At any rate, it’s getting pretty tough to keep a farm or ranch afloat these days, especially due to rising fuel costs. And those of us who work the land certainly understand our place in the crisis of fuel and water and food, but what would you have us do? I agree with some of what’s been said, but I see this like welfare reform. Many farmers need subsidies to stay afloat, but then you’re generally not allowed to use a certain amount of land.

It’s true– you might as well produce if you’re getting paid. But it doesn’t seem smart to pull the rug out from under producers… not completely. There may not be an overwhelming amount of independents like me in the supply chain, but it’s not as if big agribusiness has stepped up to fix everything, either.

You said earlier that oil is part of our economy but it is theirs. The way you’re talking about it, you make it a keystone or our economy. You’re right this may be a national security issue but not in the we-need-more-oil way but in the we-gotta-get-away-from-oil way. And there will be horrible withdrawal much like any addict but in the end the economy will be the better for it. But I am still for drilling because we should get all the oil there is to be got because we’re not going to get off of oil anytime soon. I have a gas driven car and I’m not going to get rid of it until it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

I had to change the way I look at things too. I changed the way I drive, I changed how I drive, I changed why I drive. I drive to work everyday too, I don’t drive as far as you (25 minutes) but I know what it is to spend money on gas. But I don’t want more oil. I want to get out from under the thumb of oil. I want it done in 10 years so that in 20 years, I can complain about the high price of electricity since everyone is plugging in their cars at night.

Read this: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3426

Also, I still think that menu was mainly ICK!

And Scott, that is a bad spot you’re in. I had a 35 minute commute (usually saw NO traffic whatsoever) to a small town, the nearest one. When gas hit 3.99, I quit and went to work at home. I am lucky to have a vocation that lets me do that (medical transcription). I know not everyone can, but it has worked out well for me. We also garden and have chickens and all that jazz. I told hubby we need to stockpile, but he thinks I am paranoid. Maybe I am.

And while South Africa is not in the region that was brought up, keep in mind that Apartheid ended less than 20 years ago, and they (like other countries there) are still struggling to bring up the black sectors to the same level as the white ones.

The United States has made a cottage industry of installing and removing people from positions of power, so why don’t we intervene in these African countries? Because there’s nothing in it for us.

By cutting off the food aid to Africa, you are not forcing the hand of anyone to stop being corrupt. If anything, that will contribute to the deaths of those very same people you seem hell-bent in blaming for their own problems. So before you go off on another blame-the-victim rant, come up with a better solution than just cutting food.

I’d say more, but I see this as pointless.

Ignorance is not cured by the rants of one person.

One thing that really irks me is this attitude that since it won’t make a difference today or tomorrow there is no point in even doing it. Well, putting a child through school won’t make a difference for 13 years, going to college won’t do anything for you for at least 4 years, cutting our “greenhouse” emissions won’t make a difference for years – so why bother, it’s pointless, We’re All Doomed. Adnabit, this is the same effing country that put a man on the moon 10 years after it put its mind to it, the same country that came from behind to give a massive beat-down to the Axis in less than 4 years.

With nuclear power, geothermal, solar, wind, clean coal, and more oil, we can meet our energy needs NOW and develop the technologies needed to replace fossil fuels.

“I think you want to start world war III over $5 / gallon gas. $5 / gallon gas is not something to go to war over or even start a blockade over.”

I don’t think you grasp just how badly this is going to effect the economy. Where do you live? If you’re like me, you live in the suburbs of a major city. I work on the other side of town, with a 45 minute drive to and from. Now in a perfect world, I would be able to get housing near my job – unfortunately American cities were designed and built when gas was cheap as hell. The financial center is usually downtown, you’ll have a large industrial area on one side, and since no one wants to live by factories, the houses are on the other side of town.

I’m financially ’stuck’ in my mortgage, I can’t just choose to up and move closer to my job. I can’t really switch jobs because all the companies that I am qualified to work for are located in the same area of town anyways – so I’d be driving to the same place no matter which one I work for. So I have no choice but to fill up my tank every week and put up with it. Employers aren’t willing to offer any effective kind of reimbursement for people who are now shelling out more than twice what they were just a few years ago.

A few million people in this situation, a few million people with that much less disposable income and purchasing power. Those people buy fewer things, companies make less profit, companies lay off employees, those employees now can’t afford things, and the economy sinks even lower. It’s a vicious cycle. We are the third largest nation in the world in size and population. We can’t just rethink our entire nation’s infrastructure overnight to suddenly ‘adapt’ to a world where gas is this expensive. Are we just going to pick up our financial districts and move them closer to the suburbs? Are we going to redistribute housing old-school USSR style?

What are you going to do to ‘adapt’ to all of your basic essentials going up in price? Those semis that bring your food to your local market from all over the world run on gas you know. If their fuel is super expensive, they’re not going to let their profits take a hit when they can just pass the hat down the line to the consumer.

The whole point of all my rants is that if you think we’ve got a problem with this ‘food crisis’ now – just wait until the climbing price of oil really starts catching up with us. Not only will we not have enough food, it’s going to be so expensive a lot of people simply won’t be able to afford it.

You want a job around here? We don’t pay much, but you get to pontificate above the fold …

I’m not defending the majority of African leaders but people act like they’re doing something so different from the rest of the world. Iraqi Oil for Food, the junta in Burma (Myanmar) is supposedly taking aid meant for the hurricane victims there. But back on topic somewhat.

Oil prices are high, they’re going to stay high. They were trending this way. If not because of supply then because of inflation. Being reactionary and withholding food is not the answer. Food doesn’t keep like oil does. Food spoils. People grow food with the intent of making money on it. Suddenly not being able to sell it will produce an instant increase win supply which will drop prices significantly. And somebody will figure out a way to make money on that. You may just create an international food black market. These OPEC nations aren’t protest friendly democracies. People who take to the streets demanding food above what they’re rationed will probably have some patriotism beat into them. Besides which, the West will look as it always does, greedy. Let me break it down:

1. The West uses more than half the world’s supply of oil
2. Using their own favored system, the free market, the price of oil increases
3. In order to decrease the price, The West, which produces more food than it can consume, would rather let it waste than sell it to a nation that can’t produce the amount of food necessary to feed it’s growing population

Now you tell me if that doesn’t read like a recruitment pamphlet for anti-West extremism.

Where do you think the money they use to buy food goes? What happens when all the money disappears?

Reading your military eventualities, I think you want to start world war III over $5 / gallon gas. $5 / gallon gas is not something to go to war over or even start a blockade over. $5 – 10 / gallon gas is something to adapt to. I am not raising the spectre of $5 / gallon gas to the level of September 11th, which was a real and valid reason to kick some country’s ass. I’m all for drilling, not in oil shale, that seems useless, like wind farms or solar power.. Drill in ANWAR, drill off the coast. Stick with what works: oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear.

And llama nothing proposed is going to fix anything short of ten years. It doesn’t hurt to drill.