It was suggested that this law would reduce prices by 20 to 30 cents a gallon. The legislation that ended the daily contribution to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve became law on May 16 and prices rose throughout the next week, taking a large jump on the Friday before Memorial Day.
Now what? If the oil companies are not gouging the American public (and that's a big "if") then simple theories of supply and demand mean oil is not going down.
Is there any other choice left other than to get serious about alternative energy sources, conservation and gas mileage in our cars? We're well behind the rest of the world in terms of addressing our serious and expensive addiction to foreign oil.
Gas at $4 a gallon hurts and, like higher food prices and all the other increases related to higher energy costs, it is most hurtful to those who have the least.
And while $4 a gallon hurts, it seems to be the price at which many Americans are willing to alter their behavior. It seems to be the price at which Americans are looking at Detroit and wondering, what happened?
Why can a country that can launch the Hubble Space Telescope and can broadcast a spacecraft landing on Mars, not engineer transportation that uses alternative fuel sources?
Why can't we take the money we were previously spending on oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and use it to develop new technology, or provide people with tax credits for solar panels or hydrogen cars, or subsidies to insulate homes and grow food locally?
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