Looking ahead, are you ready for gas rationing ?

[kentuck]

This week, over 2 million barrels of oil per day were shut off from Iraq when the insurgents blew 4 holes in the pipelines carrying oil down to Basra and to the tankers. The supply was totally shut down.

Is this hte next step in Saudi Arabia? If so, the entire world will be on gas rationing. How will that affect your life? Will you be ready to carpool? Can you make it on 5 gallons per week?

[daa]

1. Will we use the same cards Carter printed up

or will be get new ones printed by some repuke outfit?

[mhr]

2. Peak Oil - Here Now - Impacting Your Life Today!

Websites of interest include:

http://globalpublicmedia.com/
http://www.greatchange.org/dinosaurblood.html
http://www.peakoil.org/
http://www.peakoil.com/
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Home.html
http://www.oilcrash.com/running.htm
http://www.wolfatthedoor.org.uk/
http://www.durangobill.com/Rollover.html
http://www.asponews.org
http://www.gulland.ca/depletion/depletion.htm
http://www.dieoff.org/
http://www.oilanalytics.org/
http://www.oilcrisis.com/
http://www.after-oil.co.uk/
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/
http://hubbert.mines.edu
http://www.museletter.com/archive/cia-oil.html

Books:

Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil
by David Goodstein

The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies
by Richard Heinberg

Hubbert's Peak : The Impending World Oil Shortage
by Kenneth S. Deffeyes

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight : Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation
by Thom Hartmann

The Oil Factor: How Oil Controls the Economy and Your Financial Future
by Stephen Leeb, Donna Leeb

News Groups:

Energy Resources
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources/

Alas Babylon
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlasBabylon/

Running on Empty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2/

[WI_DEM]

3. won't matter to me

I either walk or take the bus to work. I have a car but only use it on when I absolutely need to.

[earthside]

13. What, you don't eat?

Uhm. How do you think all your food gets to the grocery store?

Trucks and freight trains that use diesel ... which is refined from oil... that's how. The price of food and everything else that is delivered by truck and train and plane will go up, up, up in price.

That will matter to you.

And what kind of job do you walk to? Do customers have to get there by car? Or are the products you help make shipped by truck, train, or plane? Or do you use items in your work that have to be delivered? Maybe you will not even have a job to take the bus to if rationing and price rises go on long enough and depress the economy.

Oil price and supply affects EVERYTHING in this nation. Gasoline rationing and the attendant effect of prices will matter to ALL of us.

[LittleApple81]

4. I can. I live in a small town. Foreigners are the ones working in Saudi

Arabia. Once they leave...who is going to extract the oil? The Saudi Royals? There are enough of those leaches, but they have never worked one day in their lives. And they have enough money outside that they don't have to worry about it that much.

[MISSDem]

5. As long as I can work from home,

as I can two days a week now, I can make it on 5 gallons a week. Think how much money we would save.

[bluestateguy]

6. I can handle it just fine.

Unlike some people I can appreciate that war is about sacrifice, not tax cuts, lollipops and sugar canes. The people who will have a beef with it will be the gluttonous, SUV driving types with in the McSuburbs.

[lazarus]

11. or

the people who, due to the state of the economy, have to drive over two hours a day to get to work.

But we're just gluttons, I guess. We could easily pony up an extra 1,000 dollars a month for rent to live closer. :eyes:

[StopThief]

7. Never gonna happen.

Rationing in the '70s made the problem much worse. If the supply goes down the price will go up until demand lowers.

[candy]

12. It wasn't rationed in the 70's --

it was just hard to get. You could buy as much as you wanted.

I don't think that it has been rationed since WWII.

[MuseRider]

8. Anybody

want to buy some horses?

[asthmaticeog]

9. I live close enough to work

to walk or ride my bike. The only reasons I drive despite that are 1) sometimes I have to leave the office and shoot photos in who-knows-what locations, and 2) my neighborhood is kind of island-like, surrounded by a valley of dilapidated industrial roads full of mystery waste and copious amounts of broken glass. No big deal for car or truck tires, but that can end a bike ride real fast, and it's a massive downer to walk through (not to mention breathe). But if I had to, I could get to work in maybe 35 minutes on foot.

