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Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster.
By James Howard Kunstler
The Washington Post
Sunday, May 25, 2008
(1)Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for “solutions.” This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.
This piece was published nationally the Sunday before Jim’s usual Monday piece. It drew over a hundred comments in just a few days. I highly recommend reading some of those at the original link. The stupidest and most arrogant ones, typical of the “optimistic” posters who show up once a week on CFN and then dissappear, are by theduke89.
(2)I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our “Happy Motoring” utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system — or even a fraction of these things — in the future. We have to make other arrangements.
This piece is interesting because it gets Jim’s usual message across, yet omits many of the jokes and props that have come to both annoy and thrill his regular readers. Instead of salad-shooters and NASCAR, we simply get Walmart and Disney. Don’t think this is not calculated. It is also duplicitous (maybe that’s not the right word). When presented with a “mainstream,” Jim simply bends to their sensitivities. He did this with both his Colbert and Beck appearances. He played the well-behaved guest. But both before and afterwards he was mocking his hosts.
(3)The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the “peak oil” story. It’s not about running out of oil. It’s about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:
The way we produce food
The way we conduct commerce and trade
The way we travel
The way we occupy the land
The way we acquire and spend capital
And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.
Yes and No. The highlighted sentence is key, and I’m glad Jim recognizes it, but it is also a no-brainer. Here is the reality. And this is actually misunderstood by most if not all of the so-called “peak-oilers.” Jim and others perpetuate this nonsense as if explaining the subtleties somehow benefits those not “among the educated and well-intentioned.” My contention is that this often repeated mantra “it’s not about running out of oil,” is dangerous and one of the biggest impediments to getting people to recognize the problem. WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OIL ! If we weren’t there wouldn’t be a problem. Whether we have 30 years or 100 years left, we are running out. It is finite. We started running out the second we started using it.
(4)As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis. What’s more, the stress induced by the failure of these systems will only increase the wishful thinking across our nation.
This is the worst case/nightmare scenario in a nutshell. Well said, except for the last part – I don’t know why this would simply result in increased wishful thinking. It might, but to me it seems like this was a lame way to end a paragraph and Jim (for whatever reason) is wishfully thinking that this will be the result. Of course, it doesn’t help his case that “wishful thinking” is THE major focus of the piece. Saying it will be the case doesn’t make it so. If there was ever a need for Jim to present an argument…
(5)And that’s the worst part of our quandary: the American public’s narrow focus on keeping all our cars running at any cost. Even the environmental community is hung up on this. The Rocky Mountain Institute has been pushing for the development of a “Hypercar” for years — inadvertently promoting the idea that we really don’t need to change.
Years ago, U.S. negotiators at a U.N. environmental conference told their interlocutors that the American lifestyle is “not up for negotiation.” This stance is, unfortunately, related to two pernicious beliefs that have become common in the United States in recent decades. The first is the idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. (Oprah Winfrey advanced this notion last year with her promotion of a pop book called “The Secret,” which said, in effect, that if you wish hard enough for something, it will come to you.) One of the basic differences between a child and an adult is the ability to know the difference between wishing for things and actually making them happen through earnest effort.
This is what I call the Obama problem. In one of the debates Obama and Clinton were discussing each other’s healthcare proposals. Barack explained that Hillary’s proposal would never fly the way things happened in the nation’s capital. That first we needed to do was “change how things were done in Washington.” In other words, Obama’s plan was that he didn’t have a plan.
Good luckgetting Americans to stop thinking the way Oprah has apparently brainwashed them. If that’s the issue, I’d pay more attention to it, then say, silly stuff like corporate money in politics, or whether we can make more fuel efficient cars.
(6)The companion belief to “wishing upon a star” is the idea that one can get something for nothing. This derives from America’s new favorite religion: not evangelical Christianity but the worship of unearned riches. (The holy shrine to this tragic belief is Las Vegas.) When you combine these two beliefs, the result is the notion that when you wish upon a star, you’ll get something for nothing. This is what underlies our current fantasy, as well as our inability to respond intelligently to the energy crisis.
