Thursday 22 May 2008

$2.40 a litre

Today the cost of unleaded petrol in New Zealand went over (NZD) $2 / litre. That's $1.62 in AUD. Premium is selling for $2.20 / lt.

BP appear to be leading the change in the market, with standard unleaded around $2.05. It's expected that other suppliers will follow suit by the weekend.

There have been strong market forecasts that it will be up to $2.50 in a few months.

Time to think eclectic or get your hands on one of those cute wee scooters to get into town. Better still, that cycle of yours that hasn't been used for awhile, might deserve an oil and the tires pumped.

Time for a radical rethink on when and how you use your car or that 4WD.

Also, bear a thought, every time you buy something from the supermarket with loads of excess packaging, and double-sealed tops, it's all derived from oil.

What a wasteful consumer-driven society we've become.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rising fuel prices are now a fact of life. The time has come for a return to public transport. People might like to start attending the CAST meetings in Cairns to try and kick-start a commuter rail service.

Anonymous said...

What have we done to ourselves?
We built Cairns around the hope that everyone would have their own car and be able to fuel it,now we are stuffed!!!!
I pity others in sub divisions further out of town or Tablelands and Beaches, with few options other than to drive their cars.
Isolation will be next problem for all those elderly, disabled, low income ect, that can't afford to fuel up.

Anonymous said...

Give back the Rail motor service we had. Rail line is already there, just need stations to be built. Kuranda and Freshwater already have one, so all they need is a commuter train.
If they can put up those huge unit complexes in a few weeks I reckon we could have stations built by this time next month or at least before fuel hits $2.

Anonymous said...

While I am fully supportive of the concept of tending toward public transport in the development of Cairns as, what ultimately will be a metropolis, the light rail option is a fallacy.

Even the FNQ2025 projected growth for the Edmonton - Gordonvale corridor is not a sufficient critical mass to make a light rail network feasible. Sure, the corridors largely exist from the northern beaches through the western suburbs to the southern suburbs in the form of the cane tramways. These easements largely remain undeveloped and could be utilised in such a development. Unfortunately it would be yet another unsustainable step as we simply do not have and will not attain the population base to repay the capital investment and operational costs. Populating our coastal strip to the required critical mass is recognised as being unsustainable in so many other facets, therefore it would only be planning and political ineptitude to attempt the light rail option.

There are however some interesting developments in solar, ethanol and methane powered bus systems that are undergoing refinements and at this stage appear to be sustainable in terms of their environmental, economic and social footprints. We clearly have locally the raw materials to generate these forms of renewable fuels although I acknowledge there are technological improvements required there as well to improve the sustainablility of their use.

Anonymous said...

Packaging is not the only worrying thing at the supermarket.
Oranges are flown into Australia from the USA, than trucked to Cairns. Imagine the carbon footprint of an orange.
All 13 crates at Coles Mt Sheridan had American flag flying proudly on stickers and not one Aussie orange to be found.
After you pump up your tyres on your bike, dig a hole and plant an orange tree.

Anonymous said...

Now don't you worry about that, anonymous above ...

It's a global world out there these days.
Internet, football player transfers, the oil price and, well what have we now .... oranges.

Mind you, either these oranges are picked, processed, packaged and distributed in California very cost efficiently, (read Mexican labor) or, the US Govt is doin' a bit of subsidising.

If our labor markets demand higher wages than, say the Chinese equiv then ... sack 'em.

Now, that's an idea, why don't we,(us Aussie's), just sit back, bring in cheap foreign labor to dig out our minerals and ores, and we can live off the taxes that the Government must surely get, from the mining industry?

At an extraction rate of 1 zillion trillion equiv. sand buckets per day, then taxed at $$$$$$$.00 per cubic whatever *.m3

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Sounds extra good to me ...

Anonymous said...

I do not understand why more interest has not been shown in a fuel other than fossil fuel,is it because the oil companies and car manufactures hold the upper hand.
Take for example liquid hydrogen,I am given to understand that space shuttles use liquid hydrogen as a fuel,also BMW has produced a vehicle using liquid hydrogen with very satisfactory results.Why do not world governments fast track this technology to bring in
infrastructure to produce this type of fuel.

Anonymous said...

"What a wasteful consumer-driven society we've become." Afterall what is the point or goal of society anyways.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps if Cairns had decent cycle tracks into the city, we might be more likely to leave our cars at home.

Anonymous said...

"Perhaps if Cairns had decent cycle tracks into the city, we might be more likely to leave our cars at home."

Yep ... let's licence bicycles AND, let's charge cyclists, ROAD USER TAX.
Now that would be fair, wouldn't it?
Time these stroppy cyclist's paid their way !!

Anonymous said...

@quickie

Well that's the kind of attitude that got us into this mess in the first place. Chasing the $$$.

How about looking at it from an environmental or tourism viewpoint?

How about we get tax rebates for not clogging up roads or contributing to pollution?