Russ Steele
Yesterday Ellen and I took the GMC 2500 to run our errends, we need to fill the tank before the coming snow story and fill up some 5 gallon cans for our diesel generator. We were shocked to see the price had risen to $3.89 a gallon. Just 11 cents from $4.00 a gallon. Fill up and 10 gallons of diesel, the bill was $87.00.
The LA Times has some thoughts in rising fuel prices here (empahais added):
Diesel is approaching $4 a gallon in California for the first time since October 2008 and the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline on Wednesday was up nearly a dime from last week, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report.
By some estimates, every penny increase at the pump sucks $1.5 billion from household spending nationwide.
"When the price of gasoline goes up, you have less to spend on everything else," said Bruce Bullock, executive director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University. "When the price of diesel goes up, the cost of everything else you buy at Wal-Mart and Target goes up: your food, your clothing, everything."
Nevada County is currently paying $90,000 dollars to develop a new logo and web site to attract more tourist to Nevada County. The most attractive and professional web site in the world will not help our local economy if gas and diesel prices continue to rise, as our local economy is highly dependent on tourism.
The current increase is being driven by global oil prices, where as future increase will be driven by CARB's Cap-and-Trade and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. While we cannot control global oil prices, we can influence the future actions of CARB. We need to support the efforts of Assemblyman Dan Logue and State Senator Doug La Malfa to reign in CARB.
