What Will it Take to End Our Oil Addiction?
    
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill                               Peak Oil Coming Sooner Than Expected

May 29, 2010
by Craig Severance

It's time we moved on to something else, or this is going to kill us. 

Not only are world oil supplies running out, but what oil is still left is proving very dirty to obtain.  We need to kick our oil addiction now if we expect to preserve any hopes of economic prosperity, or unspoiled habitats.   

"This is What the End of the Oil Age Looks Like."  We have the Deepwater Horizon oil spill now precisely because the easy to obtain oil is already tapped. You don't drill in mile deep waters if you have somewhere else you could go.  

The worst is yet to come. If we don't kick oil now, we will see more disasters as oil companies move to the Arctic offshore, clear more forests for tar sands, and rape the American West to develop oil shale.  Worldwide droughts, floods and dead seas will also ensue from global warming caused from burning oil.

Richard Heinberg of Post Carbon Institute said it best: "This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet. The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner, what we will end up doing anyway as a result of resource depletion and economic, environmental, and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff." 

We Can Do That.  I said in my recent Peak Oil article "The End of the World as We Know It" that we need to adapt to Peak Oil, but we can do that.  This article explains how.

Click here to read full article.

She's So...HEAVYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
How Congress Forces Businesses To Buy Heavy Trucks
  


April 8, 2009
by Craig Severance

Its tax time again, and as a CPA I see what my small business owners (which includes just about every contractor, realtor, lawyer, doctor, wildcatter, you name it) have purchased for their businesses last year. 

Despite $4/gallon gas in 2008, once again I see that all of the  businesses that bought a vehicle last year have purchased a HEAVY TRUCK.  Why am I not surprised?  Congress has made it very clear that is the only kind of vehicle they are supposed to buy. 

You thought Congress was pushing for energy efficiency, hybrids, better fuel economy standards, and cutting greenhouse gas emissions?  Not so much.  

Consider these choices for business owners:

Choice A:  Buy a Fuel-Efficient Auto or Light Truck.  Pay $30,000 for a new fuel-efficient auto or light truck or van to be used 100% in my business.  How much of that can I deduct from my business income?  Because my vehicle choice is NOT HEAVY, it is automatically considered by Federal tax law to be a "Luxury Automobile" subject  to very low annual deduction limits.  I cannot use ANY immediate tax write-off ("Section 179 expense") to try to write off the purchase price.  Instead, I must write it off over 5 years -- and the first year limit is (normally) only $2,960 for an auto, or $3,160 for a light truck or van.  (In  2009 these first year limits are temporarily increased by $8,000,). 

Here is the real kicker -- over those 5 years,  if I buy a fuel-efficient car or light truck or van, the normal  "Luxury Automobile" deductions total to only about half of what I actually paid for the vehicle:  $14,160 for autos or $15,060 for a light truck or van.  The rules actually forbid businesses who buy a fuel-efficient vehicle from deducting the full cost of those vehicles!

Choice B:  Buy a Heavy Truck.  Pay $40,000 for a new heavy truck with all the options.   How much of that can I deduct from my business income?  ALL of it!  Strictly BECAUSE the truck is HEAVY (more than 6,000 lbs loaded Gross Vehicle Weight) it is not subject to tax deduction limits.  The business can write off the entire cost the first year, if it uses the "Section 179" deduction.  If it chooses instead to write it off over 5 years, it can actually write off the full purchase price with no artificial limits.

If you were a business owner faced with the above rules -- what would you do?  Almost certainly, you would buy the heavy truck -- whether you need one or not.  Its a straightforward business decision.*  

Click here to read the entire Article.