I’ve never been one to question Jim’s beliefs, and I don’t give much credence to the notion that as a prophet of peak-oil he should eschew frequent plane travel and the trappings of a generally fossil-fuel-intensive existence. But it is passages like this that make me wonder what the hell he is preaching. He did just write a book that is … well, fantasy. I’m going to move on before I start to get muddled here. I’ll return to this issue in the future.
(7)These beliefs also explain why the presidential campaign is devoid of meaningful discussion about our energy predicament and its implications. The idea that we can become “energy independent” and maintain our current lifestyle is absurd. So is the gas-tax holiday. (Which politician wants to tell voters on Labor Day that the holiday is over?) The pie-in-the-sky plan to turn grain into fuel came to grief, too, when we saw its disruptive effect on global grain prices and the food shortages around the world, even in the United States. In recent weeks, the rice and cooking-oil shelves in my upstate New York supermarket have been stripped clean.
This is garbage. They don’t even partially explain this mess. These issues are the result of a broken political system controlled by the likes of ADM, Detroit, and the corrupt, greedy scum we elect because of their “electability,” among others. I saw it written somewhere today that it was interesting how millionaires always seem to make the best populists. Talk about unearned riches.
(8)So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we’ll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We’ll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We’ll have to restore local economic networks — the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed — made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.
We’ll also have to occupy the landscape differently, in traditional towns, villages and small cities. Our giant metroplexes are not going to make it, and the successful places will be ones that encourage local farming.
The wishfully optimistic (a group which usually includes Jim) frequently mention the need for a “Manhatten Project”- or “Apollo”-like program to fix our energy predicament. Jim’s big issues are suburbs, agriculture, and as we will see, the passenger railroad system. Unfortunately, fixing or converting these things in the timeframe necessary is simply not going to happen. Landing a man on the moon doesn’t even compare. One clue to the problem is Jim’s writing on the subjects. There isn’t much. Apparently he believes that if Washington decides to “do it,” then “it” will “get done.” Nevermind the details. One of these idiots that Jim never ceases to inform us surround him will surely figure out the grand design. And then, of course, Jim can take credit for seeing it all so clearly.
No, the longterm answer to both our energy crisis and our way of thinking is to treat people like adults, and spread the message that a fair system of carbon taxation and government-mandated efficiency gains has the highest chance of inducing a transition (if one is possible). That and dragging the executives at GM out into the street for immediate execution as traitors.
(9)Fixing the U.S. passenger railroad system is probably the one project we could undertake right away that would have the greatest impact on the country’s oil consumption. The fact that we’re not talking about it — especially in the presidential campaign — shows how confused we are. The airline industry is disintegrating under the enormous pressure of fuel costs. Airlines cannot fire any more employees and have already offloaded their pension obligations and outsourced their repairs. At least five small airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past two months. If we don’t get the passenger trains running again, Americans will be going nowhere five years from now.
I commend Jim for the amount of ground he covered in this piece. Unfortunately, he couldn’t resist including the feature that is probably the most counter-productive to his wrting. His horrendous predictions. First, the passenger trains are running. But even if the service is not expanded and if the airlines continue to crumble at the rate they have been in the last 2 months (which probably won’t happen – there will be damage control and any decline will be slower), Americans will still be going places. I continue to question why JHK cannot be more conservative in his predictions. I can’t see how being correct once in a while could hurt.
(10)We don’t have time to be crybabies about this. The talk on the presidential campaign trail about “hope” has its purpose. We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it — by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don’t figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works.
Unfortunately, Jim only gets this part right about half the time. Getting 1000 words published in The Washington Post has historically had poor results when it comes to sweeping societal change. Judging by the comments, I’m not sure he gained more supporters than skeptics.
FOLLOWED BY HIS REGULAR PIECE
Americans take 41 million fewer flights
Silverjet Stops Flights as Oil Costs Cripple Industry
The World’s Most Luxurious Airlines
Former EADS Chief Faces Preliminary Charges
Southwest Success Story NYT, May 9th, 2008
Fear of Flying Guest Opinion with comments NYT May 30th
You Think Flying Is Bad Now… BusinessWeek article May 28th
I had to post this because for some reason I found it the most refreshing thing I’ve read all month. I was also surprised to see who it was about. I know that Crichton is not well liked, especially by the peak-oil crowd. I’m no big fan of his either, but I can remember reading a couple of his books probably 15 years ago and finished them, so they couldn’t have been that bad (actually, I quite enjoyed them). I frequently read Jack Schafer and usually respect his take on the media.
