Whenever a problem is solved, the solution never seems to go away – or even get dialed back. If anything, the government – or busybodies who use the government to achieve their never-ending aims – doubles down on the solution.
For instance, cheap gas.
It is driving Certain People batty. They cannot stand it that not everyone is buying a hybrid or – better yet – an electric car. Instead, many are buying SUVs and trucks. Some of these people may not even need them but simply like them.
And because they can afford to drive them, they do.
It’s just horrible.
Since new gas taxes aren’t politically feasible – they are too visible and already disgustingly disproportionate to the cost of the fuel itself – and it’s not enough that high-mileage cars are readily available on the market and can be purchased by anyone who wants one – new and higher taxes must be applied to the cars that use “too much” gas.
As Certain People see it.
These Certain People can be found at dens of busybodyness such as The National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity. The busybodies therein are furious that President Trump ordered a delay of a last-minute fuel-economy fatwa issued by his predecessor that would have massively increased “gas guzzler” taxes – which have already cost Americans nearly $1 billion dollars in direct costs and probably several times that sum embedded invisibly in the cost of elaborate technologies put into all cars to make them more “efficient” but much more expensive than they otherwise would have been.
The busybodies – who are very well-funded – have filed a lawsuit demanding that the courts require the federal government to triple down on “gas guzzler” taxes, raising them to $14 (from $5.50) for every 0.1 mile-per-gallon a car falls short of the current mandatory minimum “fleet average” of 35.5 MPG. This will add an estimated $30 million annually to current “compliance costs” – all of them paid for by the people buying cars, not the busybodies at the National Resource Defense Council, et al. 
The busybodies also want that mandatory minimum jacked up to 54.5 MPG, a figure which only one currently-in-production car – the 2018 Toyota Prius Prime plug-in hybrid – measures up to.
The rest are to be taxed into non-existence or at least made so expensive thereby that very few people will be able to afford to buy them – even if the cost of fueling them is perfectly manageable.
This is why cars with V8 engines are already near-extinct or for-the-affluent only. There isn’t one available that costs less than $35,000 to start.
It is also why engines larger than 2.0 liter fours are rapidly disappearing from even the options roster of family cars priced under $30,000. Examples of this decimation include the Honda Accord – which will no longer be offered with an optional V6 beginning next year. But which will be available with a more complicated (and so, expensive) turbocharged four cylinder engine – paired with a ten-speed automatic transmission.
Not a single new Mazda is available with a six cylinder engine – including the company’s largest model, the nine-passenger CX-9 crossover SUV.
It – like so many others – is powered by a small but heavily turbo-boosted four cylinder engine. Solely because when it is off boost, the little four squeaks out slightly better fuel economy and so incurs lower “gas guzzler” fines. A V6 under the hood of a three-row/nine-passenger crossover SUV would make much more sense, functionally as well as economically – but these are not the determining criteria.
Which begs an important question:
Why isn’t the market – buyers exercising free choice – the determining criteria? What gives the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity or any group of busybodies the right to use force to supersede – to negate and punish – the verdict of the market? 
We are not talking about criminal activity here. We are talking about being free to buy and drive the type of vehicle you prefer. And which you have paid for – including the gas that goes in the tank.
Why must everyone be forced – via economic sanctions – to drive the type of car that a handful of busybodies believe we all ought to drive?
Is it not enough that fuel-efficient alternatives are available?
The media covering this and other, similar affronts by pushy minorities attempting – often, successfully – to impose their personal agenda on the majority by force – never asks much less answers this question.
If they won’t perhaps it’s time we did.
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Thank goodness transport fuel is so inexpensive!
We’re watching the big show on Weather Channel and listening to the hurricane watch net on 14.235MHz (shortwave). They’re talking about how the towns are empty. Great that people were already alerted thanks to the weather satellites (put in orbit using rocket fuel, either kerosene or liquified hydrogen derived from oil and natural gas), and ability to leave via superhighway, with enough supplies to live for days.
