That is rich! I have never been to LA, but the one thing I know is if you do not have a car you are f*cked. Yes there is some public transportation but they are limited of other problems

Yes bikes are an option, but with any big city. I think getting from home to work would tack on an extra hour, increase chance of death, plus not all businesses have a shower and change room.

I just bought a V8 Muscle Car. And in 3 years I'm buying a V8 six speed supercharged motherfucker for daily driving. YOU PEOPLE will tear the gas pump from my cold dead hands.....

Seriously though, I do very little driving. But fuck everything about this:

"Americans have more opportunities to wean themselves from the gas pump"

Next up they'll be telling us it's time to wean ourselves off beef. You, as an American, just have too much cheap access to meat. How dare you!

Some where somebody want to wean us off of something.

Environmentalists want to wean us off of energy and environmentally damaging goods and services.

Health nuts from vegans to organics want to wean us off of all the good foods from beef to mass grown tomatoes. Really the world would be better off and cancer free if we just ate permaculture grown organic foods!.

Some moralists in religion and other sociological groups want to wean us off sex. Yep we people are getting to much sex. To save the world, economy, environment, soul we need to stop fucking.

Groups like MADD and other anti drug, booze or tobacco want to wean us off of our pleasurably pursuits.

The worst of the bunch the Government wants to wean us off of our high falutent wages and living. We need to spread that wealth around.

God or Zeus help us from people that want to help us from ourselves. Can they just stop being busy bodies. Get out of my life.

The complaints are enough to make one wonder whom Republicans blamed when similar price spikes happened during the presidency of former oil executive George W. Bush.

Well I was blaming the same people I am now. Somehow the lame stream media tried to lay it out as being GWB's fault.

In any case, it takes decades from the time a new oil permit is approved before a field is producing reliable amounts of oil,... it wouldn't have a noticeable impact on gas prices until around 2030.

Well doesn't that mean that if they had approved ANWR in 2000 it would be coming online just about now?

And if you do the research you can find clips from Obama saying it should be $5 per gallon. Well it going to happen, probably soon.

Fuck them. I buy the most gas efficient vehicles I can. And if DH didn't get his gas bill paid as a perk of his job, we would have to sell our house. Not all the world lives in cities where one can walk or bike or bus places. If I wanted to live in Austin where such is possible, I couldn't afford to. Nor could anyone less well off than us. SO basically what they're saying is they want a very large chunk of the country to just drop dead. That's what they really want-a lot less people. Better for mother earth, you know.

We looked at getting solar on our roof. $20k. For what will last about 20 years. And it wouldn't totally eliminate our electric bill. We only pay about $150 a month as it is. SO solar would do nothing for us. And yet, we're "supposed" to do it because it's "green".

"Americans have more opportunities to wean themselves from the gas pump"

What if the LA Times weaned itself from bullshit??
Just askin'...

How much oil, coal, and natural gas does the LAT consume in the production & distribution of its newspaper?

--fuel to bring pulpwood, scrap paper, etc to the papermills
--fuel for electricity to run the mills
--fuel to transport paper from mills to printing plant
--fuel for electricity to run printing plant
--fuel for distribution of papers from printing plant to readers

I think LAT should wean itself off fossil fuels by shutting down all production of physical newspapers.

The opportunity for a consumer to wean themselves from a critical commodity like gasoline will come when there's a dollar-for-dollar (or better) replacement.

Few people will get out of our gasoline cars until our new [INSERT NEW WAVE TECHNOLOGY HERE] cars can be bought for the same price, refueled for the same price (or less), driven for the same range (or more), and repaired at the same rates (or less).

And if they're talking about getting people out of cars and into buses, well, they're going to need a lot more buses to make that happen. Nobody wants to wait twenty minutes to start a trip that could be done in a car in ten.

This transition may need government subsidies to get off the ground - fueling stations, technologies, fleets of green buses, smart roads, whatever. Why isn't the LAT pushing for a program of raised taxes to cover those expenditures?

(Looking at the gas pumps, I'd say people drive to work in pirates).

Gas at $5 is nothing compared to what is coming ( ...don't cry later that I didn't warn you):

http://drmillslmu.com/peakoil.htm

Didn't the Tribune Company, which owns the LA Times, file for bankruptcy a few years ago? And yet the editors pay themselves so much for churning out crap like this that they can afford to be oblivious to the cost of gas.

Google tells me the daily circulation of the LA Times is 575,000, down from 775,000 five years ago. Looks like people have more opportunities to wean themselves from newspapers with every passing year.

The opportunity for a consumer to wean themselves from a critical commodity like gasoline will come when there's a dollar-for-dollar (or better) replacement.

