rising sharply, six in 10 said they are not confident President Bush is taking the right approach to solving the nation's energy problems, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

[Given my self-imposed policy against politics on this sight, I'll let this one go]

Given several choices for dealing with energy problems, the public has some clear preferences:

_Almost seven in 10 want the government to establish price controls on gasoline and want more spending on subway, rail and bus systems.

[Oh my.  7 in 10 Americans like gas lines]

_Just over seven in 10 want to give tax cuts to companies to develop wind, solar and hydrogen energy.

[Clapping]

_Just over eight in 10 want higher fuel efficiency required for cars, trucks and SUVs.

[I think John's addressed this one...here and here and here and here and...]

_Slightly more than half, 52 percent, favor giving tax cuts to energy companies to explore for more oil.

[They'll really like this suggestion over at THE OIL DRUM.  In a post the other day I made the simple point that higher oil prices provide incentives for exploration and it generated 49!!! comments over there.  The jist of their comments can be summed up with this quote:  "The response you are seeing today is it. It is all we can do, as rigs and competent, trained people are the issues. The price of oil can hit $150 and we will not be doing anything differently, because we simply cannot. $200 a barrel oil WILL NOT MAKE OIL MAGICALLY APPEAR in the world market - anybody espousing something along those lines is a complete idiot."  I never said they would find oil, just that they would have the incentive to look.  Oh well.]

The rising anxiety over high gas prices has caused a shift in public priorities about the importance of exploring for new energy.

Almost six in 10 now say exploring for new sources of energy is more important than protecting the environment. People were evenly split on that question in 2002. Half now support drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska _ up from 42 percent who felt that way in March.

Only four in 10 wanted to promote the increased use of nuclear power, while slightly more than half opposed that step.

[Wouldn't want clean fules, would we?]

So to summarize, Americans want everyone to give up their right to choose their own car, force them to drive small, less safe cars but more fuel efficient cars to the gas station where they can wait in gas lines to maybe get cheaper gas.  Sorry for the sarcasm...I'm grumpy today.

Comments

[gmoke]

About seven out of ten people in the USA have wanted to fund renewables, conservation, and efficiency over fossil fuels and nuclear in just about every poll I've seen since the early 1970s and the first oil shock. Good thing I didn't hold my breath until it actually happened.

We know what should be done. We've known it since we first got thwacked upside the head with the 2x4. Doesn't mean that we have the political will to do anything about it.

Me, I'm distributing copies of WWII posters reading "Fuel is scarce. Plan for winter now" to peace vigilers and at farmers markets and anywhere else I can think of. This winter is going to be expensive and may be the tipping point on energy politics but I wouldn't count on anything but the expense.

[chris@organicmatter]

One tiny point on which I would like to dwell for just a minute - small cars aren't "less safe" by default. They are only less safe because most cars are big. If I get my VW Golf into an accident with a Saturn, both myself and the Saturn driver might just turn out okay, depending on a number of other factors. If I crash into a Suburban, the odds are stacked against me and in favor of the driver of the Suburban. Trucks and SUVs actually make the road more dangerous for cars that were otherwise quite safe.

You might just call this an externality that drivers of large vehicles impose on those of us with small cars.

[the oil drum (ianqui)]

Oh, come on, Tim. I'm neither a geologist nor an economist (nor a philosopher, for that matter), and my guess is that I can't win an argument with you. So I'll just say one thing. You write: "I never said they would find oil, just that they would have the incentive to look." Well, what the hell's the point of wasting billions of dollars on exploration when there's nothing to find? Are you conceding this point, but I lost it in the sarcasm? I get from TOD that there's plenty of tension between economists and geologists, but when the geologists are saying that there's simply nothing left to find, well, the economic incentive to try is really a moot point.

[anne]

People prefer better gas mileage to less. WOW!!! Luckily markets are not driven by opinions. Let's quit pretending that polls tell us anything profound. Let's use markets for telling us what people really want.

[M1EK]

"Let's use markets for telling us what people really want."

Which markets? The ones in which SUVs are grossly subsidized by the tax deduction? The ones in which SUVs get a free pass thanks to special treatment by CAFE? The ones in which they are allowed to emit a bunch more pollution than analogous cars can? The ones in which their externalities make them even more attractive than they would be naturally?

[PaulS]

Safety of small cars may be relative to big ones but very much *not* entirely so. Some of the things things Europeans drive, like Smart cars, have absolutely zero room for crumple zones. There's just nothing much in front of the driver but the air bag. Air bags are good, but air bags plus reasonable crumple zones are better.

And the leftist movement has spent decades scaring us out of our minds that we're all going to die if we don't socialize everything, and telling us that the most immeasurably trivial and insignificant safety benefit is worth the expenditure of countless billions of dollars and limitless resources. Now that they've moved on to scaring us into socialism by overstating the millenarian version of the peak oil argument (the world is ending, we must all cram into the crime-infested cities), they need to have the safety issue both ways. Funny how the chickens, or is that Chicken Littles, come home to roost.

