We've known for years and years that gas prices would one day rise. They've been going up slowly but steadily (until the last year when it has gone up quickly) yet they continued to pump out gas guzzling SUV's and trucks. Now people have finally come to their sense and stopped buy them and Detroit is going all, "OMG! We didn't see that coming!". WHAT?!?! Ever since gas started going over $2, especially once it hit $3 and the middle east became increasingly destabilized and the GDP of China and India started increasing like mad. What kind of blinkered fools couldn't have guessed?

They saw what they wanted to see.

Like all of us.

The fact was they were making profit on SUVs and large cars. They could compete with foreign car makers and beat them on that, while foreign car makers have an advantage with small cars.

US industry and US politics favors short term "solutions" to problems. That is the (or one of the) biggest failure of democracy and corporations, that they are based on the short term.

With democracy, the next election is all that counts, not 10, 20, 50 years from now. With a corporation, the stock price now is what counts. The CEO and President is there for a decade or so and then leaves, with a huge amount of money, even if the company loses money.

Ford Motor Company is different, in that the Ford family has a huge say in it and they stick around. However, the current CEO is Bill Ford who only became CEO in 1998.

In 2000 he announced that the Company would achieve a 25% improvement in fuel efficiency in the company's light truck fleet, including SUVs, by mid-decade. That commitment proved to be impractical, given consumer preference for heavy towing capacity, and large powerful engines in their trucks. The company then announced in 2003 that competitive market conditions and technological and cost challenges would prevent it from achieving the goal. Ford also terminated its ongoing electric vehicle program as impractical and unaffordable from a profitable business standpoint. Some environmentalists then questioned Bill Ford and the Company's commitment to environmental concerns, and others pointed to Ford Motor Company's continued marketing of the fuel-thirsty SUVs as evidence of an other-than-green corporate agenda. Ford's position is that for the Company to remain profitable and competitive (and remain in business), it must supply what customers demand. However, during 2006, there was an unexpectedly large swing in consumer demand away from pickups and SUVs, to smaller cars and crossover vehicles, due to rapid increases in gasoline prices, and Ford Motor Company was largely unprepared for such a sudden shift in demand. As a result, Ford's total market share dropped in the US.

As you can see, the problem wasn't that Detroit was stupid, per se, but that the American market was buying big cars and SUVs. Since that was where the profit was, so were the manufacturing.

Foreign car makers looked more to the global market, which was buying smaller cars.

The real way Detroit was stupid is that they made Americans want big gas guzzling cars. All the advertising they do works and what it says is "Buy a huge SUV with 50,000 HP or you are not a man (or woman)".

Since 1980, technology has improved massively for cars. Especially in the computer controlled area, as well as materials that are lighter. So why hasn't gas mileage improved? Because instead of putting the "savings" into gas mileage, they put it into more horsepower. Because every TV ad for a car shows the car zooming down the highway at unsafe speeds. If your car can't do 0 to 60 in 3 seconds, it sucks and you are a wimp.

The problem isn't the public nor the car companies. The problem is government regulation. We haven't built a new refinary since the 70's and we have pretty much handcuffed the oil companies in regards to US exploration, and don't even get me started on our need for more nuclear power.

This is simple supply and demand. The world market for oil is increasing and the supply is staying relatively constant. This drives up the price. I would love to see congress relax some of the environmental regulations and open up offshore drilling...Hell, China is drilling 60 miles off the coast of Florida. There is no reason we should not take advantage of the resources we have available.

Yes, electric cars/Hybrids are nice but lets be honest, the average person can't afford to buy them yet.

Oh yeah, people are stupid too. But I'd think a company would have a little longer vision... it seems that some of them do. I gloat a bit when I see people are struggling to pay to put gas in those hogs they drive and the value on their SUV's and trucks are dropping like mad. Maybe in a few years I will have more than 6" between my car and the one parked next to me in a parking lot!

I could have driven a gas guzzler too, but I chose not to because I always felt our gas prices were very unstable, for one. For two, I wanted to do as little polluting as possible. I was pretty incredulous in the 90's when I saw the explosion of gas guzzlers. It was still clear in my mind what we'd been through in the 70's and 80's and I couldn't believe people we're making the same mistakes.

This is simple supply and demand. The world market for oil is increasing and the supply is staying relatively constant. This drives up the price. I would love to see congress relax some of the environmental regulations and open up offshore drilling...Hell, China is drilling 60 miles off the coast of Florida. There is no reason we should not take advantage of the resources we have available.
This is what I see many people say.

