It feels to me more like a "you made your bed, now it's time to lie in it" situation. Yeah high gas prices are going to hurt people, but we had plenty of warning this kind of thing was coming, and plenty of chances to steer away from it.
Agreed that we’ve had plenty of chances, and I’m sure watching others suffer for their actions feels very cathartic to the partisan variety of environmentalist; however, abruptly driving up prices on everything is certain to make climate initiatives deeply unpopular.
Too many people here don't understand human nature. High gas prices mean that self-proscribed "environmentalists" will be losing elections for the foreseeable future. Right now we should be focusing on energy independence and that means more oil and more investment into renewables.
It is that type of situation, and it would much better if only people could take it stoically. But that won't happen, economic hardship hurts a lot and people in democratic systems will just vote away any ecological provisions that are causing them pain.
How so? And it's not a mindset or an opinion, but a fact a life. They dig, they sell and that just about a summary of their existence. USSR was the same. Once the Arab countries dropped the prices for a while, the whole thing shook and broke.
Russian gas is still flowing to Europe, despite the brutal sanctions. Once those pipes stop pumping it, how long until Russia itself collapses on its own? No need to engage in direct confrontation with them.
> Yeah i don't think the common American household can handle $5-6 gal
Interesting how incentives work. Elsewhere countries are seeing $8/gal, had $6/gal before this all happened. But you consequently have more fuel efficient vehicles[1] & people reducing miles driven[2]
(& don't tell me the US is big; Canada is bigger. There's plenty room for improvement)
I've lived in Europe for a few years total without ever owning a car and rarely feeling the lack of one, which would be effectively impossible outside 2-3 cities in the USA.
I would be highly in favor of completely overhauling US infrastructure into medium density walkable towns and cities and switching the ~300 million cars on the road to more fuel efficient models, but jacking up the price of gas by 3x in 18 months will just impoverish and immiserate millions of Americans who will have to choose between paying for gas vs. food, rent, health care.
It's like saying this gym rat can squat 450 lbs and is much healthier for it, so you ought to get off the couch and squat 450 lbs tomorrow.
The US is way more spread out than Europe, and our current infrastructure gets a D+ rating. Necessity is the mother of invention, but we are seriously behind in terms of transit. This is going to hurt the US more than people expect. This is why I would be shocked to see a ban on Russian oil. We simply cannot absorb that shock to our economy.
> I've lived in Europe for a few years total without ever owning a car and rarely feeling the lack of one, which would be effectively impossible outside 2-3 cities in the USA.
If one picks where they live carefully, I think most people could go car-free much easier than they believe.
I have never owned a car and mostly ride a bike for transportation. I have lived in rural Maryland, the DC suburbs, Austin, Baltimore, and Buffalo. Of those places the only one where I found a car was necessary was rural Maryland. I would use a ride-sharing service periodically in the worse cities like Buffalo.
Yes, the particular neighborhood may be more expensive, but in my experience having a car costs a fair bit more than the increase in rent from living in a more expensive neighborhood.
(Note that I'm saying that a small number of individuals can go car-free more easily than they believe. Once a huge number of people start doing this, however, I'm sure it would run into problems.)
It’s not impossible. Public transport is generally good in most European towns and cities. I have lived in second tier European cities for 12 years without needing to own a car. I still occasionally rent cars when I need to transport a lot of stuff.
Feel free to tell someone living in rural France, or Ireland, that they must live without an automobile.
Well, I didn't.
I lived in European towns/cities from ~10k to 350k people. Rural areas exist obviously but compared to US suburbs or even most US urban areas we're talking far far smaller % of people who need a car for most aspects of day-to-day life in Europe.
For the most part I agree. Gas subsidy cuts / carbon tax needed to start years ago to gradually align incentives. As per usual those without wealth will be the most impacted by these price increases, because they're the least capable of adapting in short order
Populated Canada is significantly smaller in population and area, uses fuel & emissions standards from the US (NA auto market), and also has very cheap $4 gas.
Yes, if you don't mind crushing the economic lower classes.
Inflation in general, and gas prices in particular, are devastating to the lower rungs of the economic ladder. They shouldn't have to pay for economic policies implemented by the yacht class.
For decades we were repeatedly told that Russia (and also Ukraine) is a no-good land which can't produce anything useful other than oil (transit), which is a commodity anyway.
Now it turns out that both oil and wheat output were quite crucial. Too bad it did not impact the prosperity and political stability of neither Russia nor Ukraine.
We did not get the "better peace" even as the rest of world relied on our commodities.
Everybody knows that Russian gas is an important commodity. Actually it's just one more reason for US oil producers to go into war against Russia as long as they don't have to pay for it.
I saw this floating around my Linkedin today, dont know how much is valid but worth looking into:
I have seen so much misunderstanding of how oil works online this week.
1) You don’t just “open a valve” to increase oil production.
It is extremely capital & time-intensive to extract hydrocarbons.
You have to get permits approved, construct locations, drill the well, frac the well, build production infrastructure etc.
You are talking a 6-month cycle at best.
