Rockefellers Divesting From Big Oil

If the Rockerfellers want to give up everything that got them where they are why don't they give up all their money as well?

Because that would be stupid?

All their money came from big oil. They should give it all away.

You are in no way a representative sample. With the levels of student debt carried by most college graduates, a car payment of any size is not something they can afford.

Er, no, they should invest it into whatever replaces oil, you ignorant ass.

ALL THEIR MONEY CAME FROM BIG OIL.

You can trace it all back to the man himself: Rockerfeller.

They should give all the money back as punishment for what their family has done to the world.

That's not necessary.

They can just as easily Youtube themselves self mutilating with box cutters, and sobbing humiliating self-denigrating slogans written by Youtube commenters.
The video only need be 3 hours long.

That whole "I don't wanna drive" thing must only be an urban mentality...and when you live in areas like Seattle and Boston where the bus runs every seven minutes, it makes sense. In the rural areas of Louisiana and Mississippi that don't even have sidewalks, a vehicle is a necessity.

Read the link. I'm not talking anecdotes here. Young people simply don't WANT to drive as much as prior generations, as evidenced not just by declines in car ownership and miles driven, but by not even bothering to get a driver's license in the first place.

Graphic is a bit old, driver's license attainment has continued to fall. And not everyone with a license actually drives.

And young people are fleeing those areas.

Yeah but they don't want to dress like adults either, so that's hardly indcitave of progress.


http://www.gq.com/style/blogs/the-gq-eye/2014/09/gq-addresses-the-one-piece-suit.html

They should give it to me!

That's a bus that's running late. Seriously, during rush hour, major bus corridors here are more like 2 minute frequencies.

I'd totally get one of those if I hadn't been told to stop wearing suits after my first week, I was making people uncomfortable.

Again, we're talking about a society where real incomes have been falling for decades now, for most people, while debt burdens have been increasing. I know of plenty of people who had to wait until they turned 18 to get a license because their parents simply couldn't afford to add them to their car insurance before then.

And not everyone without a license is only a passenger. Last estimate I heard was that 1/3 of all the people behind the wheel in TN did not have a driver's license. (They're driving because the state has made it easier and easier to get your license revoked, but harder and harder to get it reinstated, while not expanding the mass transit system.)

Personal anecdotes don't an argument make. And what is your argument, that all the census data, opinion polls and research is wrong? That young people aren't forgoing even getting licenses? That auto-dominated suburbs aren't losing value b/c millenials are spurning them for the more expensive (in terms of housing) dense walkable neighborhood where car ownership isn't forced on them?

Please lay out your argument with supporting data.

Services like Uber will make a difference as well. Our transportation system is as a rule extremely inefficient.

But you guys are dreaming if you think oil is going to drop in demand over the next 50 years. Too many developing countries coming online that will offset any reduction in demand that comes from the 1st world countries. That is why the US is moving towards being able to export all the oil.

Keep dreaming though.

What the fuck is this? Buy a suit, you fruitcakes.

I like Uber, because the drivers aren't hollering into a phone talking to Ethiopia the entire drive.

When fuel prices drop below $2 per gallon, I will agree that fuel prices have fallen for the positive.

I've used both Amtrak and Metrolink in the Orange County, CA area. Both of their services stink. Those trains couldn't run on time if their lives depended upon it. I had to stop taking them. I get off of work at 5:00, the train station is 5 minutes away from my office. The earliest train that I could catch was 5:50pm. Most of the time I wasn't getting back to the train station (which had 4 stops in between) until at 7:00pm. The train station is about 12 miles from the train station that I caught the train. On Friday nights, or nights when the Angels were playing, I wouldn't get back to the train station until around 7:45pm. No thanks. I can travel that same distance in my car within an hour at most and that is when traffic is bad.

I'm saying that its more complicated than any single given reason. A lack of a driver's license necessarily mean anything in and of itself as to why the person doesn't have one. For example, if you can't afford the car insurance rates, there's not much point in getting a license, if you don't already have one.

People are getting squeezed financially, and in areas with mass transit, cars are a "luxury" item. Lots of Millennials don't have TVs, because they can't really afford them. Tablet sales are stagnant, across all brands, as people don't feel the need to swap them out every time a new model is released. Some people are ditching, not merely cable TV, but internet service not provided by their cellphone, claiming that its "all they need." Is it? Or is it that they have to make choices, and having 100+ channels on cable, plus internet, plus a cellphone, etc., has simply gotten too expensive for them?