To me, this lacks vision. It is the same old "Drill more oil" attitude.

What is missing is any look at the big picture. The idea of just pumping more and consuming more oil was shown to be a false answer 30 years ago.

Oil is polluting. Even if you don't believe in global warming, it still gives off air pollution which kills thousands of people every year.

Oil is limited. Even if we drill in every spot the oil companies want to, we will run out of oil one day.

Looking at the big picture (centuries, not months) oil is just another phase of the industrial age. First was wood, then coal, then oil. Delaying the next step just continues the failures of oil. The pollution, the economic price and the political price.

It is way past time to move to renewable sources of energy. Wind, solar (both direct and thermal), geothermal, non-food ethanol, and other sources. This should have been a massive research project like the Manhattan Project or the Apollo project which should have started in 1980 or sooner. Instead, the vast power of the oil companies and other interests said to just drill more (and pay more).

The embedded interests go around claiming that renewable energy is not economically competitive. What they never mention is the hundreds of billions of dollars the government (that's us) has spent on research, land grants, tax breaks, and other "give aways" to the oil and nuclear industries, that continue today.

If the same amount of money had been spent on renewable energy, we would have it today.

There is no "free market" in the USA and there never has been, ever since the first tariffs were placed on goods in 1789. Ever since then, government interference in the market has only grown. But since the interference has benefited the oil and nuclear companies, they go around saying how only they can compete in the "free market".

Yup, it's a fair race when the other side starts at the halfway point...

Another reason to move away from oil:

Global Energy Network Depends on a Few Vulnerable Nodes

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/five-vulnerable.html

Another thing is if we drill oil here it isn't necessarily going to be used by Americans. It goes onto the global market with the rest of it and might well be used in India or China. That is unless we Nationalize our oil production and that seems unlikely... to say the least.

Doesn't matter where it's used. In the long run, if supply goes up, price goes down.

I am not saying that we don't need renewable energy. I agree that we do. Unfortunately the technology just isn't there yet..and even if we had a huge breakthrough tomorrow, it would be years before it was affordable for the average person. This means that we will be stuck with oil for many years to come. There are also all the other things we do with oil besides energy such as plastics, candles, etc that guarantee its not going anywhere anytime soon.

I really think we should be moving more towards nuclear power. It's safe and, if we get rid of the damn ban on Plutonium Uranium Recovery that Jimmy Carter signed into law, extremly clean.

Doesn't matter where it's used. In the long run, if supply goes up, price goes down.
Well, at the same time the demand is also going up. In reality it'd take years to even get it out of the ground then once it is out of the ground the prices and demand have gone up even more. If we spent the interim time investing in government funded research of new technology then perhaps we'd not really even need it.

For now, the solution to high gas prices is high gas prices. People are finally starting to conserve and that should slow things down a bit.

If we spent the interim time investing in government funded research of new technology then perhaps we'd not really even need it.

For now, the solution to high gas prices is high gas prices. People are finally starting to conserve and that should slow things down a bit.
High gas prices are killing every area of the economy. I have friends who own restaurants who say that their business is down close to 15% right now while their costs for supplies are up about 7%. My father owns rental properties and the cost of supplies to make repairs has gone up enough that he laid off two of his part time workers. My wife and I have canceled our yearly vacation because the price of airline tickets is almost triple what it was this time last year. One of the parents in my sons school told me that she is considering quitting her job and going on state aid because she can no longer afford both the commute and daycare for her son.

Government involvement is what caused this problem in the first place. Our politicians have handcuffed the energy industry to the point that neither a nuclear power plant or a refinery has been built since the 1970's.

Google says that between the federal government and the energy industry we spent about $15,000,000,000 in 2006 on alternative energy research. Every automaker is spending hundreds of millions more looking into electric cars and hybrids...it's not like everyone is ignoring the problem and it's not like throwing even more money at it is going to fix the problem.

If the government is going to subsidize something, I would much rather it be nuclear power plants and refineries.

Yes, prices are going to eventually stabilize but how many companies will be out of business and how many people unemployed before the smoke clears? conservation and alternative energy sources are great long term solutions but for the short term we need to start looking at increasing supply.

Prices may stabalize, but we'll never see a barrel of crude go below $100 again.

Think about it, this is exactly what Middle Eastern oil producing nations (including the Saudis') want. Their wealth continues to increase while the world economies wilter to the point that they can be bought easily. How many more troubled fortune 500 companies (a few banks and a couple of newspapers come right to mind) will get essentially purchased by Middle Easterners?

