Absolutely, but I did not infer that was [the] premise (i.e. “transition away from an oil-based economy as soon as reasonably practical.”).
One could say that we have been transitioning away in a reasonably practical manner for the last 50 years (when the first MPG standards were created) but I inferred a timeline that was based on the introduction of hybrid vehicles so just the last 20 years - and we have not moved away from oil economy much at all over that time period even with subsidies.
The reasons for this are simple, so simple I will call them “Goofy’s dilemma”. As we make cars twice as efficient (gas-wise) we decrease demand for gas. The price of gas goes down, so now factories can use gas more cheaply, and they convert and use more gas. Refineries start producing a little more diesel and a little less gas out of each barrel, so there’s less gas and the price goes up. So cars and airplanes get more efficient and we use a little less gas. So the price goes down.
It’s a never ending spiral, or ‘turtles all the way down”, if you will. It has taken us 10,000 years to wean ourselves off of wood as a fuel, and 200 to even think about decreasing coal usage (worldwide) but it is happening. But soooooo slowly.
Given that gas is abundant and cheap I suspect it will take many decades to accomplish the same thing with gasolne, even if we, like the frog in the pan, are slowly sweltering in an ever increasing hothouse planet.
Yep, to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and ‘Moore’s Law’ you can now add ‘Goofy’s dilemma’. I’m shooting for the history books here, so don’t take my fun away by pointing out flaws like other macroeconomic events and wars and such. Don’t wanna hear it.
Help me here. We were in Pakistan and Afghanistan why? Because of Bin Laden. Bin Laden attacked the US why? Because of US military presence in the Middle East. We have US military presence in the Middle East why? Because of oil.
Yes, I would attribute 100% of those costs to oil.
And, FWIW, your cost estimates are way low.
Through Fiscal Year 2022, the United States federal government has spent and obligated [$8 trillion] dollars on the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere. This figure includes: direct Congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; increases in the homeland security budget; interest payments on direct war borrowing; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future obligations for veterans’ care.
This total omits many other expenses, such as the macroeconomic costs to the US economy; the opportunity costs of not investing war dollars in alternative sectors; future interest on war borrowing; and local government and private war costs.
Yep.
For 2025, A married couple can take a bit over $120,000/yr in qualified dividends & capital gains from an investment portfolio in the 0% bracket (assuming that’s their only income.)
A neighbor couple with a $120,000 annual wage & salary income would pay over $17,000 in Federal income tax and FICA.
You save and invest that $17,000 difference in taxation, and let it compound in a non-taxable vehicle like BRK over 30 years, and it’s a fortune.
intercst
And other reasons. The region is strategically important for reasons beyond oil. The Suez Canal, for one, since that’s a critical piece of global trade infrastructure as well as militarily. The area is also geopolitically important for containing Russia (formerly the USSR), as it’s their main (only?) outlet for a blue-water navy and was a major theatre for their proxy efforts to gain power globally. Etc. We would have had a major troop presence in the region regardless of oil.
And if you’re attributing these conflicts to just our presence in the Middle East, then you have to allocate those costs over more oil production than just post-2001. We had military bases in Saudi dating back to right after the war, and they were really beefed up in the 1960’s. So allocating the costs of the wars over six decades of oil production still yields a pretty small amount of cost per unit oil.
As for your cost estimates, it looks like you’re using more than just the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, but the entire Global War on Terror everywhere around the world. The costs of Afghanistan and Iraq themselves are much lower. The government puts them at about $1.5 trillion combined; Brown’s project put the Iraq war at about $1.1 trillion, and most estimates of Afghanistan are about $2 trillion.
The key difference is that the Brown study you mention also includes future costs of tending to Veterans of these wars - but if we’re including future costs, you’d allocate them to future oil production.
So if you “expand the numerator” by including all costs of all wars in the GWOT in any theater (with no offset for any other strategic or economic benefits other than oil protection), you have to also “expand the denominator” by allocating them over about a century of oil production (1960-2060). Again, a very small dollar amount per unit of oil production indeed.
It may be cheap, but electricity is cheaper. Way cheaper in my experience. I got about 50 miles out of $10 of gasoline in my previous 4-door ICE sport sedan, and I get more than 250 miles with $10 of electricity out of my current 4-door EV sport sedan.
Yes, but if you drive very little, An ICE might be cheaper than an EV.
I currently drive about 1,500 miles/year and get an average of 25 mpg city plus highway driving, so that’s 60 gallons of gasoline per year. At $4/gal, that’s $240/yr.
WA State has $225 in annual fees that are assessed to EV owners.
https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/9974
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Imagine if you don’t drive at all! The SAVINGS!
The Captain