Oh sure, those idiots who have no memory or historical perspective will crow about global warming being the root cause. Maybe it is, but even so there were storms in Florida and the gulf coast long before Colonel Drake’s folly. And once non-migratory people settled the area they were completely caught off guard by storms, often losing everything including their lives. Even if they did get warning there was no way they could outrun the storm on horseback, and for sure not with many possessions.
And much of the power running those radars, tv stations, satellite uplinks and computer models run on natural gas, nuclear and coal. The nuclear power plants near Houston stayed online running at 100% capacity during Harvey. The wind turbines were all shut down because they can’t be run if there’s too much wind. Of course solar panels don’t produce much when under the thick cloud layer of a hurricane. Florida has a lot of nuclear power, in hardened facilities and inland. If they do need to shut down Georgia’s nuclear plants will be able to pick up the slack.
Imagine this scenario: You need to get out of Miami. The “authorities” are recommending you head north. Far north. You charge up your electric car, laughing at the suckers in line for what should be expensive fuel. Then you get stuck in the traffic leaving. Now you have to make hard choices, either run the AC while sitting in bumper to bumper traffic or make sure you have enough reserve to get to your destination. Oh and better turn off the radio just to make sure you get every little bit out. Remember you won’t see any regenerative braking at the crawl your moving. Will the range be enough to get you to a motel? Is there a motel far enough outside the evacuation area but still close enough to get there in one charge? Will you be able to find a charge station at your bug out shelter? Will there even be power if you don’t get far enough away? Too many variables to add to an already stressful situation. And one thing you don’t have is time.
“Oh sure, those idiots who have no memory or historical perspective will crow about global warming being the root cause. ”
Ready, I live in hope that the next person on TV who says that will get the piss slapped out of him by the closest person to him. I won’t see it since I don’t watch TV, but y’all can link me to a video of it and I’ll laugh my ass off.
Thanks to weather satellites LoL.
Thanks uncle for taking 80% of my pay.
And then throwing me a bone using your surveillance system to peep at the clouds so My impoverished ass might survive.
Thanks Stalin for plucking us dumbclucks and then letting us flock to your warmth in our fiscal nakedness.
The busybodies know how “donations” lead to the congressman they purchased voting a certain way. It’s not about representing the constituents, it’s about getting re-elected and not enough constituents care about issues like this.
http://richardheinberg.com/richard-heinberg-on-abiotic-oil , try some sites such as this on abiotic oil, even if this was true its would be a disaster for the environment, oil can only exist within certain temperature ranges, the outer planets and moons didn’t experience the dynamic outgassing as the planets closer to the sun(rocky planets).
I must respectfully disagree. (I hope you are not a “bunny or tree hugger”). Ever hear of the LaBrea tar pits? There are naturally-occurring “oil spills” all around the world that environmentalists conveniently forgot about. In fact, after the Exxon Valdez disaster, in the places where oil washed up, the locations that were left alone actually recovered FASTER than the locations that had human intervention (and sold a ton of Dawn dishwashing detergent).
Hydrocarbon products are being continuously produced within the earth and are part of the earth’s ecosystems. There is no getting around that…
Most “environmentalists” are limp-wristed, birkenstovk-wearing, prius-driving, tofu-eating poor excuses for human beings, like watermelons–“green” on the outside and “red” (communist) on the inside.
None of the above , yeah ol’Gaia will squeeze out another barrel of crude for the Republicrats( to fuel their massive SUVs with( ever heard of Biological markers? If this is true I am financially set,I will just get a wildcatter to come set up on my property and make Jed Clampett jealous( its a wonder Japan and Germany had any shortage of crude oil during WW2) How come volcanos dont belch rivers of crude oil? Most cleanup efforts are just money grabbing half hearted schemes, like the fiasco in the Gulf where they sprayed dispersants to make the crude oil sink and cover the sea floor ask any fishermen down there it will probably never recover,and science rears its ugly head again, most of the lighter elements are concentrated in the solar system beyond the asteroid belt.Most Phds will tell you most of our easily recoverable crude had a biotic origin, courtesy of Photosynthesis.Not a bunch of Demons furiously combining, elemental Hydrogen and carbon to produce long chain hydrocarbon molecules( They won’t exist at these infernal temperatures deep in the Earth)Dang these last two Huuricanes have been fierce any connection between warmer ocean water and the storms ?Darn it those glaciers are getting mighty restless too, could warming have any bearing on that ? Believe what you will, the Plutocrats will eventually fall .