His 1993 prediction of mass-media extinction now looks on target.
By Jack Shafer
May 29th, 2008
“The biggest change is that contemporary media has shifted from fact to opinion and speculation. You can watch cable news all day and never hear anything except questions like, ‘How much will the Rev. Wright hurt Obama’s chances?’ ‘Is Hillary now looking toward 2012?’ ‘How will McCain overcome the age argument?’ These are questions for which there are endless answers. Contentious hosts on cable shows keep the arguments rolling,” he says.
Crichton believes that we live in an age of conformity much more confining than the 1950s in which he grew up. Instead of showing news consumers how to approach controversy coolly and intelligently, the media partake of the zealotry and intolerance of many of the advocates they cover. He attributes the public’s interest in Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to its hunger for a wider range of viewpoints than the mass media provide.
He tosses out a basket of questions he’d like to see the press tackle, some of which I’ve seen covered. “What happened at Bear Stearns?” got major play this week, after Crichton answered my questions, in a Wall Street Journal series. And I know I’ve seen “How much of the current price of gas can be attributed to the weak dollar?” answered a couple of times but can’t remember where. (Answer: a lot.) But such Crichton questions as “Why have hedge funds evaded government regulation?” and what specific lifestyle changes will every American have to make “to reduce CO2 emissions by 60 percent?” would be great assignments for news desks.
“I want a news service that tells me what no one knows but is true nonetheless,” he says.
Secretary of Transition
Tom Whipple
May 22nd, 2008
Letting the richest five, ten or even 50 percent continue to drive around, watch their flat screens and eat their fill, while the rest abandon their cars, leave their homes and congregate at homeless shelters and food pantries is not acceptable. As long as we have something resembling representative democracy is this country, this is not going to happen – at least for long. We have become too complex and too specialized a civilization.
So the government obviously is going to have to do something. But what? The problems will soon be everywhere. Transportation, heating, electricity, food, jobs, education and the financial system — the list of problems goes on and on and on. Where to begin? Who other than the President and his immediate staff are in charge of the big picture? Can the Congress cope with hundreds of critical issues at once? What bills do they pass? Every government agency will be involved, but each will come with its own mission, biases, lobbyists and mindsets. Who, for example, is going to tell the Defense Department that they have to stop sailing so many ships and flying so many airplanes around because we need the fuel to harvest the crop this year.
All this is leading to the notion that at some point the U.S. going to need a person and agency to coordinate the great transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy that will take place in coming decades. This individual is going to require unprecedented, nearly dictatorial powers akin the War Production Board in World War II. Congress and the President are going to have to delegate a great deal to this individual for much of our civilization is going to have to be peremptorily torn apart and put together in a new fashion. There does not seem to be much other choice.
Some Stuff from Contributors…
Dana J writes:
RE: World Tanker Fleet,
I really didn’t know that they built that last category, thats one big oils spill waiting to happen.
This section provides a description of the features and operations that are common to the types of tankers that will be berthed at Pier 400, Berth 408.
World Tanker Fleet
* There are 11,127 total tankers in the world fleet
* For crude imports to the Pier 400, Berth 408 Project site, we are focusing on 1,222 long haul crude oil tankers
* About 80 percent of these 1,222 tankers are independently owned.For more technical information about crude oil tankers, their architecture, emissions reductions, and power configurations, please refer to the “Resources” area of this section and click on “tanker information.” You will find a wealth of details related to the tanker industry and shipping business.
