The Age of Oil Must End.

Clearly I've been neglecting this. I've got a steady 9 to 5 at a law firm thats been a steady 8 to 6 as The Big Case got ready to go to trial. But the case is settled into its court room and my part is pretty much over until the case ends in a few weeks. So I'll be back up to posting three or four times a week. Hopefully. Anyway, since I haven't posted in weeks I don't feel bad about not being on my usual topic schedule.

Oil Costs To Offset Stimulus Package

Since Congress and Bush unveiled an economic stimulus package Jan. 24, the price of the OPEC basket of crude oil has jumped by $32.51 a barrel, raising the cost of U.S. oil imports enough to offset the entire stimulus package over the course of the year.

Does this really surprise anyone? The stimulus package was supposed to be a shot in the arm for an economy where most people's ARMs had already exploded. The price of oil will never go down, maybe it will go down a little bit, small daily or weekly fluctuations. But like global climate change, the small day to day changes can't mask the relentless march upward.

"We're engaged in a painful experiment in discovering how high the price [of oil] has to go before it really, really hurts, before it hurts enough to slow demand globally," said Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank.

He's dead on. Something has got to give because we can't go on like this. We've known for some time now that eventually the economics of limited resources would drive the price of oil beyond what is reasonable.

The price of oil will never come down.

No gas tax holiday, no ethanol blend, no hybrid technology, no fuel efficiency standard, no maximum purchase at the pump, no drilling offshore, in oil sands or national wildlife reserves can change that. Even if we could get the cash price down, the climate change cost is, its increasingly obvious, more than we can really afford. The heyday of petrochemicals must end. We have no choice in that. What we can choose is what kind of withdrawal from oil addiction we will have. Are we going to deny that this is killing us until we hit rock bottom, or are we going to come to terms with whats going on here and get help?