Then you layer other constraints on top of that:
-labor shortages cause a limited supply of oilfield services so you can’t bring wells on as quickly
-steel shortages make sourcing pipe difficult
2) Now you’re asking O&G companies to ramp up capex to increase production.
It’s a very tough ask when the feds have created so much uncertainty from a regulatory perspective with rhetoric and actions such as banning drilling on federal lands, pulling pipeline permits, etc.
Essentially the message is:
“There isn’t a place for oil and gas in this world, you’re being phased out.”
It’s hard to make investments with those headwinds, but now that’s what’s being asked.
3) Americans have become addicted to cheap oil and gas.
That was enabled by investors subsidizing the costs over the last decade and incinerating their capital.
Now investors want O&G companies to focus on sustainable free cashflow and return capital.
Shocker.
This has caused O&G companies to go into maintenance mode and limit production growth.
4) Activists have been pushing for the divestment of fossil fuels.
Countless endowment funds, institutions, banks and other entities have announced their withdrawal from O&G.
(Preventing the ability to finance energy and support humans isn’t looking so noble now)
5) Now oil and gas companies are being painted as the bad guys for not producing enough oil.
Despite years of capital being sucked out of the space, increasing hurdles to build infrastructure and activists attacking the industry, it’s now the O&G companies who are at fault.
They are at fault for something that they can not physically do in such a short amount of time.
They operate at low prices and give Americans an extremely prosperous life, the response:
“You’re killing the planet, we’re going to end you, leave it in the ground”
They stop chasing production growth and leave it in the ground, the response:
“Greedy oil companies only care about profits, they don’t care about human suffering or else they would increase production”
People in the O&G industry have every right to be upset right now.
They wake up and work hard to power the world and support human flourishing, just to be told by critics on twitter that they’re evil.
Now those critics are in desperate need of help and the only people that can save them are the ones they have been demonizing for the last 10 years.
Bad energy policy and misguided activists have led to this problem.
Full stop.
People are getting a hard dose of reality on energy production and realizing how critical it is to society.
> They operate at low prices and give Americans an extremely prosperous life, the response:
> “You’re killing the planet,
These are both true. We absolutely need to move in the short medium and long term away from oil and gas, for climate and geopolitical reasons, but oil and gas have underpinned the global rise in living standards.
The difference that is we now have the technology to maintain that standard of living without burning fossil fuels to propel our cars or heat out homes. Fossil fuel extraction based economies and companies are painfully aware of that, and that's a factor in what is happening now.
We should transition toward using petroleum and gas mostly as an industrial feedstock (plastics, fertilizer) and limit it to use cases that are hard to move to renewables (aviation).
None of the above requires incredible new inventions, just the will to switch to less carbon intensive energy production and storage technologies.
Of course there will be the need to adjust supply up and down in the short term. That's what the strategic petroleum reserves are for. Perhaps we should increase the capacity of those for these situations.
To pile on, not even two weeks ago the current administration decided to enact a policy of "indefinitely freezing decisions about new federal oil and gas drilling[0]."
Hard to say if the current situation will cause a reversal of that policy, but it will be used mercilessly by the political opposition in the upcoming elections.
Theres a big difference between access to a cheap truck for specific needs, and driving around in lifted gas guzzlers for random trips because muh neck.
That's not a unique issue to living in a place far from stores. Do what the rest of us do and go an rent a truck or van when you need to pick up an extra large purchase
Right. So drive thirty minutes in one direction, rent a truck, drive home, pick up the lawnmower, take it to the shop (for instance), then take the truck back, then drive home. Then do it again in a week when the lawnmower is fixed.
Let's not get hung up on details. That was an example. Replace "fix lawnmower" with "pick up sheet rock" or "take broken water heater to the dump" or "buy a recliner" if you'd prefer.
Sure, but rural or not, most people don't do that sort of thing most of the time. Saying "I need a big vehicle" for the odd large load is just a smokescreen.
I recently worked out the cost of owning a truck (including insurance, maintenance, and expected depreciation, but excluding the cost of the truck itself) versus renting from U-haul/Penske. I found that for more than 4-6 trips per year, owning is probably more economical. And that's assuming the truck is sitting in the driveway unused for the rest of the year; if your family also requires a secondary passenger vehicle, then owning a sedan and a truck almost certainly makes more sense than owning two sedans and occasionally renting a truck.
When you make the purchase, you're exchanging $x for resalable equipment that's presumably worth $x. Your bank account balance goes down quite a lot, but the only decrease to your net worth is from the taxes and title transfer fees. Your net worth goes down as the vehicle depreciates. Even if you drive it to the very end of its operable life, you'll still get a bit of money from the junkyard you sell the vehicle's corpse to.
This does ignore the time that needs to be spent buying the vehicle, transferring the title, obtaining insurance, etc, which is significant. But procuring a rental truck is also time-consuming; on a typical Spring/Summer/Fall weekend where I live, you're lucky if you're able to get one at all. The local hardware stores are first-come/first-served, and can't guarantee over the phone that they'll have a rental truck available by the time you arrive.
