» 2008 » June

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At today’s oil prices, every 10 percent increase in trip distance translates into a 4.5 percent increase in transport costs. The duration of a typical sea voyage from China to North America is four weeks. Including inland costs, shipping a standard 40-foot container from Shanghai to the U.S. eastern seaboard now costs $8,000. In 2000, when oil prices were $20 per barrel, it cost only $3,000 to ship the same container. But at $200 per barrel, it will soon cost $15,000 in transport costs to ship from China to the U.S. eastern seaboard.

So the same energy costs that are pummeling low-income and working-class Americans are also responsible for changes in global terms of trade that will make the economics of manufacturing in the United States much more favorable. Who wouldn’t want to make that trade: a good job in exchange for high gas prices?

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » Maybe the crazy prices of oil and gas are good for something afterall? Kids it is time to start building things again. No more will we drown in “made in China” crap. Soon we can drown in our own crap instead. The need to consume won’t retreat, that is here to stay, ingrained in our wiring, and now that we will all have jobs making crap we will be able to buy all that much more of the crap we make. Hmmm, this was supposed to be a positive shift. At least the reduction in pollution from less transportation is an environmental positive.

Why risk our rivers to satisfy US energy hunger?

A few weeks ago I wrote an article saying, in essence, that proceeding with Site “C” to meet our power requirements was better than mucking up hundreds of smaller rivers and streams in the hands of rapacious private power groups. I blew it because I’d fallen for the Campbell government gup that it was either one or the other. It isn’t. In fact, B.C. has no immediate need for power and as our needs increase we will have plenty of time to meet our requirements.

Before I go on, the Campbell bunch has misled us all. On the need for power issue, they point to the amount of power imports during the year without telling you that sometimes that’s because Hydro can make a hell of a good deal by importing power from Alberta and selling it to great profit below the line; other times they import power because it is, at that moment, cheaper than the cost to make our own.

Look at it this way. Suppose you are a power company for a city and you create the power for $50 a unit and sell it at $75. You find out that the company who creates power for a neighbouring city will sell it to you for $40; you’d be a damned fool not to take it and make $10 while conserving your own power system.

Source: www.thetyee.ca/…

LS » There is no doubt we are going to need more electricity in the very near future to compensate for the ridiculous price of gas and the seemingly limited supply of global oil resources, but destroying our rivers for this cause is asinine even with the cleanliness of hydroelectricity over oil. There must be another way to produce enough energy. Better get Bush out of there and start innovating, the last seven years has been a write-off. (And besides maybe our very wealthiest citizens, who would want to privatize BC Hydro, should not the government (ie. the people) control our most important resources and not some profit-hungry corporation that doesn’t care about our environment?)