Classes of Crude Oil Tankers
Most of the world’s crude oil tankers are between 70,000 dead weight tons (DWT) and 500,000 DWT. Within this range, four size classes are most popular:* Panamax – up to 70,000 DWT – approximately 500,000 barrels capacity – the largest vessels that can transit the Panama Canal, although the depth of the canal limits their draft which limits their capacity to a maximum of about 50,000 DWT or approximately 400,000 barrels
* Aframax – 70,000 to 120,000 DWT – approximately 750,000 barrels capacity – originally configured to obtain the best rates under the Average Freight Rate Assessment Scale Published monthly by the London Tanker Brokers Panel
* Suezmax – 120,000 to 200,000 DWT – approximately 1,000,000 barrels capacity – the largest vessel size that can transit the Suez Canal fully loaded.
* Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) – 200,000 to 325,000 DWT – approximately 2,000,000 barrels capacity
* Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC) – 325,00 to 550,000 DWT – up to 4,000,000 barrels capacityTo follow up on the CFN post re Iran using 10 of the VLCC’s as floating storage, according to the source above there are about 244 VLCC’s in available, so Iran is using about 5% of the fleet as floating storage.
As these are the type used to transport our daily oil fix to the US, taking them out of the transport business could indeed have a significant impact on our oil fix.
- Dana J
And more …
Saint Bif writes:
I have some experience working with tank ships and their economics. VLCCs/ULCCs are impressive ships indeed. But the types of vessels used are a function of long -versus short -haul because of the economics, and also bearing in mind that most US refinery ports are shallow draft. VLCCs are pretty much limited to hauling crude from the mideast (i.e. long haul), with 2M and 3M cargos being typical. Long haul takes a voyage of several weeks. Short haul voyage is a few days or maybe up to a week.Within the Atlantic basin (the short haul market), smaller Aframax and Panamax vessels are the work horses with cargoes of 500,000 bbls typical. VLCCs draft too deep for US ports (except LOOP) and must be lightered offshore in deep water, and their cargoes are shuttled to port on lightering vessels that are essentially purpose-built or modified Panamax-sized tankers. Lightering adds time and cost but not enough to take away the advantage of VLCCs for long haul transport. The amount of crude imported from VLCCs is substantial but most of our imported crude comes in on smaller tank ships (from Ven, Mex, and also Africa is probably still that way).
-Saint Bif
Soaring Fuel Prices Take a Withering Toll on Truckers
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
May 27, 2008
NYT
Trains vs. Trucks
“By using railroads, we are achieving some economy on fuel,” said Dan England, chairman of C. R. England, a family-owned company based in Salt Lake City that runs 3,600 tractor-trailers and now regularly loads 350 of the trailers on railroad flat cars to get them from, say, Chicago to Los Angeles.
Still, 70 percent of the nation’s freight tonnage moves over the highways on trucks, much of it in the diesel-powered tractor-trailers of the nation’s 350,000 independent operators, each with a fleet of up to five vehicles, one usually driven by the proprietor. Profit margins, notoriously thin in good times, are minuscule now, and each rise in fuel prices pushes more truckers into the red.
More than 45,000 vehicles, or 3 percent of the tractor fleet, have disappeared from the highways since early last year, according to America’s Commercial Transportation Research in Columbus, Ind. That surpasses the last great shakeout, in the early 1980s, when deregulation, along with a recession, high interest rates and the second Arab oil embargo, took out 33,000 tractors.
And some good stuff on the Airline industry
The nation’s air cargo carriers are also paring their operations somewhat. Northwest Airlines, for example, dedicated 13 giant 747-200’s to carrying freight between the United States and the Far East, a business that brought in $840 million, or 7 percent of the airline’s total revenue last year. The price of jet fuel, however, has risen faster than freight rates, and Northwest recently shrank its cargo fleet to 12 planes.
Oil Consumption of Unites States Military
Thanks to our Saint Bif (SB) for this idea. Comments are now open. You guys are really something else. You are just flooding me with good leads and thoughts and info. I really wish some of you would take Nudge’s lead and start writing. Put together 500 or 1000 words, or whatever, and I’ll print it. Think about how many times you put 50 words together for a comment on CFN or elsewhere that noone including you will remember a month from now. Put them all together and It suddenly becomes more rewarding. Trust me. That’s why I started this blog.
