Lowering The Price Of Oil

Lowering The Price Of Oil: "

Bradford Plumer outlines various strategies. He has low expectations:

In theory, it’s possible to imagine some sort of sweeping compromise where Democrats agree to a tar-sands pipeline (and maybe some drilling) as a short-term fix and Republicans agree to repeal oil tax breaks and put more money into ways to reduce our dependence on oil—better fuel-efficiency, faster electric-car deployment, mass-transit, the works—so that gas prices become less, not more of a problem over time. But does anyone think that will actually happen?

Derek Thompson created the above "editorial pie chart" to help think about the price of oil:

The price of a barrel has increased from $85 to $110 -- a 30% bump -- in just five months. To find out why, I spoke with several energy experts across Washington to build myself a kind of editorial pie chart. I'm calling it an editorial pie chart because it is based on the experts' opinion rather than a measured impact, but I think it's a useful way to illustrate the relative importance of each factor.

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