It ignores and simplifies a lot of options for that money to be parked somewhere else instead of having a huge passive.
A truck will cost you what, US$ 50k? What are the opportunity costs of having this money parked on an ever depreciating passive? The depreciation only shows the net result of the purchase but completely disregards that you could use this money for investing somewhere else with a better return. Not only assets or financial instruments, I'm considering even quality life improvements such as home improvements, etc.
You are moving the goalposts with new issues such as availability of rentals, these might even be caused by you and everyone else buying a truck instead of renting when needed. More demand for rentals, more trucks for rentals.
It works quite well here in European cities to depend on rentals for DIY stuff, no one is buying a truck just do their own renovations or construction...
Considering just the depreciation is very simplistic, it doesn't capture all the other stresses and time-consuming processes of buying, selling, as you mentioned. I'd prefer to rent a truck once every two months instead of dealing with all the paperwork, insurance, maintenance and so on. This is wasted time.
I paid $600 for my first truck back in high school, drove it for a couple years, and received something in the ballpark of $100 from the scrapyard I sold it to in the end. In the current market where I live, ~$3k can get you a truck with no mechanical deficiencies and a few years of life remaining. Financially, I wouldn't advise anyone to shell out $50k for a new F-250, but some people enjoy saving money and others enjoy shiny new vehicles.
There's nothing wrong with buying $3k worth of VYM instead, and using the dividends to subsidize your rental truck costs. It's probably the better decision if you move things only 1-5 times per year, no maintenance obligations, and more free space in your driveway. If you move things more frequently than that, you enjoy the buying process, and you dislike the complexity of renting, then the calculus reverses.
Station wagon and a trailer could solve most of these issues. Likely for less than a truck costs. There really is lot of alternatives or a van if you regularly need more stuff transported. I see rather few things that you actually need a truck for.
I'm in my van right now, out on some BLM land with others parked in most directions. The fifth wheelers can ONLY be hauled by a truck because of the way they are designed. Regular hitch-pulled trailers come in all sorts of sizes, and over the weekend we were parked next to two that got pulled by SUVs.
But sure, I take your point, there are legitimate, "ordinary" needs to pull a lot of weight sometimes. The question is whether the frequency of these really justifies this sort vehicle being someone's daily driver.
OK, so the adjacent question is about the sustainability of everyone (or a lot of people) having a 10k lb-hauling vehicle sitting around in addition to their daily driver.
I know a man who retired into a fifth wheel. He doesn't move it much, but it's definitely smaller footprint housing, so more responsible than most when optimizing for environmental impact. You'd definitely want a truck if that was your lifestyle.
Fifth wheels are just a specific type of pull-along vehicle that connects to the mount in the bed of a pickup truck.
There are many pull-along vehicles ("campers", "trailers") that offer precisely the same space and features as any particular fifth wheel, but connect to a regular ball hitch instead.
At least that is how I've learned the meaning of this term.
I was arguing for nuance, not arguing that everyone needs a truck. Rural folks, blue collar folks, and folks that need to build and fix things themselves get comparatively more utility from a truck. In some cases, it's a practical necessity.
Someone has to plow the neighborhood. Someone has to drive the power washer to the worksite. And so on.
And the farther you live from a city, the more likely that someone is either you or someone who trusts you enough to borrow their truck.
I get what you are saying, but I don't like the way you are conflating personal use of these vehicles with commercial use.
Some people have a good reason to own heavier vehicles for private use, but even in a rural setting, those are few and far between. There are many more good reasons to own such vehicles for a trades person or a farmer. Commercial use of those vehicles is completely justified.
Maybe it is an American thing I don't get, but there seems to be a confusion between private lives and the work people are doing? Someone does have to cart the tools and materials to the worksite, but that person should be using a work vehicle. There doesn't seem to be a need for that person to own their own truck and pay for their own gas?
The issue is perhaps that in the rural parts of the US, the boundary between these things becomes pretty fuzzy. You may need to plough the snow off your own driveway. Your job may sometimes involve the need for a truck even though it generally does not. You may be doing your own water heater replacement, and hauling that in a regular sedan is tricky (though not impossible).
You're probably right he doesn't, and consequently his post was not about what you're describing. I live in the suburbs, < 5 minutes from almost every conceivable material good, with all delivery options, and I'm frequently the lone sedan stopped at the light, surrounded by F-150s, Escalades, Land Rover's that have never left the pavement, and every other sort of towering, vanity vehicle with a single occupant. It's not uncommon to drive past large homes, with 3 and 4 SUVs/trucks out front, maybe a lone Tesla.
I have zero problems with the situation you describe, which is a household having a truck or SUV out of practical need.
Some people need smaller and fewer cars, yes. I think more nuance is useful here is all. Especially because the folks that need trucks the most are working class on average, not folks with a driveway full of Range Rovers. And, yeah, with inflation being bad lately, they can complain about gas prices. IMO anyway. They're not getting just desserts.
