I heard a story on the news the other day about a billionaire going through a divorce.

The judge in the divorce proceedings ordered him to pay his wife half of his fortune….so he wrote her a personal check for a little bit shy of a billion dollars.

It’s hard to write out a check that big.

That’s a crazy amount of money.

Good work, lady!

Score!

But….she turned it down. She didn’t cash the check.

She was holding out for more.

She was angry and a billion dollars wasn’t going to sooth her anger.

She didn’t cash the check until the fan got hit with something stinky and gas prices started to go way down.

Now, personally, I love that gas is cheap right now. It makes it easy for me when I have to drive around all the time for work to save some money on gas.

I like it.

But these guys who are in the gas business are hurting.

They aren’t making the huge amounts of money they used to.

So….when things started to get rough….and profits were sinking….this billionaire said something like, “Hey! I’m poor! I can’t give you any more! A billion is all I can spare!” and….guess what?

His ex-wife cashed the check.

You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip….so….she cashed that bad boy.

Took the money….and ran….while the getting was good.

Wow.

Then yesterday, I heard that Canada was going to lose a lot of money because of the lowered  gasoline price….like 450 million dollars in the hole because the profits had fallen so drastically.

Holy smokes.

What’s good for the goose….no, that doesn’t make sense….what?

I’m benefiting from all this cheap gas….and somebody else is freaking out.

Somewhere….some high-roller gas dude is totally freaking out.

So, you can’t make money selling gasoline right now.

I was thinking about that…..and I wondered if maybe this wasn’t the kick in the pants that the alternative energy movement needed?

Maybe when it becomes a matter of everybody’s inability to turn a profit with the old “paradigm”….maybe they’ll make a panicked leap onto some other technology that might be more profitable?

They sure aren’t going to do it because it’s the “right thing to do” or because it’s good for the planet….maybe when the money dries up with this “gas thing”, they’ll go looking for a deeper pond to milk for a while….

“A deeper pond to milk”…..that’s silly.

It’s all about the money, anyway. It’s all about a ghost….a construct….a fairy tale that we’ve all bought into.

We might have still been trading pretty shells if we hadn’t been advanced enough to eventually come up with something like Bitcoins.

Maybe “peak oil” isn’t the really scary thing…..maybe it’s the reduced profit margin that’s really going to take the system down?

Oh, what do I really care?

I think it’s time for a good road trip….gas is cheap.

Let’s go down South….sip some margaritas by the sea.

Let’s “motorvate”….while the getting’s cheap.

“beer or gasoline” Chris Young