We have to wean ourselves off of ALL foreign powersources before our economy gets forced into a 3rd world one.

Alternatives are more realistic than people think. The problem is that there is very little government involvement since most politicians have either made their wealths from oil or have oil companies lining their backpockets.

Why not turn the unused land of desert states into huge solar panel fields? This could power the whole country. Popular Science did an article on it not too long ago.

Why not force all new vehicles to be flex vehicles? I read that it would add only another $100 or so to the car's cost. Now big oil would have some competition.

The problem with nuclear energy is that there is nothing you can do with the waste except store it. The halflife of the waste is 10,000 years, so unless they come out with a new technique that eliminates the waste, I'm against it. I'm against anything that hands a problem down to our children that we didn't care enough to think about before hand.

There are plenty of things to do, our politicians are the biggest problem. Thus is the problem with politicians without the fear of term limits.

Unfortunatley, nothing will be done in any area I mentioned and we'll see $200 barrels of crude before you know it. I'm sure another war is brewing too, so the speculators will use that to boost prices a bit more.

Nuclear waste can be reprocessed; other countries such as France, Russia, and Japan are doing it today.

Read about the Integral Fast Reactor for one particularly promising design:
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/anlw.html
Normally, the transuranic elements would go to the waste stream with the fission products, but in the IFR, they are kept with the fuel and sent back to the reactor to also serve as fuel. In the above description, note that the waste stream consists of only the fission products. The result is that instead of a waste that remains radioactive for many thousands of years, as would be the case if the transuranic elements were present, the radioactivity in the waste will decay to a value less than that of the original uranium ore in about 200 years.

This was interesting. NPR had a segment on how many people are trying to dump their SUV's thus driving down the price. This one guy had bought an Escalade for $70,000 when gas was $3.20 a gallon. Now that it has gone up 1 dollar, he wants to get rid of the Escalade (this is one year later) and he was offered $32,000 for it.

But really, you could buy a lot of gasoline instead of taking a 38k loss.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92259328

France does reprocess their nuclear waste. However, it does not eliminate all waste. It just reduces it.

The Meuse/Haute Marne Underground Research Laboratory is a laboratory located 500 metres underground in Bure in the Meuse département. It allows to study the geological formation in order to evaluate its capacity for deep geological repository of high level and long lived medium level radioactive waste. It is managed by Agence nationale pour la gestion des déchets radioactifs (Andra).

This is where France plans to store their waste that can not be reprocessed (and that which is left over after reprocessing). Note that it is not a permanent storage site, as France has admitted that they do not have any permanent answer to nuclear waste. Instead, they plan to store it there until someone figures out a better answer.

By the way, before claiming that nuclear power is the answer to our problems, be aware that many nuclear plants in the USA are not operating at full capacity. Why? Because they don't have enough water to do so. Nuclear plants require huge amounts of water and due to drought conditions, they don't have enough water.

Nuclear (fission) power is a dead end. Besides all the problems, it actually is not economic without government subsidies.

Again, as I said before, if the government had / would spend the same amounts they have spent on nuclear and oil, we would have renewable safe energy.

But no huge corporations lobbied the government for subsidies to develop and deploy them.

The US energy problem is multi-pronged. First is generation of electricity. Second is automobiles. Third is heating.

Nuclear power is not the answer, even if we got 100% of our electricity from it, as automobiles use oil, and homes are heated with oil, natural gas, and propane, as well as electricity, and industry uses oil and natural gas.

Claims that nuclear power would free up oil (and reduce the price) for other uses if not used for electrical generation are also not logical. Half of US electricity comes from coal. So nuclear power would have no effect on that. It takes many years to build a nuclear plant. It also takes years to build a solar thermal plant. Guess which one is safer and doesn't create nuclear waste?

Simple answers are not going to work. Politicians like to give them out, "Drill more oil in the USA, build more nuclear plants!". That does not solve the real problems. They are just blaming their greed and lack of foresight on the environmentalists.

The answers are many fold. We need to move to an all electric or hydrogen automobile. Hybrids are a interim step.

The real answers do not involve the same old "Drill more" and "Build nuclear plants" garbage they have been handing us for decades.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" - Albert Einstein

It's time we stopped doing the same thing over and over. It has failed.