Mr. Range Rover Number Three can just trade in for a Tesla anyway. Our ire doesn't do much here. Maybe it's therapeutic?
Right now I live in an apartment built in the last 2 months with most of the apartments around me still in various stages of being built. This is in Denmark. During the 8-16 time window the road is filled with plumbers, electricians, and other construction workers. There are regularly big cranes and huge belt-driven machines rattling everything in my apartment. The only pickup truck I've seen was not used for construction work, but rather was driven by an inspector wearing a suit under the high-viz vest and hardhat.
Instead, the electricians, plumbers, etc. drive vans. They're smaller in footprint and easier to get things in and out of. Some have a covered and insulated shop inside (mostly the electricians) while others are purely for transportation. The materials and machinery that don't fit are too large be transported by a pickup too. Instead, lorries arrive with two or three pieces of machinery on a flatbed, or a single piece of machinery and a bunch of big pieces of material in a closed trailer. I can't tell where a pickup truck would ever be more useful in the construction landscape I'm seeing literally outside my window.
Again, the lower the density of life, the more pickup trucks are useful. Dense residential construction is one situation, but there are many others. I brought up plowing snow in another comment in this conversation.
That being said, I don't really care to litigate the pros and cons between work vans and work trucks. I was mostly trying to make the point that there are legitimate uses of work trucks. It's very easy for the HN crowd to be in a kind of bubble where they wouldn't understand that, so I thought I'd add some nuance to the conversation.
The serious plumbers have finally realized that vans, now more easily available in the USA, are much more appropriate for them than pickup trucks (with or without the usual work-truck mods).
At least half of the serious landscapers that I see tow a trailer with their tools, bins and stuff on it. Wouldn't matter much what was pulling it, as long as it could pull it.
Not only do I drive low MPG vehicles, my emissions exempt vehicle more than makes up for your Tesla. You can sneer down your chai mocha latte at me from your Tesla all you want.
You're making broad assumptions and then insulting people, from NorCal of all places, how do them farts smell?
I know this will seem like a troll, but please take this as a genuine attempt at a meeting of minds. I am not an American and I would like to understand some things.
Do you believe climate change is real? Or even putting aside that, what are your thoughts on air pollution and the early deaths caused by cancer and other diseases that can, at least partly, be linked back to the burning of hydrocarbons next to peoples every day lives?
I get that there is an element of Red state vs Blue state, and all the goes along with that. But do you agree that there are downsides to internal combustion? Those down sides might be environmental, health, or even national security, but at least some of them exist right?
And those downsides are worse the larger a vehicle is right?
So isn't less ICE vehicles, and smaller versions of the ones that can't be replaced, a good thing?
I agree that some of the emotive language used by both sides here isn't helpful to actually action any change, but to an outsider it looks a little like cutting off your nose to spite the lib-tards.
You might have a good reason to drive a low MPG vehicle, but why celebrate that when doing so negatively impacts all the people around you?
It was more of a tongue in cheek response. I believe in the need to pollute less, my opinion on that is fairly strong. I do drive a modified vehicle that is emissions testing exempt under state law, but my other two vehicles are more fuel efficient and retain all original emissions equipment.
My food's transportation gas costs are a tiny fraction of my overall expenses.
Increases in rent, tuition, or medical costs, or even my personal transportation expenses absolutely dwarf them. A semi moves food way more gas-efficiently than my car moves me.
This is a hostile take (I grew up in the south). A lot of people unnecessarily buy trucks but a lot of people also have legitimate uses for them. Everytime I go on the country side in US, they are being used almost always.
I live in Oakland the current atmosphere is to reduce the quality of life to bare minimum and suffer. Not have kids. Depopulate.
Not only is this arrogant and self-serving, but also incredibly ironic. Progresssive cities have some of the highest income inequality.
I would vote for 1) Increase nuclear energy production and crank it up to 11. 2) Make electricity cheaper than it is worth metering 3) I agree with your EV take.
But for fucks sake, please be nice to fellow humans. I see no difference between toxic liberals attacking conservatives and vice versa. You're doing a disservice to the rest of us.
As an American of the “live too far away to get a pizza delivered” variety, you can go F yourself.
You absolutely do not understand what it’s like living rural, please go try it for a bit and then come back to talk about how we should “F “ ourselves.
I don't think you are the target of OP's ire. There is definitely a need for SUV's in rural areas. The issues I have (and I think OP as well) is with people who drive them in the city, never going off road or towing anything. It's a huge waste and in fact ends up making your gas bills higher than they need to be.
I am a New Zealander that lives rurally and I drive a Suzuki Swift. Do you not have roads where you live?
If you need the truck for a farm or other job, well that's a bit different. But you will have to get used to the rest of society increasingly wanting to put a price on the externalities your work generates. Owning a truck _is_ going to keep getting more expensive and you should be planning for that now.
60 miles is pretty good, considering most trucks aren’t usually towing a trailer. Obviously, if you are towing long distances, an electric truck does not make sense … yet. Diesel is the way to go.
Again, most trucks aren’t towing long distances so towing range is not critical to electric trucks making sense for most uses.
