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While in general terms the elevated price of petro will provide 
incentive for development of alternative technology - petro does not 
really operate completely in the free market. Petro is a "strategic 
resource" and as such the US government is very willing to work to 
insure stability in the market.

Long range development of expensive technologies is not something the 
free enterprise system does well. Public companies cannot afford a 10 
to15 year R&D cycle that many technologies would require. The prime 
example is nuclear energy. Without the money the Government poured into 
the science and technology associated with nuclear energy I seriously 
doubt if nuclear energy would have been a viable alternative. True most 
of the research was for defense related technology, long range fuel 
sources for the Navy, nuclear weapons, etc. The development of the first 
nuclear powered submarine by the Navy paved the way for commercial 
generation of electricity. The "space race" with the Soviets took the 
transistor that was first built at Bell Labs in Shockley et. al. in 1947 
and developed it and developed the fabrication technology to build 
integrated circuits. This was a massive effort. By the end of the 1960's 
all the critical components had been developed by large Government R&D 
programs and the technology was ready for commercial prime time. The 
same is true for satellites. The massive amount of R&D dollars put into 
space technology by the US Government (and Soviet Government for that 
matter) developed the technology base for commercial satellite 
technology to take off.

Today solar is on the verge of being economically feasible - but it's 
not there yet except in specialized applications. At the rate it is 
going it may never get there. I looked at a solar system for my house 
and while I would like to do it - the payback for it is 30 years. I can 
make a lot more money by putting the same money into a reasonable 
investment than putting it into solar. That is the problem.

Many times the R&D for break through technology - be it the basic 
technology or the technology required to fabricate the components in a 
cost effective method - is very expensive and if the payback is too far 
out capitalism alone is normally not a good model to develop the 
technology. As John Maynard Keynes pointed out with capitalism "in the 
long term you are dead."

So I suspect it is going to take a lot more than expensive gas to push 
the alternative technologies over the top. The one that seems to be 
ready for prime time is wind. But there seems to be a lot of "not in my 
back yard" associated with wind energy fields.

A stable price of petro is too important to the US strategic interest to 
allow the supply to become too expensive or unstable. That has been true 
since 1945 when FDR and King Al-Saud formed a strategic alliance to 
insure the stability of middle eastern oil needed by the US. That is why 
we fight wars in the middle east.

As Joe Long pointed out a big issue with gas prices is our refining 
capacity. Hopefully that might be resolved at some point. But there is 
the "not in my back yard issue there also."

Tomorrow we will head out to Mississippi and then on up to Kentucky. I 
guess we'll just drive a little slower to save some fuel.

Truman


k s swigart wrote:
> I find it slightly humorous that an assortment of people here are, at
> the same time, advocating the development of
> new/alternative/cleaner/whatever fuel technologies while at the same
> time bitching about the high price of gas and how we need to do
> something to do something about both these things.
>
> The way to encourage the development of such technologies is for the
> price of gas to continue to go UP or for the increased price to become a
> permanent state of affairs.
>
> History has shown us (since the price of gas, in real terms is not as
> high as it was in the late 70's early 80's), that a lowering of the
> price of gas will just return users to their former profligate ways with
> respect to its use.
>
> New technologies will not be developed unless there is an economic
> reason to do so.  And there will never be an economic reason to do so if
> there is a competing technology with is both cheaper and easier.
>
> For those who are interested in the development of new fuel
> technologies, the high price of gas is a GOOD thing.
>
> kat
> Orange County, Calif.
>
>   


--

“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how 
smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong” Richard 
Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics


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