Gas Tank Hell!!! : Gas prices are out of control with no relief in sight.
I think that everyone has felt the pain at the pump caused by Russia’s shenanigans in the Ukraine. Even if you don't own a vehicle, you've seen your groceries increase in price. Is this finally enough to make us all run out and buy Teslas? Of course not, but you can be sure that there aren’t a lot of other industries or commodities that could get away with the price hikes that the petroleum industry does. They have us over a barrel (pun intended). High gas prices made our vulnerability obvious, but we already had a serious problem. Increased domestic production, or release of oil from the strategic national oil reserve are only a temporary band-aid. The unfortunate truth however is that we as a species wont make a serious move away from fossil fuels until they are extremely scarce (making them prohibitively expensive) or completely depleted in accessible places.
Lets just say tonight while we’re all sleeping the Santa Claus of cars came around and switched every single vehicle in the United States out for an electric vehicle of the exact same look and performance. We would still need petroleum to make plastic to make the convenient packaging for all sorts of products. Plastic is everywhere! Bio plastics are 20–50% more costly to make. Our biggest obstacle by far however is how we currently ship things over water. Which accounts for 1 billion metric tons of carbon emissions each year.
Huge container ships run on diesel because it makes the most business sense. A company called Fleetzero is currently working to provide an alternative where ships would run on electric and “refuel” by replacing batteries the size of shipping containers. Diesel fuel for the moment still remains the best bang for your buck. Pound for pound it contains more potential energy than batteries. A forward leap in battery technology, like a next generation graphene battery being easier to produce would change the math.
The disruption in supply due to the trouble in Ukraine caused a spike in oil prices and even though that's come down some, gas prices haven't. Hopefully we will soon see a day when; more efficient solar panels, next generation batteries, bio plastics, and electric vehicles are so widely used that the drop in demand will trigger a permanent drop in price.
