Disclaimer: I am not an economist! But recently a marketing guy pretended to be an atmospheric scientist, so I figure it's my turn to pretend to be an economist.
The price for a barrel of oil broke through $130 today, a 30% increase in under 5 months. It will fluctuate some, but those fluctuations will be around an ever increasing trend. I hope everyone here has been thinking about how you'll be coping with energy prices in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years.
It's not just the direct price of oil, of course. Our use of oil and other fossil fuels have driven up the cost of food and everything else with embedded FFs, and over time has affected climate as well. This is going to get worse before it gets better, and if we maintain our addiction to fossil fuel this will NOT be getting better. If we stick to business as usual this may be the century that loses New Orleans, parts of Florida and the Atlantic seaboard to water, and parts of California and the West to lack of water. And this will come sooner and harder than we want to think about.
This post is a bit long, so here's the (not exactly profound) short and sweet: we need a stiff price on carbon, and to repudiate modern Republicanism.
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