Unlearning Energy Lessons - Americans "Crisis-Driven", Forgetting Years Of Econ Lessons Since Summer

[hatrack]

Mike Linn stepped out of a conference room Wednesday just minutes after the Dow Jones industrial average closed below 8,000 for the first time in six years. “It’s depressing,” he said.

Linn, the chief executive of Linn Energy and a past president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America isn’t much more upbeat when he talks about his own business. Linn Energy’s shares have fallen 35 percent this year, and Mike Linn said the domestic energy industry is on the cusp of another bust that could leave reserves untapped, orders for drilling equipment canceled and employee ranks pared in the next year to 18 months. “You’re going to see things shutting down,” he said. “We don’t learn. This has happened before.”

EDIT

Duke Energy, for example, recently announced it wants to sell part of its wind-power business, and Dallas oilman Boone Pickens said recently that he’s having trouble getting financing for his West Texas wind farm, envisioned as the world’s largest. If industry stalwarts like Duke and Pickens are feeling the pinch, it’s a safe bet that smaller alternative fuel ventures face a similar squeeze. “The best thing that happened to us was $4 gasoline,” Linn said, because it forced Americans to face the energy shortages that are coming, despite the current easing of prices. “The American public is crisis-driven,” he said.

EDIT

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/6124375.html

[phantom power]

1. I'm going to step out of character and say something optimistic...

So far, the indication is that Americans are not resuming their driving habits, in the face of cheap(er) fuel. So it's possible they learned something, at least temporarily.

[NNadir]

2. I certainly hope that we have all learned something.

Personally I favor a $10/gallon tax on oil, but I don't expect that the idea would be too popular.

What is popular and what is necessary are different things.