Towing a few times per year completely trashes the utility of an all-electric truck. I do have a big diesel (1T) bought just to be able to tow heavy things.
What I'd really like, no one makes: namely an electrically driven, so GOBS of low end torque, but with a diesel powered generator to keep the batteries charged. Give me 150mi of electric range (unloaded), and then a fuel tank big enough to pull a heavy load 500mi. Oh, and the ability to keep it plugged in at night so 80% of the time I'm not needing to use the diesel motor.
More power to you. I specifically mentioned "soccer Mom" which implies suburban areas like mine and how I see enough large gas guzzling status vehicles to get mad about it, but hey, if you want to feel attacked, be my guest.
It might surprise you that the overwhelming majority who buy trucks do so because they work a blue collar occupation such as construction, electrician, etc. not because they want to "roll coal" on your overpriced Tesla. These folks generally don't have a 500k/year WFH FAANG gig and yes filling up your truck so you can work makes the difference in how much food you can put on the table.
"Let them drive EVs" has turned into a modern day SV version of the Marie Antoinette (mis)quote.
Where do you suppose they plug these EVs in at the jobsite? The elephant in the room that no one addresses being the complete lack of EV infrastructure.
I'd really like to see some statistics on this. The majority of people that I see driving around in trucks have bed covers on them, which leads me to believe they're not being used for their intended purpose. They seem to be more status symbol rather than utilitarian.
I do not believe this anecdote. The top selling vehicles each year are full size pickup trucks, last year alone they accounted for 10% of sales (1). The F series has been America's most popular car for 40 years (2).
Are they really being bought in the "overwhelming" majority by trades people? The numbers suggest they're just popular cars.
Americans are in love with pickup trucks, it's an entire subculture.
And at least where I live, which has some nasty weather conditions, the trades people I've worked with over the last few years all drive vans. Landscapers and garbage pickers are some of the exceptions.
> It might surprise you that the overwhelming majority who buy trucks do so because they work a blue collar occupation
And yet so many new trucks have a single driver hauling a trailer with stuff while the bed is empty because the bed is too short to carry anything useful.
The extra cab area, of course, isn't useful because there's only one person. The bed area isn't useful because the cab area has shortened the bed.
So, that driver has to expend the space and weight for a trailer because he bought a truck that isn't useful as a damn truck.
Smug elitist drivel that provides nothing to the discussion. This is simply misdirected hatred based upon stereotypes.
High gas prices disproportionately affect the poor. Even if that weren't the case, lowering oil prices right now would have a strong negative effect on Russias ability to fund its war in Ukraine. We can push to lower oil prices AND keep pushing into renewables. We should invest in both at this moment.
That is not the point. Energy prices are a massive input to systemic inflation. We are setting ourselves up for a 70s style stagflation environment. The 70s environment was practically defined by energy price shocks.
Even if you own an EV yourself these gas prices could hurt you. Converting from hydrocarbons is going to take decades.
Pretending the economy doesn't run on oil and gas is just counter productive in general. Basically, we will pretend until things have gone too far and then we will do what we would have done anyway.
Morally, I don't think judgement can be passed on drivers until there are EV models that undercut budget unleaded models.
"Just learn to code and buy a Tesla" is not an answer to our problems.
Well, better watch the refinery limit as you can pump all of the oil you'd like but it's not useful if you can't refine it and ship it to where it's needed. Fracking can handle natural gas and fortunately the northern hemisphere is leaving winter behind.
If we do this then the oil companies should be on the hook for all cleanup costs no more of the situation in places like Texas where the oil companies get the tax payers to pay for their damage.
They should also be questioned as to why they have so many leases they haven't used and why the active wells in the Permian Basis are not running at their max safe rate of extraction currently.
Seems like most folks are responding on the level of individual vehicle owners, who ostensibly deserve what they get for buying a hummer (a view I'm sympathetic to), but separate from all of that: Russia continues to be able to sell oil and gas, and high oil/gas prices bolster their revenues, blunt the effects of Western sanctions, and fund the continued war effort. There's a geopolitical interest in wanting to bring down oil prices, in addition to the domestic-political one.
Increasing production might be an option. Loosening sanctions on Venezuela and/or Iran might be another. We may have to pick our battles.
Higher prices will result in increased production. We don't need to motivate producers beyond that. There's plenty of potential from non-Russian sources. It will take months though.
I think the biggest motivational issue will be expectations for the duration of any oil sanctions. If producers think it is likely to only be short-term, there won't be as much motivation to bring extra production online.
I don't really care if we increase our production it not. We need to stop purchasing had from Russia.
That is the first step. Perhaps we need to increase our production after that. And invest in more green energy. But first step is so the Russian oil
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[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadRussian gas is still flowing to Europe, despite the brutal sanctions. Once those pipes stop pumping it, how long until Russia itself collapses on its own? No need to engage in direct confrontation with them.