As for drill more, we've heard from the pro drillers so many times, "Just let us build the Alaska pipeline and we will have all the oil we need". Guess what? We did that. And we don't have the oil we need. "Oh, you know, we need to open up the Alaska wilderness that we agreed to leave alone when we built the pipeline, then we will have all the oil we need". "Oh, also open up the off shore land" "Oh, yeah, also open up the National Parks".

It will solve the problem....the problem with their stock not going up as much as they want. As for the USA's energy problems, no.

T. Boone Pickens, the 117th-richest person in America, has announced "The Pickens Plan" (http://www.pickensplan.com).

A major feature of the plan is replacing the 22% of its electricity that the United States gets from natural gas with wind energy, which would then allow that natural gas to provide 38% of the States' fuel for transportation and reduce its dependence on foreign oil. The Pickens Plan calls for the United States to leverage its wind corridor in the middle of the country which stretches from Texas through the great plains to the Canadian border.

While I would not be friends with him (he donated to Bush and the Swift Vets for Lies (err, Truth)), his plan does have some good points.

Wind energy can provide at least 20% of US electricity, according to the Department of Energy and other sources. And Pickens might be the man who can make it happen, if he lives long enough (he is 80).

The idea of using the "savings" of natural gas for cars, however, is not something I think is going to fly. I would think the extra electricity can be used to cut down on coal as well as hopefully help power electric cars. We also will most likely use more electricity in the future, so it will help.

In any case, natural gas already has plenty of uses, from heating homes to generating electricity. Anyone here who uses it to heat their home and hot water I expect pays more than enough to hope that the wind power would help keep the price down, rather then power cars.

Cost for nuclear waste site jumps to $90 billion

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25692300/

The problem I keep hearing about making wind farms in the mid-west is that we don't have the transmission lines to get the energy to the places where it is needed most, the coasts.

Great idea, but a few stumbling blocks along the way.

What I keep wondering about is why we aren't building these glass and concrete skyscrapers with solar panels on the sides. But actually I think I know, we'd be blocking someone's view.

The problem I keep hearing about making wind farms in the mid-west is that we don't have the transmission lines to get the energy to the places where it is needed most, the coasts.

Great idea, but a few stumbling blocks along the way.

What I keep wondering about is why we aren't building these glass and concrete skyscrapers with solar panels on the sides. But actually I think I know, we'd be blocking someone's view.

The solution to that particular problem may be solved. It seems that some researchers found a way to apply extremely thin layers of coloured paint between two plates of glass. This would not be so exciting (that is mostly what smoked and coloured glass does anyway), but they found some substance that trapped certain wavelengths of light in that thin layer and directed it to the window frame. There they placed a narrow strip of photo voltaic cells all around the glass plate. The advantage was that they needed a lot less area of expensive solar panels (only strips the thickness of the glass), light was highly concentrated on those strips (and limited to certain wavelengths so they could optimise the panels for that). And the panels were much less susceptible to getting dirty, being encapsulated inside the building and behind the glass panes. Also since a significant amount of light was diverted to the solar panels buildings would heat up a lot less, cutting down on the need for air conditioning. The disadvantages include a permanent smoked glass effect (depending on how much light is being directed towards the solar panels) and the fact that in winter when you -want- the building to heat up from sunlight all that light is still directed to the solar panels (so the heating bill goes up some); it is not something you can switch on and off. It is not (yet) exactly cheap either, especially since solar panels are produced in as large panes as they can make and not in strips 3cm thick and as long as possible.

And of course a system like this can be fitted into existing buildings (when the glazing panes are being replaced anyway) and can be plugged into any power outlet in the room (assuming the wiring of the building is up to the extra current flowing through it of course).


Eri

Wouldn't it be cool if those buildings could be mostly self-powered?

My dream is to live off the grid. I'm just not rich enough to do that. :(

Wouldn't it be cool if those buildings could be mostly self-powered?

My dream is to live off the grid. I'm just not rich enough to do that. :(

Thus, you sum up why green will not as of yet, mainstream with today's technology. Once solar, wind, and the rest of the green technologies become cheaper, and able to compete in a free market (no subsidies, etc) per KwH with the current means of producing power, then everyone will switch, because then it makes financial sense to switch, and most people will happily help save the planet and money (over the long term) at the same time.

Everyone that I know went for the CFL's once their costs came down, and it was shown it would pay for itself inside of a year. All my friends and my parents, who aren't too into the whole "green" thing, they all switched once the CFL price came down far enough to make financial sense.

