The Question About Fuel

Australia is currently in heated debate about an Emissions Trading Scheme. Even though the emissions from the nations fleet of cars amounts to only 8% of those emissions, it seems that is the focal point of the bulk of the argument. This was the headline that led major news reports across the Country yesterday Friday.

PETROL TIPPED TO HIT $8.00 A LITRE BY 2018. (We call it Petrol here in Australia, while you guys call it Gas.)

This is the link to the story in the ABC News Online media outlet, and that’s the Australian version of ABC which bears no relation to the US ABC.

I’ll do the conversion to US gallons and then also take into account the current exchange rate.

What that exactly equates to in US terms is $28.60 per gallon. If you’re grumbling now with gas hovering around $4.00 a gallon, the hairs on the back of your neck must be prickling up when you read this.

Admitted it’s still ten years off, but the thought of that is pretty frightening. That equates to filling the tank of your average car and then forking out around $500 across the counter. That’s $500 for a tank of gas.

So, here in Australia, the newscasts ran with the story, and sent out reporters to service stations (gas stations for you guys) asking people what would they do if it ever did reach that price.

People said that they’d just take public transport to work.

That means Governments would have to significantly ramp up purchasing new trains, and buses. However, all it really does is move those emissions sideways into the Government sector. They will obviously have to ramp up the prices of travel in that public transport, and then run so many extra services that it would quite obviously send those public authorities and also the private contractors into meltdown when it came to the vastly increased scheduling of those services.

I also hesitate to even mention it, but a sidelight of all this is that humble guy behind the counter at your average neighbourhood gas station. With the amount of people putting gas in their tanks at that price, then that guy behind the counter becomes a pretty attractive target for the criminal element in society who prey on gas stations, The amount of money he will be holding will be greater by almost an exponential factor. After an hour of just average takings, he could be holding around fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. Because of that, surely then, security would have to be ramped up. That is assuming people still have cars to fill or if people will be visiting gas stations.

Odd, isn’t it? Remember twenty years back all those pictures coming out of China with hardly a car on the road, and yet the roads were choked with bicycle riding citizens, while all you got from the US was choked freeways during rush hour. Pretty soon, those images might be reversed.

Again, this is just another case where everybody loses.