> Yeah i don't think the common American household can handle $5-6 gal
Interesting how incentives work. Elsewhere countries are seeing $8/gal, had $6/gal before this all happened. But you consequently have more fuel efficient vehicles[1] & people reducing miles driven[2]
(& don't tell me the US is big; Canada is bigger. There's plenty room for improvement)
1: https://morningconsult.com/2019/07/31/united-states-risks-la...
2: https://internationalcomparisons.org/environmental/transport...
I would be highly in favor of completely overhauling US infrastructure into medium density walkable towns and cities and switching the ~300 million cars on the road to more fuel efficient models, but jacking up the price of gas by 3x in 18 months will just impoverish and immiserate millions of Americans who will have to choose between paying for gas vs. food, rent, health care.
It's like saying this gym rat can squat 450 lbs and is much healthier for it, so you ought to get off the couch and squat 450 lbs tomorrow.
https://www.thecivilengineer.org/news-center/latest-news/ite...
If one picks where they live carefully, I think most people could go car-free much easier than they believe.
I have never owned a car and mostly ride a bike for transportation. I have lived in rural Maryland, the DC suburbs, Austin, Baltimore, and Buffalo. Of those places the only one where I found a car was necessary was rural Maryland. I would use a ride-sharing service periodically in the worse cities like Buffalo.
Yes, the particular neighborhood may be more expensive, but in my experience having a car costs a fair bit more than the increase in rent from living in a more expensive neighborhood.
(Note that I'm saying that a small number of individuals can go car-free more easily than they believe. Once a huge number of people start doing this, however, I'm sure it would run into problems.)
You lived in a big European city. Feel free to tell someone living in rural France, or Ireland, that they must live without an automobile.
Well, I didn't.
I lived in European towns/cities from ~10k to 350k people. Rural areas exist obviously but compared to US suburbs or even most US urban areas we're talking far far smaller % of people who need a car for most aspects of day-to-day life in Europe.
Yes, if you don't mind crushing the economic lower classes.
Inflation in general, and gas prices in particular, are devastating to the lower rungs of the economic ladder. They shouldn't have to pay for economic policies implemented by the yacht class.
Now it turns out that both oil and wheat output were quite crucial. Too bad it did not impact the prosperity and political stability of neither Russia nor Ukraine.
We did not get the "better peace" even as the rest of world relied on our commodities.
I have seen so much misunderstanding of how oil works online this week.
1) You don’t just “open a valve” to increase oil production.
It is extremely capital & time-intensive to extract hydrocarbons.
You have to get permits approved, construct locations, drill the well, frac the well, build production infrastructure etc.
You are talking a 6-month cycle at best.
Then you layer other constraints on top of that:
-labor shortages cause a limited supply of oilfield services so you can’t bring wells on as quickly
-steel shortages make sourcing pipe difficult
2) Now you’re asking O&G companies to ramp up capex to increase production.
It’s a very tough ask when the feds have created so much uncertainty from a regulatory perspective with rhetoric and actions such as banning drilling on federal lands, pulling pipeline permits, etc.
Essentially the message is:
“There isn’t a place for oil and gas in this world, you’re being phased out.”
It’s hard to make investments with those headwinds, but now that’s what’s being asked.
3) Americans have become addicted to cheap oil and gas.
That was enabled by investors subsidizing the costs over the last decade and incinerating their capital.
Now investors want O&G companies to focus on sustainable free cashflow and return capital.
Shocker.
This has caused O&G companies to go into maintenance mode and limit production growth.
4) Activists have been pushing for the divestment of fossil fuels.
Countless endowment funds, institutions, banks and other entities have announced their withdrawal from O&G.
(Preventing the ability to finance energy and support humans isn’t looking so noble now)
5) Now oil and gas companies are being painted as the bad guys for not producing enough oil.
Despite years of capital being sucked out of the space, increasing hurdles to build infrastructure and activists attacking the industry, it’s now the O&G companies who are at fault.
They are at fault for something that they can not physically do in such a short amount of time.
They operate at low prices and give Americans an extremely prosperous life, the response:
“You’re killing the planet, we’re going to end you, leave it in the ground”
They stop chasing production growth and leave it in the ground, the response:
“Greedy oil companies only care about profits, they don’t care about human suffering or else they would increase production”
People in the O&G industry have every right to be upset right now.
They wake up and work hard to power the world and support human flourishing, just to be told by critics on twitter that they’re evil.
Now those critics are in desperate need of help and the only people that can save them are the ones they have been demonizing for the last 10 years.
Bad energy policy and misguided activists have led to this problem.
Full stop.
People are getting a hard dose of reality on energy production and realizing how critical it is to society.
The oil companies didn’t cause this.
Which still absolutely has to be true! We can talk all we want about energy production being critical to society, but so is a functioning planet!
Personally, I've long seen nuclear energy as the least-bad way out of this, but that can hardly be done with the flip of a switch either...
> “You’re killing the planet,
These are both true. We absolutely need to move in the short medium and long term away from oil and gas, for climate and geopolitical reasons, but oil and gas have underpinned the global rise in living standards.
