Down on Petrol, but from a Different Angle Today

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=10252015

I realize that I have been rather prolific lately, and as you saw on yesterday’s post concerning the CAFE Standards and Monday’s on Petrol, I have a big issue with our lack of conservation in policy. Reading the Economist, above I posted the link, they have written about something I was talking about with a Gold Market expert a few months in arrears. Quite simply, we are driving ourselves to starvation. A lack of fuel economy and a thirst for larger automobiles predicated from bad policy in Washington, is consuming all of the commodities in the world at a faster rate.

Seriously, if one were to sample the aggregate for all commodities’ pricing, if I was an Economist I would; they would find a substantive increase in the market price for commodities. Some of the commodities are the likes of Gold, because in a tumultuous world, Gold is a safer bet than currency or bonds for longevity. Of course, with resources being finite, and our population ever-expanding, the commodities like ore are shooting through the roof as well. What’s just as interesting are rights and ownership pertaining to water, which we should watch in the coming elections. Then, of course, there is petroleum.

Quite simply, we have a finite pool of resources in the world, and we have an ever-increasing population with needs for them. The areas to right now invest are the commodities, particularly if one is moving for longevity. Those companies in the business of extracting these things are only going to grow. In the meantime, we need to do a much better job of reducing demand for this pool of supplies, all of which are only growing more limited.

This is not a granola-loving tree-hugging perspective. I can’t get on my high-horse about environmentalism with a clear conscious; I am by no means a model member of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace; however, from an Economic perspective, I don’t like paying more for everything. Not only are peoples’ lives throughout the world affected by this short term greed, but, in the long term, our way of life is in jeopardy. With resources growing more and more limited, we only have more war to look forward to, more likely than not, these wars we will fight over indirect dependency on a region’s commodities.

It is unquestionable as to why we have such a vested interest in the Middle East to date. Quite simply, by limiting our demand for finite resources, we remove ourselves and our society from indentured servitude to our interests elsewhere in the world. In the meantime, as a society, we will continue putting our values and freedom on the block to sustain material needs, which are solely predicated off what the Jones’s have and our lust for what marketers tell us we want.