George Bush held Crown Prince Abdullah’s hands and walked down the path to the ranch and once they were inside, pleaded with him to raise oil production. Bush also told the Crown Prince and the ruler of the country that sent 19 hijackers that American families are suffering and it is important to reduce prices. The price of crude oil fell in anticipation. But even if the Saudis pump more oil, there is not enough refining capacity in United States to make gasoline available to the consumer. So we will be pretty much stuck with the $2.50/gallon price tag (After filling gas for $2.70 for past few weeks, I am happy to fill at $2.50).
So will this high price of gasoline (It was $1.60 a year back), cause a change in lifestyle like more carpooling or using public transport ? Not yet. Columnist Tom Friedman in his book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century argues that the President should have used 9/11 to start a national mission to reduce dependence on Saudi oil by charging more for gas and forcing people to change their lifestyle. The President’s solution is to drill in the Alaska for more oil.
Consumers who pay for gas every week are wiser. They are now opting for more and more hybrid vehicles. In California there was an increase of 103 percent in the sales of hybrid vehicles. Even SUVs and buses are now running on hybrid engines.

But Bob Kuhn, the fleet’s director of transportation, is impressed. So impressed that the bus company intends to replace 45 of its diesel buses with hybrid diesels. That would require approval from California’s Air Resources Board, and is being evaluated by the agency, a spokeswoman said. In all, 10 California transit agencies have asked to use hybrid-diesel buses, including San Francisco’s.
Fuel economy is one reason. Stockton’s hybrid buses are getting 4.9 mpg. That doesn’t sound like much — the five-seat Prius gets 60 mpg in city driving, according to the EPA — but remember that buses seat 34 people, and regular diesel ones get only 3.3 mpg.
“With this technology, we can lower emissions, and it’s not as expensive as we thought it would be,” Kuhn said.
It’s a growing trend. Seattle is now using 235 hybrid buses. Cities as disparate as Honolulu and Albuquerque are trying them out, too. [Hybrid engine technology boards the bus]

It is not just the Japanese car makers who are thinking about fuel efficiency. Few years back when I visited the Los Angeles Auto Show, GM displayed a concept car which was fuel cell powered, and required no gasoline. Finally, the dependence on Saudi Oil will be reduced by the American consumer, by buying more and more such vehicles. It will take a while for these vehicles to be mainstream and till then Oil companies and the Saudis are going to mint money.

Ashish had a post recently on the anti-Japanese protests happening in China and suggested that these demonstrations could be used to sneak in democracy. NY Times has an article that the Chinese Govt. fears the same and is now cracking down by banning the use of text messages or e-mail to organize protests.

The government began cracking down on people using these technologies to foment anti-Japanese protests more than a week ago, before the Shanghai march. According to an employee at a major Internet provider, the government on April 14 ordered all Chinese Web sites to begin filtering anti-Japanese content. Then last week, several anti-Japanese Web sites were shut down because they were trying to organize new protests in May.
One Western analyst in Internet technology said the government has powerful filtering devices that can screen cellphone and e-mail messages. This filtering technology can separate messages with key words such as Falun Gong, the banned spiritual group, and then track the message to the person who sent it.
Falun Gong, in fact, used cell phones to coordinate protests until the government deemed the group a threat and launched a crackdown.
“There are things the bureaucracy could do if it found this sort of communication truly threatening,” said the Internet technology analyst, who has studied China for more than a decade and asked not to be identified.
Yet many analysts agree that screening the Internet and cellphones is far more difficult than the practice of simply ordering state-controlled newspapers or television stations to censor a subject. [A Hundred Cellphones Bloom, and Chinese Take to the Streets]

It is not just local people that China has to worry about. Till now United States was “engaging” China, hoping that some reforms would come through, but now things are getting confrontational. US Senator Chuck Schumer got an amendment passed, which calls for punishing China for undervaluing its currency.

During a floor speech in defense of his amendment, Schumer cited the case of Marietta Corp. in Cortland, which manufactures sample-size shampoos and soaps found in hotel guest rooms. “Only one country doesn’t allow Marietta to (export) import its soap and its shampoo China,” Schumer said. “And when the president (of the company) called me and I visited the plant up in Cortland, 30 miles south of Syracuse, he told me that the Chinese now do their own business in China. They’re using that protected market in China to compete with Marietta, now in Southeast Asia, soon in America.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you file (a complaint) with the WTO (World Trade Organization)?’ “He said, ‘Well, I’ll get an answer in about eight years, and I’ll be out of business.’ “Ladies and gentlemen,” Schumer went on, “. . . we must do something. This (amendment) is the best thing to do. It is certainly better than what we have been doing over the last two years, which is absolutely nothing.” Schumer’s effort against China’s currency practices began in a meeting the senator had two years ago in Syracuse with business, labor and government leaders. Since then, he has repeatedly urged the Bush administration to pressure the Chinese to “float” their currency, the yuan, against the U.S. dollar. China has refused to do so. [Senate supports Schumer’s trade bill]

And China has agreed to revalue the yuan very soon. So it seems as if China is able to contain internal pressure, but it is not able to withstand the external ones.

Once when I was in Kerala, I heard two relatives speaking about farming and one of them said, “Soon America will be telling us what to cultivate”. I could not understand why someone from America would tell a farmer in Kerala what to farm. In Kerala as in many parts of the world, Globalization equals America. Any change in the market forces are attributed directly to Uncle Sam. When you look from Kerala, it seems as if the White House or IMF or World Bank is just spending all their waking hours trying to screw the local farmers.
If Americans had control over this globalization, then so many American software engineers would not have lost jobs due to outsourcing and so many textile mills would not have closed. There is no point in whining, for globalization affects everyone. People who survive are the ones who have learned to take advantage of it.
For example, the personal car revolution started in United States and Detroit churned out aircraft carrier type mediocre cars till the invasion from Japan happened. The Japanese car makers took advantage of a global economy and created plants in America, employing American workers to create economical as well as fuel efficient cars. Recently the No.1 American car maker, GM, reported a loss of $1.1 billion, its worst quarterly performance since 1992.
While GM is losing marketshare, Toyota is gaining by doing things right and taking risks.

Despite the endless debate about what’s plaguing the U.S. auto industry

Multinational companies have this image as exploiters not answerable to anyone. Multinational companies also justify everything they are doing with the words, “to maximize value for the shareholder”. So this time shareholders decided to take some action regarding the alleged issue of the depletion of groundwater by the Coke plant in Kerala, India.
The plant in Kerala was sanctioned by the communists, who realized, maybe after a coconut fell on their heads that Coke uses water and groundwater was disappearing in Plachimada. So the commies, to enhance their shareholder value, turned protestors and got the local panchayat to revoke the licence.
Now the CEO of Coke is facing music over the same issue.

Shareholders didn’t want to talk about re-electing the board of directors or appointing an independent auditor. Instead, they questioned Isdell about issues he’s heard before, namely the killings of several union workers at Coke bottling plants in Colombia and accusations that some of Coke’s plants in India have depleted local groundwater.
Isdell said Coke has not done anything wrong in the two countries, noting that government inquiries in Colombia have dismissed the accusations that Coke was complicit in the deaths by failing to protect workers there. He also said a high court in India has sided with Coke over the water dispute. Even so, Isdell conceded that the company’s best efforts to put the questions to rest have not been successful. Last year’s annual meeting also descended into questions about alleged abuses abroad.
“As long as anyone continues to believe these allegations, we’re going to take them seriously” and work to change people’s perceptions, Isdell said. [Coca-Cola Vows to Change Perception Abroad]