The difference that is we now have the technology to maintain that standard of living without burning fossil fuels to propel our cars or heat out homes. Fossil fuel extraction based economies and companies are painfully aware of that, and that's a factor in what is happening now.
We should transition toward using petroleum and gas mostly as an industrial feedstock (plastics, fertilizer) and limit it to use cases that are hard to move to renewables (aviation).
None of the above requires incredible new inventions, just the will to switch to less carbon intensive energy production and storage technologies.
Of course there will be the need to adjust supply up and down in the short term. That's what the strategic petroleum reserves are for. Perhaps we should increase the capacity of those for these situations.
Hard to say if the current situation will cause a reversal of that policy, but it will be used mercilessly by the political opposition in the upcoming elections.
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/20/climate/carbon-biden-dril...
A lot of folks live places with absolutely no delivery options. Not even pizza. If you don't have access to a truck, you don't buy certain things.
Or have a truck.
Home Depot rental truck prices start at $19 for the first 75 minutes, and then $5 for every 15 minutes thereafter.
So 3 hours would only be $59... assuming it's unlimited mileage.
Comparing to U-haul, which charges $1/mile, for $59, you could drive 40 miles, for the whole day.
Either way, doing this once a month costs under $1000/yr. Saving on gas, loan payments, and maybe insurance.
It's not. Add $.70-$1.09 per mile for mileage.
> Unlimited mileage on all vehicles
Why would you exclude this on a cost analysis comparison?
This does ignore the time that needs to be spent buying the vehicle, transferring the title, obtaining insurance, etc, which is significant. But procuring a rental truck is also time-consuming; on a typical Spring/Summer/Fall weekend where I live, you're lucky if you're able to get one at all. The local hardware stores are first-come/first-served, and can't guarantee over the phone that they'll have a rental truck available by the time you arrive.
A truck will cost you what, US$ 50k? What are the opportunity costs of having this money parked on an ever depreciating passive? The depreciation only shows the net result of the purchase but completely disregards that you could use this money for investing somewhere else with a better return. Not only assets or financial instruments, I'm considering even quality life improvements such as home improvements, etc.
You are moving the goalposts with new issues such as availability of rentals, these might even be caused by you and everyone else buying a truck instead of renting when needed. More demand for rentals, more trucks for rentals.
It works quite well here in European cities to depend on rentals for DIY stuff, no one is buying a truck just do their own renovations or construction...
Considering just the depreciation is very simplistic, it doesn't capture all the other stresses and time-consuming processes of buying, selling, as you mentioned. I'd prefer to rent a truck once every two months instead of dealing with all the paperwork, insurance, maintenance and so on. This is wasted time.
I paid $600 for my first truck back in high school, drove it for a couple years, and received something in the ballpark of $100 from the scrapyard I sold it to in the end. In the current market where I live, ~$3k can get you a truck with no mechanical deficiencies and a few years of life remaining. Financially, I wouldn't advise anyone to shell out $50k for a new F-250, but some people enjoy saving money and others enjoy shiny new vehicles.
There's nothing wrong with buying $3k worth of VYM instead, and using the dividends to subsidize your rental truck costs. It's probably the better decision if you move things only 1-5 times per year, no maintenance obligations, and more free space in your driveway. If you move things more frequently than that, you enjoy the buying process, and you dislike the complexity of renting, then the calculus reverses.
But sure, I take your point, there are legitimate, "ordinary" needs to pull a lot of weight sometimes. The question is whether the frequency of these really justifies this sort vehicle being someone's daily driver.
There are many pull-along vehicles ("campers", "trailers") that offer precisely the same space and features as any particular fifth wheel, but connect to a regular ball hitch instead.
At least that is how I've learned the meaning of this term.
Someone has to plow the neighborhood. Someone has to drive the power washer to the worksite. And so on.
And the farther you live from a city, the more likely that someone is either you or someone who trusts you enough to borrow their truck.
Some people have a good reason to own heavier vehicles for private use, but even in a rural setting, those are few and far between. There are many more good reasons to own such vehicles for a trades person or a farmer. Commercial use of those vehicles is completely justified.
Maybe it is an American thing I don't get, but there seems to be a confusion between private lives and the work people are doing? Someone does have to cart the tools and materials to the worksite, but that person should be using a work vehicle. There doesn't seem to be a need for that person to own their own truck and pay for their own gas?
I have zero problems with the situation you describe, which is a household having a truck or SUV out of practical need.
Mr. Range Rover Number Three can just trade in for a Tesla anyway. Our ire doesn't do much here. Maybe it's therapeutic?
Instead, the electricians, plumbers, etc. drive vans. They're smaller in footprint and easier to get things in and out of. Some have a covered and insulated shop inside (mostly the electricians) while others are purely for transportation. The materials and machinery that don't fit are too large be transported by a pickup too. Instead, lorries arrive with two or three pieces of machinery on a flatbed, or a single piece of machinery and a bunch of big pieces of material in a closed trailer. I can't tell where a pickup truck would ever be more useful in the construction landscape I'm seeing literally outside my window.