[John Whitehead]

Ianqui,

My guess is that oil companies will find some additional oil as a result of increased exploration. At least they expect to find enough to make their additional exploration costs pay off. This doesn't mean that the additional exploration will solve the long term nonrenewable energy problem that you guys are writing about.

Economists don't know much geology, biology, etc. We just try to understand some components of peoples' behavior. We know the oil companies know a lot about finding oil so if they're trying we think there is some more out there. This makes me question that there is "nothing" left to find.

So, we think that rising oil prices will provide an incentive for firms to fully develop renewable energy sources so that some day the world switches our reliance on nonrenewables to renewables.

I don't think Tim or myself are trying to "win" any arguments with you folks. We don't know anything about oil but we think the oil companies do.

John

[Tim Haab]

It makes me feel proud when John sticks up for me.

In all seriousness, John said it much better than I would have. We can argue all day about whether there is or isn't more oil in the ground. But the oil companies ARE looking in response to the higher prices.

P.S. And yes you can 'win' an argument with me. My wife does ALL the time.

[the oil drum (ianqui)]

Alternatively, they're looking because governments are giving them tax incentives to do so. That certainly seems to be the case in France.

(In which case, I'm definitely wrong—there IS economic incentive to look for more oil, but not for any of the right reasons.)

[odograph]

I enjoy reading this blog, and econbrowser, but I think this news hits to the heart why I can't take it too seriously. Retreading my econbrowswer post from the day before this news:

"Thanks to [econbrowser] for a great discussion.

Just the same, I think the economic piece of the oil puzzle is smaller than these discussions imply. Economic analysis works within a stable, rational, market framework.

We've seen, with legislative responses to Katrina, that human societies are quite ready and willing to "bend" the market in response to a perceived emergency. Tax repeals. Gouging investigations.

I mean, look at something as small as CAFE standards. They are a clear market intervention. They didn't have too much backing a couple months ago, but one hurricane later they are back on the agenda.

For what it's worth, I think that will be the pattern for the future. I think we will be looking at irrationally high consumption of oil up until it gets scarce, and then irrational responses to scarcity.

If you see a X% fall in oil supply, do you really think you are going to be looking at a purely rational economic response?

It seems kind of pointless to calculate the economic impact of a large shortfall, when we will doubtless respond to the shortfall by changing all the rules."

Well, here we have another demonstration, in this support for "price controls" - that the economic piece of the oil puzzle is smaller than these discussions imply.

[odograph]

When I read responses to high gasoline prices it seems to me I am hearing people standing on the sand-hills of their philosophy, reacting to news as it passes them by. Few people get off their hill to see more of "transportation" problem. Indeed the news is often used as a "teaching point" for the philosophy and nothing more.

Our "personal mobility system" comprises roads, road-use rules, cars, car manufacturing rules, gasoline, gasoline manufacturing rules. It is a hugely complicated interaction of local, state, and federal governments, as well as industrial and individual players.

Is it outlandish to regulate MPG on an SUV? Well, maybe we should stop and think about the lines of state and federal regulation that must be parsed and complied with now, before you can make any SUV.

Geez, look at the distance we have come from a blacksmith in a barn building a car and then heading out on the road.

You may argue at the fringes about the econmomic impact of Page 293, Paragraph 6, Subsection A of the federal register ... MPG requirements or whatever ... but don't lose track of the fact that the whole mess is a fairly arbitrary accumulation of preference, convention, and rule of law.

We are looking at a human system that is fractionally "economic" and one that in times of stress is much more likely to be "political."

[PaulS]

Well, yes, politics matters, but even when the system is in "political" mode, economics is far from useless. Economics is only "prescriptive" in a limited sense that it can tell you, under certain conditions, that a given action - such as price controls - will be very costly overall. Politically nothing stops you from foolishly taking that action, and the economics will then simply be "descriptive".

If, for example, the American people want gas lines, well, they can't say they couldn't have anticipated the consequences. And exurbanites, who will have by far the most trouble surviving gas lines especially combined with gallon limits, will know what's coming rather than just waking up one morning and being totally shocked.

Eventually most people will tire of the shootings in the gas lines, and tire of having the police doing little else but herding the gas lines, which, due to today's outlandish entitlement mentality, will be much more violent than in the 1970s. When they've had enough, economics can tell them what they need to do to remedy the problem, which is to allow price to reflect cost and scarcity. Of course, it can't tell them when they've had enough, nor does it pretend to.

[odograph]

Allowing "price to reflect cost and scarcity" is a good last resort, but I think it shows flaws in our pre-planning if we must allow scarcity to produce "dangerous" costs.

Stepping back, I think we could compare the American and European systems of gasoline taxes and subsidies. I think by taxing consumer fuels "early" they got out in front of this issue a bit. We (broadly speaking) chose CAFE instead of tax, and then built holes into CAFE. It was a perfect dysfunction - a political compromise that created burdens without benefits.

I think we are missing a lot of "big picture" thinking this week, as the blogs tussle over point issues.

