Skyrocketing Oil Prices Stump Experts

Confused about oil prices? So are the experts.

“People don’t get it,” said Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) at a Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday at which senior oil company executives were grilled about prices. Kohl said: “Demand is not crazy. Why are prices going crazy?”

Read the whole Washington Post Article

Gas Rises While Oil Declines

So, like most Americans, I’ve been grumping about gasoline prices for quite a while now. I’ve watched the price of gas spiral upward, and the resulting inflation throughout the economy due to the increased costs of distribution and travel. I had to buy gasoline today, and I while I was at the pump, I began to get angry. Not just frustrated, but genuinely angry, and I decided to do a little digging into what the cost of refining, distribution, and marketing gasoline is.

Let’s go on a little journey, shall we?

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Clean-air rules for national parks may be eased

This is just the sort of thing that really upsets me:

Scientists, managers oppose plan that may allow for new power plants

The rewriting of air-quality rules would ease the way for the construction of 33 coal-fired power plants within 186 miles of 10 national parks, including Great Smokey Mountains, left, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24658362/

Here’s some interesting facts I dug up…

• China’s Ministry of Health says pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death.

• Only 1 percent of China’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.

• Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

• According to the Journal of Geophysical Research, much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China.

Much of the pollution in China is a result of their energy demands, which are primarily answered with coal fired power plants. The effects of China’s pollution have worldwide reach, and will for many years to come. Keeping this in mind, why in the name of all that is sacred, would we even consider relaxing Clean Air protections?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/oct/31/china.pollution

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070709-china-pollution.html

People never see it coming, when they look the other way.