Diesel Price Inflation: Conservation and Consternation

by Donal Fagan

Published: March 11th, 2008

diesel price inflation conservation and consternation

According to the American Automobile Association [via [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/business/11diesel.html?ref=business

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Sitting@home on Mar 11, 2008
The rising popularity of diesel vehicles in Europe increases demand for the fuel and decreases demand for gasoline, allowing European refiners to export their surplus to the United States, which helps stabilize gasoline prices here Now just imagine what would happen if 50% of US car drivers switched to diesel; the extra demand would probably push the price so high as to wipe out any gain in efficiency, and the prices of any food or goods shipped by road or train would rise as well. Be careful what you wish for all those waiting for their VW or Mercedes diesel to arrive on these shores.

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Joeaverage on Mar 11, 2008

I don't particularly want to pay the high prices we are faced with right now but I am looking forward to the efficiencies this will force in the heavy trucks, in buildings, and so on. Stuff we should have been continuing since the 70s when we felt the bing pinch the first time. Like the big three we Americans have short memories... Whatever the case I want us off the foreign oil teat even if that means we are all driving little European style cars (VW Polo, Fiat 500, BMW Mini) whenever we can. I recognize that sometimes some people still need the largest vehicles.

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GS650G on Mar 11, 2008

Ask the environmentalist how they plan to run semi trucks on batteries, I'd like to hear their ideas. Since they refused to allow drilling for our own oil in America it's up to them to come up with a way to move 80,000 lbs down the road to the grocery store without using fossil fuels.

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M1EK on Mar 11, 2008

GS650G, all drilling in our own country would do is make oil prices a bit lower for the Chinese. Oil is fungible; look it up if you don't know what it means. And what we should be doing is running cross-country freight on trains - where the fuel efficiency is orders of magnitude better. Yes, some stuff would still run on trucks - but we're doing a lot of stupid trucking because we've been subsidizing it (and penalizing rail) for so long.

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