Posted on 03/04/2010 9:42:09 AM PST by AJKauf
During 2008, when gasoline topped $4 a gallon in many parts of the U.S., political figures like former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) chanted the popular cry: “Drill Here, Drill Now!” Bumper stickers calling for expanded drilling in the U.S. were ubiquitous, and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin relentlessly pushed to have the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) opened for drilling.
Average, everyday Americans were heavily involved as well. And taken in retrospect, 2008’s “Drill Here, Drill Now” movement became so vocal that the push for expanded domestic oil production was nothing less than a precursor to the tea parties that popped up throughout the U.S. in 2009.
Yet here we are in 2010, and the mantra is lost. After gas prices fell in late 2008, many of the “Drill Here, Drill Now” crowd apparently moved on to other causes. As a result, we didn’t drill here and we now face the prospect of paying $3.25 (or more) a gallon for our gasoline this coming summer. And estimates are that this approaching price increase will raise the average American’s monthly gasoline expenditures beyond what many can bear.,,,
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
We’ve been flooded with so many other issues it kind of got shoved aside. I haven’t forgotten it and will be one of the things that my votes depend on.
0bama and the Libs stole it - We're all taking it up the butt right now!
The prices went down.
good question
It was the right answer then and its still the right answer.
Every billion we drill out of our own deposits is a billion we aren’t sending out of the country, and its a billion that is being spent here on American workers, paying American salaries, buying American materials and equipment, and paying into American tax bases.
We send several hundred billion a year out of the country buying fuel, and the way to turn that around is drilling and mining our own oil and oil shale deposits, and converting our coal into diesel and in so doing putting our own people to work. Not everyone is a driller? No, they aren’t. But lots of people build machinery, and tools, and lots of people build houses and cars and sell clothes and TVs. Starting pumping new billions of real investment into the economy and you’ll turn everything around.
Wind and solar farms don’t offset even a thimble-full of foreign oil. To do that you have to drill.
“Wind and solar farms don’t offset even a thimble-full of foreign oil.”
They don’t? What about the electrical generators that are oil fueled?
That picture would be even better if Karl Marx was under the mask.
I kinda lean toward Benito Mussolini, myself...
The kicker is, although we import a majority of our oil, less than half that comes from the Middle East. Drilling here could take a huge dent out of the goat humpers cash flow.
Not many of those left in continuous operation. The ones that remain are mostly peakers and backup, or dual-fuel with oil as a backup. In the list of the top thirty countries using oil for generation, we aren't on the list (although Canada and Mexico are). Solar and wind don't reduce the need for peakers, in fact they increase the need for stand-by power.
Most generators in the US are coal or natgas. Which means, for the most part, solar and wind off-set fuels we already have plenty of. My view is that politicians who promote wind and solar as their energy policy are shilling for OPEC since their policy won't reduce our use of OPEC oil by even a barrel.
Okay, makes sense. I guess our oil consumption is tied to transportation, so unless and until we actually start driving electric cars, alternative sources of electric power won’t have any real effect on it.
Which I'd like to see, a push toward electrics. I'm excited about the Tesla, if only they could get the price down where ordinary folk could afford it.
For me, the alternative to coal and natgas is nuke. Not instead of, but in addition to, the others. I'm not totally against wind and solar, to me they are a good niche source for specialty purposes.
Since we do have lots of home-grown coal, and natural gas (and uranium for nukes), in a way it makes sense to shift at least part of our transportation over to electrics. We could make diesel and gasoline from coal, but we could also turn the coal into electricity as we already do, and then use electricity to drive the cars. We're not there yet, but batteries are going to get better. We may not be that far off.
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