At least part of what's causing people to re-examine where they're spending their money is that they simply don't have the money to waste any more. If we see a return to increases in earning potential for individuals similar to that which existed prior to the 1980s, we might see a shift back towards car ownership.

What worries me is that when we have a large disaster situation, where people need to be evacuated from an area, because so many folks don't have a car, that they're forced to rely on services which can't handle the emergency, and we end up with a situation similar to what happened during Katrina.

You do know that a great deal of the components needed for electric cars are being built or mined in China, right? And that the Chinese government is now starting a push towards encouraging electric cars, what with all the air pollution they have to deal with.

I don't expect to see a global plunge in the demand for oil in the next 20 years, but do I think that its possible the global demand will remain flat because of the US getting off oil, and other nations following the same path? Yeah. That I do.

Orange County is one of those places where the perception is that only "those people" ride public transportation, so naturally your one and only commuter line is going to suck. And Amtrak was designed for longer distances, not local stops.

Even L.A. - which abandoned its perfectly wonderful trolley lines for freeways (yes, the plotline in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is based on fact) - has been steadily rebuilding a real commuter line that will eventually interconnect the entire county, the NIMBYs in Beverly Hills notwithstanding.

I DON'T GET IT GUYS DOESN'T SUPPORTING GREEN ENERGY MEAN YOU HAVE TO HATE ANYTHING OR ANYONE THAT HAS SO MUCH AS DEEP FRIED SOME FOOD?

Amtrak is not the only commuter line. There is also the Metrolink. Neither are dependable or reliable modes of transportation.

The only benefit to me was the money I saved for gasoline and wear and tear on my car. My company paid for most of my monthly train pass.

Southern California has a horribly dysfunctional public transportation system. The most significant problem with either the Metrolink or Amtrak is the limited number of tracks available for use. In most areas of OC there is only one set of tracks. So when there is any type of accident on or near the tracks, all train travel was impacted. One day I was more than an hour late for work due to the crossing arm system being down. The train couldn't go more than 10-15 miles per hour. The train would have to stop while a conductor got out of the train to stop traffic at each of the intersections that had the malfunctioning crossing arms. Another negative is that the tracks used are owned by the railroad. The railroad controls the routes.

To @Tuckerfan 's post above: he's got a point to all of that. I didn't even have a licence till I came back from Japan last year, simply because I didn't have the money for lessons.

And why spring for cable if 95 percent of everything on TV can be found on Hulu and Netflix and Pirate Bay? A TV's best use these days is as an overprice computer monitor.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant your Metrolink line and Amtrak, two separate entities. Amtrak, obviously, is national, Metrolink akin to the LIRR or MetroNorth, i.e., local commuter lines. The difference with the East Coast lines is that they have to run more frequently because they feed into the central locus of Manhattan. There's no equivalent in SoCal.

Some parts of SoCal have horribly dysfunctional public transportation systems and, you're right, suburban sprawl has made it difficult in places like Orange County to lay track anywhere except on old rail beds or freeway medians.

L.A.'s Metro uses freeway medians in only a few places where other options weren't available. Mostly it's been built on either waste space or the old trolley and freight line beds, which means running the trains doesn't interfere with traffic. Maximum speed is 55 mph (how often can you say that on the 10 or the 405?), and trains arrive every 10-12 minutes.

Does it reduce freeway traffic? You betcha:

Monthly ridership stats

When Expo Phase 2 - which can take you from Union Station to the S.M. Pier - is completed, it's expected to add another 64,000 riders a day.

That's the number of people who won't be driving on the 10. So even people wedded to their cars will benefit.

The message isn't "mass transit sucks." It's "mass transit done right benefits everyone."

My TV is used for video games and the occasional DVD. I haven't watched a program on it for years.

LA is definitely working toward a decent system. I notice from the link that you posted, though, that ridership for all modes is actually trending down. What do you think is causing this?

As for OC, it is not yet where LA is, but the OCTA bus system is actually quite well implemented. I agree Metrolink is fairly limited, mostly because it bypasses where people live and also to some extent where they work. Plans are afoot for some light rail in better situated corridors. Santa Ana, Garden Grove, and Anaheim are collaborating to build a system using some of the Pacific Electric right of ways, that should bring true rapid transit to central county areas. That's at least a start.

I know batteries for cars have improved a whole lot but don't batteries still include lots of toxic materials?

So do the electronics in a smartphone and gasoline isn't exactly good for the environment. What's your point?