[mongo]

10. this will screw over many many people

Out here where there is no public transportation, and a good many people travel 50 miles each way to work in order to get 10-12/hr.

Personally, we'd have to sleep at the store a night or two a week - the poor dog and cats would have a fit. And we only have 15 miles each way to work.

That's also driving my '02 escort. If it goes down or we have to bring the '94 ranger in (only 196,000 miles on that puppy) we would be really screwed. At least now we don't have to drive it unless we need to take two cars in for some reason or I'm going to the lumber store. If my neighbor stopped mowing my grass for me at the store, I'd have to bring the mower back and forth once a week.

You cannot imagine the impact this will have on people outside of the cities and suburbs.

[Heddi]

16. I agree with you

re: people living outside suburban areas.

Currently I live in Seattle---great public transportation, general acceptance of bicyclists, and other "alternative' means of transportation.

However, I grew up in South Carolina. Haven't lived there in 4 years or so, but where I lived (Charleston, decent sized-city for the state) the bus service was so miserable to be useless to those who needed it.

Firstly, the bus route wasn't very comprehensive. You had to literally live in the Projects to be on a bus route, and you literally had to work in one part of town to be able to take a bus to work. If you lived anywhere else, or worked anywhere else, you were SOL. No bus for you.

If you WERE "lucky" enough to take the bus, you'd better hope your job started at 7am and ended at 5pm, because there were no late-night busses. No alternating schedules. Many busses only had 2 stops per day---one at 4am, another at 6pm. If you lived on that route, that's the bus you took if you had no other means of transportation. So what if you didn't have to work until 8am. You'll just get there 4 hours early. No big deal, or anything.

Needless to say, the public transportation system sucked beyond all known suckiness. The city, which is highly republican, cut funding for CARTA (the bus service) which means that the very few bus routes there were 3 years ago have been slashed in half, and they're thinking of cutting off the entire bus service TOTALLY.

Of course, CARTA did NOTHING for people living in rural areas 45+ miles outside of any major city. People who are generally poor, black, uneducated, working menial jobs for menial pay.

So when gas goes up to $5 a gallon, yeah it's nice to laugh at the helmet-hair soccer moms and their SUV's, but there's a FUCK of alot more poor people in this country than rich. There's a FUCK of alot more people who live in rural areas than New York City-type metropolises with busses and trains and all sorts of ways to get to work.

When I see (read?) the glee in posts by DU'ers about 'LETS SHOW THOSE FUCKERS! I *WANT* Gas to get up to $20 a gallon, then maybe those SUV driving fuckers will blah blah blah", I get so sad, because it's not just SUV-driving mother-fuckers who are going to be affected.

Working class poor will be affected. People who don't have the luxury of trading in their old beater of a gas-guzzler and get a new car. People who can't afford to get solar panels on the house and forgo the oil heater under the kitchen floor.

THOSE are the people who will suffer most, and suffer hardest, and suffer worse than any $100k a year marketing assistant.

In another thread similar to this, a poster made the comment that people who live in poor or rural areas should see high gas prices as a way to 'pressure their communities' to install bus systems. As if it's that easy.

[newyawker99]

18. Hi mongo!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[candy]

14. I could manage nicely,living in a suburb as I do,with good pub trans

I would give some my gas to family members who needed it.

[LynzM]

15. We'd be ok, I could bike to work

Luckily, we are close enough... I feel for those who can't afford to live near where they work, and drive decently fuel-efficient cars.

[MadHound]

17. Sorry friend, but you are overblowing matter a little

America's supply of foreign oil is so very diversified that any interruption of supplies from one or more countries is easily replace by other sources. Besides, we haven't depended on Iraqi oil for any serious supply for fifteen years. And if Saudi Arabia is shut down, well Mexico, Venezuala, and Russia(esp. Russia) would be more than happy to step in and take up the slack.

No, the oil tap is going to continue to be fully open until all wells are dry. That is when the real shit will hit the fan, and it will go far beyond rationing friend. And yes, I am quickly becoming prepared to deal with that scenario. I believe it is coming up quick, quicker than we know, and when it hits it will make the Dark Ages look positively radiant.