Fuel costs – where does the responsibility lie?
Sent to the editor of the Cooma Express on 9 June, 08
Rough estimates say that a $US1 per barrel increase in the price of oil gives us a 1c increase in petrol costs. That’s pretty significant when you think about how every one was carrying on about the potential 2c per litre change that Fuel Watch could deliver. Just last Friday, oil rose another $11 per barrel - in one day delivering more than 5 times the price rise we could possibly have saved with Fuel Watch!
Most of the public voices are putting the rising prices down to tensions in the Middle East and growth in the Asian economies. These are obviously factors, but the US National Energy Administration knew well enough about them last year when they forecast that as a worst case scenario oil would hit $100 a barrel 22 years from now. What they didn’t factor in were the warnings of the petroleum geologists who had been pointing out for decades that oil wells don’t last forever and that we need to start finding alternatives. The very disturbing reality is that in a report produced for the US government 2 years ago, fully half of the studies by world oil experts concluded that global oil production would begin to decline irreversibly by the year 2010 or sooner. If oil production declines while demand continues to increase, we have massive price hikes that can’t be blamed on the local service station, the Federal Government or even the OPEC oil cartel or Middle Eastern nations. The account is running dry because we kept spending when we needed to start planning ahead.
We are facing a pretty hard reality. The bottom line is that fuel prices and all sorts of other oil-dependent costs such as food, medicine and roads are going to increase globally. This is not a time to ask for tax cuts – we need to take it on the chin and (belatedly) start thinking a bit more responsibly. We need big spending on public transport and research into alternative energy and more economic ways of doing things. Over-indulgence has gotten us here, so above all let’s watch that we don’t respond to rising costs with a renewed burst of selfishness. Fuel needs to be factored into carbon trading; we can’t make the third world pay for our excesses through climate change. They say that when someone is under pressure, who they are inside starts coming out. I’ve got a feeling that pretty soon we’re going to start seeing what sort of people we really are.