Few people will get out of our gasoline cars until our new [INSERT NEW WAVE TECHNOLOGY HERE] cars can be bought for the same price, refueled for the same price (or less), driven for the same range (or more), and repaired at the same rates (or less).

This. Unfortunately, competing technologies are nowhere near to meeting these standards. And the solutions liberals like - more public transportation - work well in dense urban areas, but they are ill-suited to the America we actually have, most of which was developed in the automobile era and assumes individual transportation. People can modify their habits somewhat, but they cannot be expected to "wean themselves from the gas pump". In the long run, we must replace gas as the primary fuel source we use. It's ruining our environment, we're running out of it (the Saudis can no longer increase production to minimize price spikes), and many of our fuel dollars enrich those who hate us. In the short run, there's no replacement for gas; and a sustained price spike will hammer the current weak economic recovery.

Christopher, with all due respect, that's missing the point. If everyone could drive Mr. Fusion-powered cars, the Left would still have the exact same complaints, about how Mr. Fusion was ruining the environment and ruining humanity. It's all a smokescreen -- what really pisses the Left off is not that the automobile uses fossil fuels, but that it gives people the freedom to go where they want, when they want. It's the same reason that suburbs piss off the Left. In their minds, ordinary people should not be allowed to live where they want and go where they want. We should all live in tiny ultra-high-density, Soviet-like apartments where we can easily be controlled.

Dave, I'm not interested in making the far left happy; their desired future for this country is as stunted, constrained and joyless as that of the religious right.

The Oil Market Panic
=== ===
02/20/12 - Hoover.org by Richard A. Epstein
[edited] The rise in oil prices traces to a renegade Iran. The West sees that the Iranian nuclear threat is not just bluster. Iran poses far greater risks to world peace and the political order than even a major disruption in oil supplies.
=== ===

The current rise in oil and gasoline prices comes from reasonable fear of a conflict with Iran, and the current fact that the US and other countries are attempting to embargo Iranian oil to pressure an agreement on nuclear weapons. We/they want to cut off Iran's income by not buying their oil. This necessarily increases oil prices, but hopefully this will be less expensive than going to war.

This price increase is not primarily Obama's fault. But, we can rightfully blame him for denying the US much productive work and jobs developing our own, huge oil reserves.

Development of domestic oil would not completely change the world oil price. Oil is an international commodity. But, a large domestic supply would more insulate the US from threats to foreign supplies.

( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_%28United_States%29 )

We rely now on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, storing 726 million barrels of oil, to back up US consumption of 21 million bbl/day (34 days usage). It would be much better if the US were producing that 21 MMbbl domestically, rather than the current 5.8 MMbbl/day.

It's a 21st Century version of "Let them eat cake. "

Americans have more opportunities to wean themselves from the gas pump

And the rise of digital media is an opportunity for the LA Times to wean itself from newsprint.

You know, instead of the crisis the newspapers keep telling us it is.

If gas prices are rising under the wise and benevolent stewardship of President Barack H. Obama, then it's a good thing.

Obama is awesome!

At the risk of being the voice of dissension, there are some who might say that our current, low gas prices are an illusion, and that somebody (probably somebody far away and poor) is making up that difference for us. It is pretty well established that we need to reduce our dependence on oil, but nobody seems to want to be the one who does it.

The only real solution is to bring the price of oil up to its "real" cost and make society adapt, which it will, even if it is painful.

Nobody is subsidizing our gas and oil prices.

There is no country that is paying higher prices in order to keep our prices down or that is paying for an outsized share of the research and development that we are unwilling to fund.

We are, in fact, funding a great deal of the gas and oil exploration going on around the world.

The higher prices in other countries are due to their own institutions: distribution network difficulties, higher taxes, and supplier monopolies.

Competition from developing countries for the currently available supply of gas and oil is going to drive prices upward.

However, that supply is being artificially restricted, so the price increases could easily be mitigated if the political will exists to do it.

I don't think anyone is subsidizing our oil, but I do think the cost we see is an illusion. Oil is a finite resource, and we are burning it up at ever-increasing rates. The price we pay does not take this into account. We are borrowing from our own future.

What would happen if gas prices rose?
1. Many people would be unable to afford to drive themselves to work (but businesses still need employees, so people would move into cities, or businesses would make accommodations to bring in workers).
2. The inconvenience of public transportation would become worth the cost savings, and public transportation infrastructure would grow to support it.
3. Increased population density, because it became a necessity, would mean increased opportunity for the general public to use public transportation.

Right now I am unable to take a bus to where I work. I have to drive, or ride a bike. If the cost of gas became so prohibitive that many employees could not afford to come into work, the company would move in towards the city or bus lines would spring up where there was need.

I believe the only way to reduce dependence on oil is to force a need ... gradually.