Because these “busybodies ” are actually impotent, androgynous hypocrites that can only wet their panties by controlling other people, and robbing them blind, to boot! Putting and end to this abuse is eventually going to come down to more than just fisticuffs.
Hey eric – the funny thing is the pollution actually caused by manufacturing new “more efficient” cars. Some years ago, I read somewhere that the actual pollution in terms of emissions due to the manufacture of the car, including mining materials and transporting them are much more than the actual emissions from the car itself. And this was before the days of global supply chains and hybrids which have lithium and rare earth dug from far flung parts of the world via processes which are hardly “green”. Ofcourse the sheep in the west don’t ever hear about this, and prob have no clue what happens beyond the marketing videos showing butterflies and shit coming out of tail pipes……
Furthermore – the old cars, which were mostly metal and some plastic / rubber will basically eventually return to the earth where they came from….. but these new hybrids or electrics – what will happen when they have to be de-comissioned or recycled – I suspect a new surprise tax is awaiting a lot of hybrid / electric owners when governments realise disposing of this shit in large quantity is NOT cheap….
That was one of the problems with older cars they wanted to return to the environment quickly, I cannot think of a better material to construct cars from then steel.
They don’t believe the market should control because pollution and resource depletion is an externality. And, largely, a generational externality. Personally, I think we’re long past the last 10% in terms of eliminating it, but, really, you’re not dealing with people who are going to ever believe their work is done. They remind me of MADD; give them what they want and then they move the bar.
The term “fossil fuel” was coined in the 1950s when not much was known about the nature of naturally-occurring hydrocarbon products. Environmentalists have used this misconception about naturally occuring oil to their advantage; hence, the now-discredited concept of “peak oil”.
Oil is abiotic in nature, being produced deep within the earth by yet-unknown processes. Russian oil interests have been drilling deep wells, as much as 30,000 feet deep and coming up with oil deposits–far deeper than that of decayed plant and animal materials.
It turns that many of our depleted oil wells are “filling back up”; oil is migrating from deep within the earth, upward to many of our present drilling sites.
There are certain interests that do not want to see oil as a plentiful natural resource–FOLLOW THE MONEY…
Immense amounts of oil have been discovered very deep in various places. Far too deep to be biological matter that doesn’t live down there to begin with.
“It turns that many of our depleted oil wells are “filling back up”;”
Yep, when I lived in Longview back in the ’80s, some old oil field men said the same thing; that leases they’d held that they’d capped off in the ’70s as dry holes were ready to pump again, but the price of Saudi oil was too cheap for them to be able to sell it. The Caddo reserve is a huge deposit of oil under East Texas and part of Louisiana. The old guys were saying that there’s a lot more oil there than anyone guessed.
The vegetal decay process is one way oil is formed.
Either more vegetal matter decayed in the interim. Or there is another process involved to explain the replenished oil.
Maybe it’s like the pearl in an oyster. Remove the pearl a new one forms.
Or the remaining oil abhors a vacuum. You suck a well dry. Adjacent oil migrates due to oil osmosis.
Oil is the second most common liquid on earth, yet far less is known about it compared to water.
Of course this doesn’t apply to the giant black SUV’s that our rulers travel around in. Rules for us mundanes only; screw that, fish heads for all the busybodies.
“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”
“Four legs good, two legs better!”
The world has a crisis of busybodiness. I know not a word, but it should be. Some people just can’t wrap around their brains that some people have different priorities in life.
And – worse – can’t just leave other people be.