A Political Glimpse from Ireland

Vote Yes To Lisbon

Most of my readers are probably not aware that a momentous occasion in Irish history is occurring tomorrow, as voters head to the polls to vote on whether to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. I still don’t quite understand what is in the Lisbon treaty but many pro-Lisbon organizations seem to be throwing around the phrase “…it will make the EU more efficient…” On the other hand many anti-Lisbon organizations are criticizing the loss of power to the Republic of Ireland. I was in the city centre today and I was amazed at how outnumbered the “yes” campaigners were, for every one person who had on a “yes to Lisbon” t-shirt, there were at least three separate people handing out “no to Lisbon” flyers. It was simply amazing but I fear it might be a little too late to inform the public as many of my Irish friends will not vote or will vote no because the Irish government failed to adequately inform the public about this important issue. I predict that the majority of the people of Ireland will vote “No” tomorrow in an event that is likely not going to make the government and the businesses in Ireland very happy. What their next step will be, I am uncertain, but I hope that I am wrong because Ireland needs this treaty to keep economic growth strong in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. Two Flyers portraying the different viewpoints:

Killing Demand

The price of oil increased significantly on Friday, climbing to $138.54 a barrel with the possibility of the price reaching $150 a barrel in July according to analysts at Morgan Stanley. This is not surprising given that summer is peak driving time for many Americans, but what happens after summer, will the price stabilize or should we expect further increases?

I was thinking about driving today and the difference between your typical Irish and American commute. When I lived in Worcester, MA, it would take between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours to drive the necessary 42 miles into Boston. Now that I live in Lucan, Ireland, it takes me about the same period of time to drive the 6.84 miles into Dublin. Given the vast discrepancies in distance, what is the actual cost in terms of gasoline?

1. It costs $3.93 per gallon of gas at a station in Worcester, MA.
2. For the same gallon of gas in Ireland, I would be paying $7.88 on average.

Yes, that is no exaggeration, but I used the current data available to come up with this unique figure:

1. There are 3.8541178 liters in 1 Gallon.
2. It costs someone in Ireland on average €1.32 per liter of gasoline.
3. Therefore for 1 Gallon of gasoline you would pay €4.99 in Ireland.
4. Using the current euro-dollar exchange rate, the typical Irish driver pays $7.88 per gallon for Gasoline.
5. That is 49.8% more than the typical American driver.

There are a few caveats with this math of course:

1. The euro-dollar exchange rate is not directly correlated to the price of gasoline therefore its inclusion does distort the real cost when comparing Ireland and America
2. I rounded of all figures to two decimal places with the exception of the Gallon-liter conversion.
3. The entire width of Ireland is a mere 138+- miles which his not anything significant compared to the size of the United States.

The point of all these figures and numbers is to illustrate how dependant society has become on every person owning a vehicle despite their detrimental effects to the environment. Ireland and America are both wealthy countries yet some people reading this must ask why it takes 45 min to drive a mere 6.84 miles into the city. The simple answer is traffic. People often joke around here, that Ireland is “Europe’s largest parking lot.” That may sound a bit nasty but there is significant truth to those four words, Ireland has been steadily increasing in wealth over the past 10 years with double digit GDP gains at some points. All this wealth has translated into more cars on a highway that was never meant to hold that many vehicles in any engineer’s imagination.

The government has been talking about instituting a city congestion charge for some time with no implementation to date however they have radically changed the vehicle registration tax. Basically you pay lower tax if your vehicle has lower emissions. I think that is quite fair, don’t you? It will certainly help to encourage consumers to drive vehicles that are more environmentally friendly.

No matter how environmentally friendly cars are, the fundamental problem of traditional gasoline exists and the only way to overcome that is through a significant investment in new and alternative energy sources. Billionaire Boone Pickens of BP Capital sums up the current situation simply and concisely:

“There’s nothing to it to start with,” Pickens said in interview at an American Wind Energy Association conference in Houston. “That’s not what’s happened. You have 85 million barrels a day of oil available in the global energy market and 86.4 million barrels a day of demand. So the price of oil is going to go up until you can kill demand.”

Mr. Pickens goes on further to reinforce his statement later in the interview:

“We’re using 400,000 barrels of oil less today than we did a year ago, but the Chinese are now using 500,000 barrels greater than they did last year,” Pickens said. “So whatever we kill in the way of demand, they pick up in their demand. You’re going to bid for the oil, and the highest bidder’s going to get the oil until you finally kill demand with price.”

In the West we are trying to find more oil, or different ways to more efficiently use what we already have but the problem is never going to go away. Oil is never going to go below the sub-$100 level because demand is going to perpetually increase. Nations like India and China are going to use more oil as their populations grow in wealth and prosperity and it is up to the West to find alternative methodologies to power our transportation systems to ensure a strong and stable macro-environment for future generations. I am not too sure on what technology to use, given the current food crisis, I am going to stay away from ethanol but perhaps hydrogen:

The Irish Take on the American Elections

Having lived in Ireland for almost a year now and have watched with fascination the growing interest of the whole world in the American Election. The News Networks from Europe to the Middle East cannot get enough of the election and it is one of those ever-present segments that are on RTÉ every day (Main Irish Network). I thought it might be a good idea to take a break from my American perspective on the elections to bring a more worldly perspective for this discussion. For this I have used www.boards.ie which is the biggest Irish Forum here in Ireland and here are the results of the Election 2008 Poll conducted so far:

I don’t give any credence to this Poll in terms of the results but it does give a suggestion to what I have been saying about the world opinion at the moment. People outside of the USA are looking for someone to change America’s percieved role in the World. That being said I have liked what Senator McCain has been saying in the media lately that he advocates a stronger relationship with our allies which is a good thing to say but I don’t think that line follows traditional GOP policy. Senator Obama has also been an advocate for a greater integration between the USA and the world but first we will have to see who wins the nomination first.