Don’t Look to Oil Companies to Lower High Retail Gasoline Prices | Hacker News Reader

Don’t Look to Oil Companies to Lower High Retail Gasoline Prices

dallasfed.org

I don’t see how we can transition off of fossil fuels without them becoming prohibitively expensive. Unaffordable gas is exactly what our politicians have chosen when declaring all new cars in 2030 will be electric. It is by design. Sort of silly that there’s now this pearl clutching about expensive gas. Even more absurd to see the left attack Elon who is the person doing the most to make their policies actually work. Imagine California getting rid of gas burning vehicles without Tesla. Ridiculous. And if that weren’t bad enough, with 8% and rising inflation California’s genius leader wants to send everyone (presumably even jailed convicts) gift cards to buy more gas! Can’t make this stuff up.

I agree but the only issue is we can’t build electric cars fast enough to address the high gas costs.

These prices seem to be too much of a shock to the system. It’s better to have a smooth transition over ten years or so.

I mean, if they really wanted to make gas unaffordable, they could have raised gas taxes to European levels. I think most people know we are in a Catch-22: the majority of Americans are totally dependent upon affordable gasoline to go about their daily lives. You don't want these people to suffer, which is what happens when prices are high, but you also don't want them to become even more dependent upon low gas prices, which is what happens every time that gas prices collapse.

We should be celebrating that we can now see a way out of this endless trap, and embracing EVs across the political spectrum.

Ev are only part of a solution. The energy must come from somewhere and it’s not going to be wind/solar unless something miraculous happens in renewable energy. Europe like California is ditching nuclear while paying lip service to climate change. They are either dishonest or falling into magical thinking.

Honestly, the miracle in wind and solar has already happened, or is happening right now, depending upon your perspective. There are literally hundreds of utility-scale wind and solar projects up for approval in the US right now, including solar in places well outside the sun belt. And rooftop solar is still rare in most places, largely because the utilities have successfully lobbied against net metering. I still think we'll need nuclear for at least another generation, but I see fossil fuels getting largely priced out of the generation market before this decade is out.

> Even more absurd to see the left attack Elon who is the person doing the most to make their policies actually work.

A person can do good, and also do bad. Reward the good, punish the bad. You're exhibiting black-and-white thinking here and treating "the left" as a monolith. One could just as accurately claim that Elon is attacking "the left" despite "the left" being responsible for the policies that have massively helped Tesla get off the ground.

So screw poor people eh? Until you can buy a beater EV for $2000 you can’t make gasoline price prohibitive unless you really want a Revolution.

Even in Europe where public transport is arguably better in most places than in the US car ownership rates are still very high and a very large portion of the population is dependent on them.

Even if Tesla does bring the Model 3 to its $30K price range that would still make it price prohibitive to most of the population in the west.

I wonder if France and Germany had pushed Ukraine to follow up on Minsk agreement, would the world have been much more peaceful?

It's quite hard to follow an agreement like that when the other side is constantly breaking ceasefires and refusing to follow it themselves.

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