Everyone would love to "stick it" to the big ole mean power companies, and never pay a power bill again, but when it costs around $0.90 per KwH to produce via current solar tech(over the 20 year life of the solar cell) vs. $0.03 per KwH to produce via old tech like coal, then only the "giraffe money (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Giraffe+Money)" people will be able to switch.

The problem I keep hearing about making wind farms in the mid-west is that we don't have the transmission lines to get the energy to the places where it is needed most, the coasts.
------------------
Texas Approves Nation's Largest Wind-Power Project

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) ― Texas officials gave preliminary approval Thursday [2008-07-17] to the nation's largest wind-power project, a plan to build billions of dollars worth of new transmission lines to bring wind energy from gusty West Texas to urban areas.

Texas is already the national leader in wind power, and supporters say Thursday's move by the Public Utility Commission will make the Lone Star State a leader in moving energy to the urban areas consume it.

http://wcbstv.com/national/texas.wind.power.2.773461.html

----------------------------

As you see, Texas is building some power lines. They don't go to the "coast" if you mean the east and west coasts of the USA, because the amount of power isn't even enough to power all of Texas cities. But it will help.

The Pickens Plan, as I linked before, considers this kind of stuff. This is phase one of part one of the plan.

I wonder if having lots of wind farms will perturb the air turbulence somehow? I'm sure there will be some unintended consequences, there always are.

Good for Texas though!

I'd love to move to all CFL but my house has a ton of recessed lights and so far I haven't found any CFL's that work in there. They get too hot I guess. But they're coming out with LCD lights very soon, perhaps those would work.

CFLs give off less heat then incandescent bulbs. That's what makes them more efficient, they don't waste as much energy as heat.

I also think you mean LED lights, not LCD.

As for "unintended consequences" of wind power, there are two known ones.

One is the appearance of the wind towers. For some reason that is beyond my ability to understand, some people dislike the look of them. They seem to feel it "ruins" the skyline. About the only thing I disagree with Ted Kennedy about is that he is opposed to building a wind farm off the shore of Cape Cod because of NIMBY feelings that it would "ruin" the properties because you would see them as you look out to sea.

The other is that migrating birds can be killed by flying into the blades.

But important questions remain: Could large wind farms, whipping up the air with massive whirling blades, alter local weather conditions? Could changing the arrangement of these turbines lead to even more efficient power production? The researchers from Johns Hopkins and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute hope their work will help answer such questions.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071215212425.htm

At least they're trying to anticipate any problems that might crop up.

We've had huge wind farms in CA for a looong time now. Some over by Palm Springs and I remember seeing a lot on a drive up to SF once.

I live in a place where I get a lot of wind blowing up a canyon, channeled from down low, I always wished I had a wind turbine!

Wouldn't it be cool if those buildings could be mostly self-powered?

My dream is to live off the grid. I'm just not rich enough to do that. :(

A house that is independent of the power grid is difficult to build, but if you accept being mostly independent it is only a modest investment. (it is still 20 to 25 of the total building cost, mind).

The first step is NOT investing heavily in solar panels and things like that. You have to start with the design. What you want is energy that is inside the building to stay there, and energy that is entering the building (through sunlight and high temperatures outside) to do so in a controlled manner. The first will reduce the need for heating (still the largest part of the energy footprintf of a building). The second will reduce the need for cooling (the second largest cost in most of the USA).
This starts by building heavy. I.e. use concrete or brick inner walls at least, and preferably bricks as outer walls too. Have at least 15cm between those walls and put 12cm good quality insulation in that space. This ensures that a building loses its internal heat only slowly and that it also will heat up slowly in hot weather. Depending on the local climate you will have to design specific solutions to windows and doors, but there are ways to deal with them in a way that does not affect the energy usage of the building too greatly. Glass lets in heat and allows it to escape easily, even triple paned panels. You want to minimise the excess heat coming in (by shading and recessing the window) and you want to make sure that the heat that does come in is trapped and moved away to where it does not do harm.
After the building itself is as energy saving as you can make it (for realistic cost), you add the additionaly equipment to make the rest work. The easiest (though not necessarily cheapest) way is to have thin water pipes run through floors and walls near windows. That water is pumped down deep into the earth and circled back up again. What this achieves is that it cools during the day and heats during the night and winter (though in winter you are likely to need additional heating to keep the building comfortable).
The pumps for this can be run on solar panels and small wind turbines.
The other, relatively cheap, investment is to use bio matter to generate natural gas that can be used for heating, cooking and in some cases generating electricity. Only then do you add solar panels (the most expensive investment for the amount of energy it generates), small wind turbines (the type that rotates around a vertical axis is less efficient but easier to add and less dependent on weather conditions. For those days that there is neither sun nor wind (or too much wind) you will need a connection to the power station, though over the year it should be possible to have your house operate with a tiny electricity bill.
You will not be able to do entirely without external electricity and if you cook on gas a hookup for that, but the annual savings should be considerable and pay back for the investment.


