JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum The US Bounced A Check

I think it's 3.79 Liters to a US Gallon.

I agree that the gas prices suck in the UK. My understanding it that it's simply a matter of massive taxes added to the actual cost. But when your entire country (or Kingdom in this case) is smaller than many of our states, it's simply a matter of massive distance that must be traveled to do most things, especially business if you care to visit in person multiple locations, have face to face meetings etc. Many people are shifting to Skype and other similar options which to me makes sense. But the distance the average worked in the US must travel to get to work is much farther than in the UK. And due to the massive size, building a truly connected train system just doesn't work. The only cities where public mass transit really works is NYC, Chicago and possibly 3-5 others with lesser systems. In some very large systems there's barely even bus options. Los Angeles is so spread out you have no choice but to have a car if you hope to work most jobs. Once outside of a major (i.e. top 10-15 city) you're screwed without cars, gasoline and drive times. We visited a large number of the biggest city in the UK and Ireland on one 5 week trip. In the US, you could spend 5 weeks visiting Texas and see less of it. (It's 1000 miles across).

We're also being short sighted in terms of how much oil is used in everything else in life. Medicines, Food, Plastic, Fabric and other materials etc. Without oil we're all screwed world wide. Fortunately my family is good friends with a small religious group in the USA called the Amish (not sure if they are also common in the UK or elsewhere). But they are found in many US States and life without electricity or any modern conveniences. Last Christmas a young Amish family near my parents house caught fire in the chimney and roof area and we all rushed (in our cars thankfully) to get there quickly to help them put it out. Fortunately before we could even do much, the young father had climbed up on the roof and inside the area of the chimney and put it out with no lights or modern tools (like a metal bucket to hold water) and he had to pump water manually with a hand pump outside to get water into his wooden buckets. All that to say they know how to live without Oil. And observing their lives, it is clearly how we'll all be living if and when it's gone, not just to drive cars (which is actually a waste of a much more valuable resource) but to have anything we think of as modern. Most foods come from 100's of miles away or more (I can't remember the number and I apologize if it is wrong, but it seems I saw a story that the average meal in the USA has traveled over 1500 miles to get to your table. And we live in the farm belt (and I grew up on a farm run by grandparents and then parents). Now they have a new farm in the south of the state away from civilization, but right next to the Amish who can probably keep us from starving. The problem for me personally is I will be long gone first because of the medicines I take and the high tech required to make them, which is heavy on oil to create.

And finally, I watched a 60 minutes special on a religious monastery (one of the oldest I think) in Greece which has no cancer or heart disease of any kind among it's monks. The Amish also have very little health problems (but do, to their credit, take young children to modern hospitals to save their lives, which I admire because a childs life outweighs a religious contradiction in my view). The also don't have welfare (nor need it). They take care of their elderly and sick and share anything needed. They build each others homes and barns and help bring in each others crops. I am not saying I would WANT their lifestyle, but I think sometimes we might want to inch a bit closer to them. Perhaps oil should be saved for medicines and products critical to survival until/unless we find a viable alternative which wind power and solar power (both scams at this point as solar panels often require enormous resources and oil to build and rarely can even pay for themselves or adequately light up a homes needs, let alone a towns. But I disgress. Also in the US, we are acting like morons by burning highly polluting corn ethanol (which is far different than the superior sugar based fuel made in Brazil) which, even if we used 100% of our corn supply would not cover a tiny low single digit % of our gasoline needs. Still digressing...

I love the public transportation in Paris, but get outside of it and unless you're on a train line, it's still hard to get around. Same with Chicago and NYC. But we need cheap gas (under US $4) or our economy can't survive. Our food has for practical purposes gone up 20% in the last year. If you used the inflation numbers used in the USA until 1980 (back in the Carter years) our inflation this year is already 10%. (They removed food and gas from calculations... how convenient). Our fat lazy corrupt government on both sides has ruined us. It may take a sweeping non violent uprising among voters to replace all incumbents in both parties to even START fixing the problems. These folks have proven they can't do the job.

Brian

Brian