2006 Energy Bulletin article oil US Department of Defense Fuel Consumption and The Iraq War
http://www.energybulletin.net/13199.html
For starters, there are two basic ways we can look at this. 395,000 barrels per day. If we use 20 million barrels per day (mbpd) as national usage, that’s roughly 2.0%. If we use the 18.5 mbpd number I figured in my airlines post, representing different types of refined transportation fuel, then we get about 2.2%. This is all military fuel including tanks, Humvees, and non-nuclear powered ships. The claim was 70% aviation fuel – so about 1.5% of national consumption is jet fuel during wartime.
1400 Words on The Airline Industry
The Numbers. In 2007, The United States used 20.7 million barrels per day (mbpd) of crude oil and petroleum products. About 2.2 mbpd of this are considered Natural Gas Liquids or Liquified Petroleum Gases. The other 18.5 mbpd of crude oil is refined into three main products – gasoline, diesel fuel, and kerosene-type jet fuel. Roughly speaking, these products are produced and supplied as follows: 9300 thousand barrels per day (kbpd) of gasoline, 4200 kbpd of diesel fuel (a category which includes both the liquid transportion fuel used in most large trucks and the home heating oil), and 1600 kbpd of jet fuel. The remaining 3 or 3.5 mbpd of crude oil is refined into various miscellaneous products. [as we shall see, this 1600 kbpd or 1.6 mbpd of jet fuel is the equivalent of 4500 Boeing 747 transcontinental flights from Boston to LA per day]
A Breakdown of the Refined Product Numbers
Recent Changes. Work I’ve done recently shows jet fuel demand down substantially in the first 5 months of the year. It continues to fall and presently is about 10% below last year’s levels. Jet fuel demand, unlike gasoline has not shown consistent gains over the last decade and flutuactes erratically, although an overall seasonal pattern is discernable. In comparison, gasoline consumption usually increases by a fairly steady 1 or 1.5% per year. It is down 1% so far this year from the same period last year.
The Airlines
“Over all, the number of scheduled flights in the United States dropped 3 percent in May, or 22,900 fewer flights than in May 2007, according to the Official Airline Guide.”
-New York Times
Using these numbers we can quickly see that there are about 9,000,000 commercial flights per year in the United States or about 25,000 per day. This number is much higher than the 4,500 number I have derived – reflecting the more diverse realworld picture of many different sized planes flying different distances. This number probably includes some very small planes, but also omits private flights (of which there are a huge number and chartered flights). The details of the number, distances and types of flights is beyond the scope of this introductory analysis. What is important for now is the overall level of travel and how it is changing with a rapidly increasing oil price. In a second installment, I’ll attempt to delve deeper into the numbers regarding different types of planes and their fuel efficiencies.
The Airlines – Part II Using numbers from The Air Transport Association, it appears that about 840 million people fly every year. The US only has a population of 300 million, so obviously some people are flying more than once. It is unclear whether this number is counting the number of times a passenger boards a commercial flight, the number of complete one-way trips, or round trips. But simply dividing 840 million by the 9 million flights yields about 90 passengers per plane. It is unclear what percent of total capacity this represents or how many seats have remained empty. A heavy reduction in flights nationally probably won’t reduce the availability of long distance distance travel between major hubs, just the convenience of multiple flight times and obviously the pleasure of a near empty plane. As with many things in the American economy, there is a lot of slack and a lot of gains that can be achieved quickly through the elimination of obvious waste. One note of interest is that most of the large commercial jets (Boeing and Airbus) I looked at have seating capacities of 150, 200, or above, so clearly there must be a lot of spare capacity actually flying or a huge amount of flights are done on much smaller planes.
Tickets and Pricing. Looked at differently, these same numbers produce another result. If we use the rough numbers of 1.6 mbpd of jet fuel, 25,000 flights per day, 90 passengers per flight, and $4 per gallon of jet fuel, the average cost per passenger is $120 per flight. If this on average makes up (according to industry sources) 40 percent of the cost of each ticket, then the average ticket price is $300. Assuming that all fuel charges eventually get passed on to the consumer, a doubling of the fuel price from $4 to $8 will result in a 40% increase in the cost of flying (an extra $120 over $300).