I think the big issue is that we tried to prepare for this day of high fuel prices, and failed. What do we do now, as a coherent strategy for the future? And, are we even capable of a coherent strategy for the future?

[M1EK]

"Economists don't know much geology, biology, etc. We just try to understand some components of peoples' behavior. We know the oil companies know a lot about finding oil so if they're trying we think there is some more out there. This makes me question that there is "nothing" left to find."

This downplays the risk that a few large fat and happy companies can make stunningly stupid long-term decisions because they don't see the sea change ahead. GM, Ford, and Chrysler already got hit this way once during the 1970s and 1980s; they're getting hit again now.

Who's to say that the 'big' oil companies can't be as stupid as the big car companies were?

The other end of this is that even with renewably energy, what oil is left will still be incredibly valuable for fertilizers, plastics, etc. So it's arguable whether they _need_ to be retrenching.

[PaulS]

I wonder whether we'd better not need a "coherent strategy", which may be too Soviet-sounding to gain any serious and coherent political traction. It's not clear that anyone has a crystal ball good enough to formulate such a strategy, and it's perfectly obvious that pork-barreling politicians absolutely wouldn't look at a perfect crystal ball if they had one.

Congress needs 535 strategies, not one of which needs to make technical or economic sense. So we vitally need the sometimes disorderly activity that is stimulated by high prices. And although we have teenagers whining about the expense of driving to the mall to "hang out", that's utterly beneath notice. (Politicians will deal with the winter-heat issue when it arises, and not one second sooner.) The only genuine near to mid term "danger" would be something like politicians creating shoot-em-up gas lines.

There are also long-term research bets that most folks do not expect markets to address. Such bets are, unlike price controls, worthy subjects for political intervention. And yet the effort put into, for example, fusion, is just the worst sort of joke. Alas, research tends to be prosaic, lacking the political thrill of scoring points and grandstanding over CAFE standards and other wars of all against all.

[Robert Schwartz]

"Given my self-imposed policy against politics on this sight"

should be:

Given my self-imposed policy against politics on this site

[Tim Haab]

Robert, thanks.

If that's all you find wrong with that sentence, I'm happy?

[odograph]

I think you miss what I mean by a "coherent strategy" - it could indeed be a coherent market-driven stragegy, if that is what we argeed upon.

In that case we'd tell people, and companies, that it was up to them. "Go ahead" we'd say, "plan for your own energy future."

But that's not what we've got right? To put it bluntly, the stated policiy is "don't wory, keep shopping, and we'll invent things ... hydrogen cars, yeah that's the ticket ... we'll invent hydrogen cars precisely so you don't have to plan for your own energy futre. You can keep your "lifestyle."

Get where I'm going here? We something that is half free, half government, with the worst elements of both.

[odograph]

CAFE isn't bad just because it doesn't work. It's bad because people trust it AND it doesn't work.

[PaulS]

Odo: Bingo! You win the prize.

As Winston Churchill said, "The Americans will always do the right thing...after they've exhausted all the alternatives."

The closest we are likely to get to a "coherent plan" is indeed a "you're on your own" market plan. We will exhaust the alternatives by way of political grandstanding - mainly making matters worse, as econbrowser.com has been pointing out with sickening regularity. Politicians garner votes by appealing to glands rather than minds, which is how we can find ourselves with the worst of both market and command ecomomies.

One reason why is that other countries are ascending economically, so we're down to 25% of the world economy from over 50% not long ago. We will not run the world economy; it will, to some extent run us. That will severely damage any strongly-nonmarket plan we might cook up. But neither will we disconnect ourselves from the world. Autarky is simply not feasible in the real world, not for us, not for Jim Kunstler, and not for anyone else, not even if we dress it up in finery and call it "relocalization". North Korea has pursued autarky, and they've amply demonstrated that it's not feasible for them either.

Alas, no one will say, "we're getting the market plan, like it or not."

The folks charged with telling us the plan are our politicians. It's right there in the Constitution. Politicians say whatever garners votes, which by accident, may occasionally be the truth. Neither they, nor anyone else, will tell the truth to power. And the most obdurate power on planet Earth is a large group of voters, about whom H.L. Mencken sniped, "No one in this world so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

The most obdurate power on Earth does not want to be told that gasoline prices (etc.) will go up and down, and may in the future go up more than down. Instead, they want to be told that their surroundings can be forever frozen exactly as they were the day they turned eighteen. They're sick of school, and want to be told that never again will they need to read, learn, or adapt. They dislike their jobs, and want to freeload by flipping far-flung real estate. Reality will intrude, but like a good commodity trader, I won't put a date on it...

[odograph]

Well written Paul.

I've been trying to figure out why I feel so curmudgeonly lately, and so ready to disdain optimists. I think it is an aftershock to the whole Katrina episode. I worry that energy policy is to energy, as disaster policy is to disasters.

Both the response to Katrina, and the response to the response, have shown "American governance" in a pretty bad light.

As you say, despite the grand plans, we are often on our own.