Peak oil...or not? (I'm expecting $3.50 gas by this spring and summer)

[RobertSmalls]

And then there's coal: Peak coal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although individual countries' production have peaked - Britain in 1913 and Germany in 1958 - world coal production will continue to rise for a very long time, though obviously not forever. I'm more worried about what the CO2 levels will be like if we burn all the hundreds gigatons of coal we have available. Leaving coal in the ground is just about the most stable form of carbon sequestration imaginable, and I think we should do just that.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

Oh, no, you're not mistaken at all.

I hate the high taxes too, plus we pay VAT (Sales Tax) on the total price of fuel including duty, so its double bubble for the government here.

Having said that it has two main advantages (or not depending on your point of view I suppose)

1. Free health care, cradle to the grave without insurance (although not dentists in the UK ironically )

2. Worldwide oil price rises hit us less. Pump prices only went up 10-20% at most during the spike a few years ago compared with almost doubling in the US.

Oh, and a 3rd is that we get loads of cool economical cars too.

The downside is that a proportion of the income goes to the EU directly. No idea why as the EU hasn't had its accounts approved for a number of years now...

[wagonman76]

Doesn't EU also have good roads?

[Laurentiu]

Well, EU doesn't have federal government or something like the FHWA in the States to take care of the highways as well as the fact that the countries in the EU vary in GDP/capita from as high as 105.000$ (Luxembourg) to as low as 6.200$(Bulgaria) so relatively, not all countries governments can afford the same expenditures. The best designed highway system I would believe is the Autobahn in Germany but I remember reading somewhere that Spain spends more than any EU country on their roads (or at least they did until the crisis hit).

Here in Cyprus, highways are ok but city roads leave a lot be desired...