That being said, I don't really care to litigate the pros and cons between work vans and work trucks. I was mostly trying to make the point that there are legitimate uses of work trucks. It's very easy for the HN crowd to be in a kind of bubble where they wouldn't understand that, so I thought I'd add some nuance to the conversation.
At least half of the serious landscapers that I see tow a trailer with their tools, bins and stuff on it. Wouldn't matter much what was pulling it, as long as it could pull it.
You're making broad assumptions and then insulting people, from NorCal of all places, how do them farts smell?
Do you believe climate change is real? Or even putting aside that, what are your thoughts on air pollution and the early deaths caused by cancer and other diseases that can, at least partly, be linked back to the burning of hydrocarbons next to peoples every day lives?
I get that there is an element of Red state vs Blue state, and all the goes along with that. But do you agree that there are downsides to internal combustion? Those down sides might be environmental, health, or even national security, but at least some of them exist right?
And those downsides are worse the larger a vehicle is right?
So isn't less ICE vehicles, and smaller versions of the ones that can't be replaced, a good thing?
I agree that some of the emotive language used by both sides here isn't helpful to actually action any change, but to an outsider it looks a little like cutting off your nose to spite the lib-tards.
You might have a good reason to drive a low MPG vehicle, but why celebrate that when doing so negatively impacts all the people around you?
Increases in rent, tuition, or medical costs, or even my personal transportation expenses absolutely dwarf them. A semi moves food way more gas-efficiently than my car moves me.
I live in Oakland the current atmosphere is to reduce the quality of life to bare minimum and suffer. Not have kids. Depopulate.
Not only is this arrogant and self-serving, but also incredibly ironic. Progresssive cities have some of the highest income inequality.
I would vote for 1) Increase nuclear energy production and crank it up to 11. 2) Make electricity cheaper than it is worth metering 3) I agree with your EV take.
But for fucks sake, please be nice to fellow humans. I see no difference between toxic liberals attacking conservatives and vice versa. You're doing a disservice to the rest of us.
You absolutely do not understand what it’s like living rural, please go try it for a bit and then come back to talk about how we should “F “ ourselves.
What do you expect to do when the price of petrol inevitably doubles or triples?
Not GP, but that's an easy one: vote for people who would increase production.
If you need the truck for a farm or other job, well that's a bit different. But you will have to get used to the rest of society increasingly wanting to put a price on the externalities your work generates. Owning a truck _is_ going to keep getting more expensive and you should be planning for that now.
Not an option if you actually use your truck.
Again, most trucks aren’t towing long distances so towing range is not critical to electric trucks making sense for most uses.
What I'd really like, no one makes: namely an electrically driven, so GOBS of low end torque, but with a diesel powered generator to keep the batteries charged. Give me 150mi of electric range (unloaded), and then a fuel tank big enough to pull a heavy load 500mi. Oh, and the ability to keep it plugged in at night so 80% of the time I'm not needing to use the diesel motor.
Its not that hard to have a $500 old shitbox for when you actually need to haul things, and drive something efficient the rest of the time.
"Let them drive EVs" has turned into a modern day SV version of the Marie Antoinette (mis)quote.
Where do you suppose they plug these EVs in at the jobsite? The elephant in the room that no one addresses being the complete lack of EV infrastructure.
Are they really being bought in the "overwhelming" majority by trades people? The numbers suggest they're just popular cars.
Americans are in love with pickup trucks, it's an entire subculture.
And at least where I live, which has some nasty weather conditions, the trades people I've worked with over the last few years all drive vans. Landscapers and garbage pickers are some of the exceptions.
(1) https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/pickup-trucks-dominate-ameri....
(2) https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/02/ford-pickup-remains-americas...
And yet so many new trucks have a single driver hauling a trailer with stuff while the bed is empty because the bed is too short to carry anything useful.
The extra cab area, of course, isn't useful because there's only one person. The bed area isn't useful because the cab area has shortened the bed.
So, that driver has to expend the space and weight for a trailer because he bought a truck that isn't useful as a damn truck.
High gas prices disproportionately affect the poor. Even if that weren't the case, lowering oil prices right now would have a strong negative effect on Russias ability to fund its war in Ukraine. We can push to lower oil prices AND keep pushing into renewables. We should invest in both at this moment.
Even if you own an EV yourself these gas prices could hurt you. Converting from hydrocarbons is going to take decades.
Pretending the economy doesn't run on oil and gas is just counter productive in general. Basically, we will pretend until things have gone too far and then we will do what we would have done anyway.
Morally, I don't think judgement can be passed on drivers until there are EV models that undercut budget unleaded models.
"Just learn to code and buy a Tesla" is not an answer to our problems.
They should also be questioned as to why they have so many leases they haven't used and why the active wells in the Permian Basis are not running at their max safe rate of extraction currently.
Increasing production might be an option. Loosening sanctions on Venezuela and/or Iran might be another. We may have to pick our battles.
I think the biggest motivational issue will be expectations for the duration of any oil sanctions. If producers think it is likely to only be short-term, there won't be as much motivation to bring extra production online.