Now let’s look at some actual numbers. These are one-way prices based on sample round-trip prices. All flights have been scheduled for the same 2 weeks in September. I’ve provided a high/low range and typical plane types from samples on Orbitz. Boston to L.A.:$208/$288 (757/737), LA to Honolulu $155/$400 (757/737), Chicago to Milan: $400/$550 (A330/A340). As you can see these prices fit in nicely with the “average” base case I’ve used above. I didn’t try to make anything match or fit, I did this completely independently. For the record I did this first almost a week ago for the same cities but some other time-frame (near but not exact). I got prices at the time as much as $100 different in either direction.
Something positive may happen with efficiency. News concerning drastic cuts of flights by the airlines and some carriers going bankrupt and completely out of business may in fact be a good thing in a few ways. For the previous year, prior to the latest explosion of oil and fuel prices, the big news in the airline industry was the horrendous on-time record of all the major carriers, every manner of airport and runway delays, and a very dissastisfied American customer. It is hard to see how a reduced number of planes in the sky could have any effect but to lower jet fuel usage in two ways. First, obviously, there will be less flights. But the reduced amount of traffic in the air should reduce the amount of jets idling on runways, circling in landing queues around congested hubs, and lower the overall gate-to-gate time for the planes that are flying. If recent news about American Airlines is any indicator, the carriers will be retiring and scrapping planes – most likely the older, less efficient models.
The problem of plateauing production and the demand-destruction fallacy. Before I wrap up this introductory piece on the airlines, a word about the history of efficiency and the reality about American oil usage. It is often pointed out that oil usage increased throughout the days of stagflation in the 1970s and coincident with and following the second oil spike of 1979-1981, oil consumption fell by 15%, from which point it took 15 years for it to return to its highs. Conservation, massive gains in efficiency, and a transition in the energy mix are all correctly cited for this “slowing” of consumption growth. But let’s take a closer look at an important statistic. Oil use per capita.
In 2007, The United States used a little over 25 barrels of oil per person. In 1969, the figure was 25.6. It bloated to about 31 barrels in 1978 before dropping to a low of 23.8 in 1983. 25 barrels per year is the equivalent of 2.9 gallons of gasoline per person per day, or every single person driving alone 87 miles each day in a car that gets 30 miles to the gallon. This is the highest of any large, industrialized nation on earth. To put this in perspective consider the next highest contestants on the list. Japan: 15, Germany: 12, UK: 11. China, the latest big consumption story, only uses 2 barrels per person per year.
So for all the talk about efficiency gains, we still use as much person as we did 40 years ago and we’re still Number One. Good Job.
The following chart shows the likely forced gains assuming highly probable population growth of 0.8% per annum and a 1% yearly reduction in oil use in 2008 and beyond. We should be hoping for more drastic changes like those in 1979-1983 which might actually drive the message home.
What will be interesting to watch is what will happen in an environment of a growing global economy and plateauing or decreasing oil production. Any excess supply created by demand destruction in the United States will be quickly devoured elsewhere. All exports are up for auction. How long can we afford the highest bid?
Part II In the second installment, I’ll be taking a more detailed look at planes, their specifications, and how they are mixed in the international fleet. I’ll be looking more closely at their fuel usage. And finally I’ll be looking at the airlines themselves and their sorry record.
The Jetmakers by Charles D. Bright
[ Note: I made a huge mistake (or omission) is these admittedly rough calculations. I know Idid not figure in military consumption because it is only a small percentage of the number. However, I made the assumption that everything else was basically commercial passenger travel. I completely neglected to figure in commercial cargo/freight flights such as Fedex, UPS, USPS, and probably a thousand other carriers. I will be correcting/addressing this in future updates and pieces.]
Any fuel-using business can remain in business if the company can pass on its increased fuel costs and if the business volume remains healthy. The ones we see falling out of the skies these days are the ones that failed at either or both of these things. So perhaps it boils down to asking at what price do people stop going to Hawaii just for scenic vacations? And is there much upside potential for foreign tourists visiting Hawaii to enjoy the low exchange rates?
– Nudge
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