Eri.

Here's the story of a lady who built her own home off the grid in the back country of the city where I live. Sounds kind of nice! It was made with straw bales.
http://www.strawbalediary.com/

Article in business week today about Republican's off-shore drilling fantasies: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jul2008/db20080718_965702.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

... and the reality they kind of gloss over.

The real reason they're lifting the ban, their corporate cronies want to make money.
The oil industry has been pressing lawmakers for access. The National Ocean Industries Assn. (NOIA), which represents 300 companies engaged in offshore oil and gas drilling, spent $200,000 in the first quarter, according to a disclosure form filed in the House. The group, whose members include drilling giants Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO) and Halliburton (HAL), used the money to press for lifting the offshore oil ban and on a variety of other issues. NOIA also includes companies that would more immediately benefit from more access: seismic exploration companies including CGGVeritas, WesternGeco, a subsidiary of oil-services firm Schlumberger PGS Geophysical.

Well, your Business Week link destroys the fantasy that Off Shore drilling will "solve" the problem and this link:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/20/news/economy/alaska_drilling/index.htm?cnn=yes

does the same with Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

We can't drill our way to low gas prices.

"What we can save by focusing on energy efficiency in our vehicles would dwarf [oil from the refuge]. That's the direction we need to be headed."

"Consumption would go back up," said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm. "People would revert to their bad habits, and prices would rise again."

Tertzakian sees the value of drilling in Alaska from an energy security perspective - the more oil that's under free-market control the better, he said. And he thinks it could be pumped without too much environmental disruption.

But he also thinks the whole debate over drilling in the refuge is a distraction.

"Only 15% of the energy in a barrel of oil is used to turn the wheels of a car," he said, highlighting the need for better technology. "You can't just throw barrels at the problem."
A distraction. A better term would be political scapegoating and misinformation. Blame the environmentalists rather than admit you have no plan for dealing with our oil addiction and have done nothing about it for decades.

Apparently, the person to blame for $4 a gallon gasoline is Obama.

At least according to McCain:

http://www.youtube.com/v/EiTpS4MK3D8&hl=en&fs=1

ANNOUNCER: Gas prices - $4, $5, no end in sight, because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.

No to independence from foreign oil.

Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?

CHANT: Obama, Obama

ANNOUNCER: One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets.

Don't hope for more energy, vote for it. McCain.

JOHN MCCAIN: I'm John McCain and I approve this message.
Yup, Obama has been in the US Congress since January 4, 2005 (about 3 years) and McCain has been since January 3, 1983 (about 25 years), but the blame for our national energy policy (i.e. NO energy policy), is clearly Obama's.

We've known for years and years that gas prices would one day rise. They've been going up slowly but steadily (until the last year when it has gone up quickly) yet they continued to pump out gas guzzling SUV's and trucks. Now people have finally come to their sense and stopped buy them and Detroit is going all, "OMG! We didn't see that coming!". WHAT?!?! Ever since gas started going over $2, especially once it hit $3 and the middle east became increasingly destabilized and the GDP of China and India started increasing like mad. What kind of blinkered fools couldn't have guessed?

Detroit made plenty of fuel efficient cars in the 90s, but they were inferior to the Japanese economy-mid size cars so not many people bought them. Detroit pumped out so many SUVs and trucks because it's the only thing they could make that was better than the their competitors', but that didn't last long. The Japanese companies started taking market share in SUVs in the early 2000s and in trucks in the mid 2000s - this is why the big 3 were cutting jobs even back when gas prices were still pretty low.

But, does it matter? Japanese car companies make a better car at a cheaper cost while creating more American jobs.

But, does it matter? Japanese car companies make a better car at a cheaper cost while creating more American jobs.
This is a good point.

Exactly whether it matters if there are any American car companies at all is a complex question.

Many "Japanese" cars sold in the USA are made here anyway.

After considering a great many factors (of which I have only slight knowledge), I would say that it matters, but not a great deal.