The world can breathe a great sigh of relief today as oil prices have just dipped below $90 per barrel in today's orgy of falling markets. There's no telling how far this may go, as prices approach half of their peak just a few months ago. This will, of course, lead to decreases in everything from bus fares to food prices, and hopefully help restore some stability to our battered financial system.
Candidates like Jack Layton would like to see gas prices regulated. That could have worked. Many others would have liked Saudi Arabia to ramp up production to drop prices to this point (if possible). But, ultimately, oil prices found their own way to come down on their own accord...they triggered the biggest economic meltdown in nearly a century.
The American dream of low-density suburban housing connected by freeways of gas-guzzling life-sized Tonka trucks, all built quickly and cheaply and mortgaged/leased/rented to consumers with a host of money-sucking financing plans relies heavily on cheap oil. Without it we can't import cheap, chemically grown tomatoes from Mexico, and without those we'd have to keep growing FOOD south of Rymal to feed ourselves, and that land would not be sold off by failing family farmers (thanks to the amount of financing they need for all those nifty pesticides, chemicals, copywrited seeds and mega-tractors). Without it we couldn't keep millions empolyed in industries like automobiles (some estimates put it at one quarter of America's jobs), airlines or trucking, and that means people can't keep paying those absurd financing plans off.
Our economy, for better or worse (usually worse) runs upon a seemingly magical game of numbers, which may generate tons of wealth, but usually only involves a few percentage points of grown on the whole each year. When on of the fundamental commodities (oil) goes up in price from 4-7 times what it was at the dawn of the decade, it isn't hard to wipe out those few points. Keep in mind that oil production hasn't really dropped, it's only plateaued for a few short years while demand increased, and this is the havok it hath wrought. In another decade or two, once pumping has really begun to decline and production has shifted from cheap and easy desert wellheads to multi-billion dollar tar sands megaprojects and deep sea arctic drilling, we'll begin to see the true cost of a lifestyle based on cheap fuel.
With any luck, this drop in commodity prices and fall in stock prices will encourage people to get back on their feet, buy a few bargain-priced stocks and maybe fill up their Ford. But that won't solve the problem. Our economy is based around the fantasy world of Wall Street ballance sheets and not the realities of a finite, living planet, and until we walk away from that, we'll still be in danager of this kind of collapse.
Maybe, though, it's for the best. Had the dinosaurs never died out, we would never have evolved. And now, in the midst of the biggest mass extinction since then, maybe a different kind of dinosaur has to move on to make room for the new guys. Right below BBC's pile of stories on today's financial mayhem there was something from the science section which stood out - at least 25% of the world's mammal species are now facing extinction, and that's a conservative estimate. This represents a bigger loss than every company on Wal-Street, a massacre of this world's living genetic heritige, and a crime for which future generations will likely never be able to forgive us. If that's going to be the legacy of all the "progress" and "development" from Wal-Street, then maybe all of this is for the best.
Candidates like Jack Layton would like to see gas prices regulated. That could have worked. Many others would have liked Saudi Arabia to ramp up production to drop prices to this point (if possible). But, ultimately, oil prices found their own way to come down on their own accord...they triggered the biggest economic meltdown in nearly a century.
The American dream of low-density suburban housing connected by freeways of gas-guzzling life-sized Tonka trucks, all built quickly and cheaply and mortgaged/leased/rented to consumers with a host of money-sucking financing plans relies heavily on cheap oil. Without it we can't import cheap, chemically grown tomatoes from Mexico, and without those we'd have to keep growing FOOD south of Rymal to feed ourselves, and that land would not be sold off by failing family farmers (thanks to the amount of financing they need for all those nifty pesticides, chemicals, copywrited seeds and mega-tractors). Without it we couldn't keep millions empolyed in industries like automobiles (some estimates put it at one quarter of America's jobs), airlines or trucking, and that means people can't keep paying those absurd financing plans off.
Our economy, for better or worse (usually worse) runs upon a seemingly magical game of numbers, which may generate tons of wealth, but usually only involves a few percentage points of grown on the whole each year. When on of the fundamental commodities (oil) goes up in price from 4-7 times what it was at the dawn of the decade, it isn't hard to wipe out those few points. Keep in mind that oil production hasn't really dropped, it's only plateaued for a few short years while demand increased, and this is the havok it hath wrought. In another decade or two, once pumping has really begun to decline and production has shifted from cheap and easy desert wellheads to multi-billion dollar tar sands megaprojects and deep sea arctic drilling, we'll begin to see the true cost of a lifestyle based on cheap fuel.
With any luck, this drop in commodity prices and fall in stock prices will encourage people to get back on their feet, buy a few bargain-priced stocks and maybe fill up their Ford. But that won't solve the problem. Our economy is based around the fantasy world of Wall Street ballance sheets and not the realities of a finite, living planet, and until we walk away from that, we'll still be in danager of this kind of collapse.
Maybe, though, it's for the best. Had the dinosaurs never died out, we would never have evolved. And now, in the midst of the biggest mass extinction since then, maybe a different kind of dinosaur has to move on to make room for the new guys. Right below BBC's pile of stories on today's financial mayhem there was something from the science section which stood out - at least 25% of the world's mammal species are now facing extinction, and that's a conservative estimate. This represents a bigger loss than every company on Wal-Street, a massacre of this world's living genetic heritige, and a crime for which future generations will likely never be able to forgive us. If that's going to be the legacy of all the "progress" and "development" from Wal-Street, then maybe all of this is for the best.
posted by Undustrial at 10:22 AM
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