Posted on 11/08/2007 9:42:18 AM PST by neverdem
Edited on 11/08/2007 9:48:34 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Oil is nearly $100 a barrel. Gas may soon reach $4 a gallon. And Americans are being bitten in almost every way imaginable by this insidious oil hydra.
Two billion people in China and India are now eager consumers. They want the cars, gadgets, and lifestyle that Westerners have claimed as a birthright for a half-century. Their growing energy appetites mean that the international petroleum market may remain tight, even if Americans — who use almost twice as much oil per day as China and India put together — cut back on imported energy.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Common sense from Fresno State!
While I don't usually support large government programs, I would love to see the federal government spend about $50B figuring out how to mine methane hydrates from the ocean floor. Centuries of energy from our own coastal waters.
Oil shale/sands is good too.
—as usual, VDH hits it—
You mean some real, old fashioned imperialism?
It’s shameful that we didn’t take the pain of 1974’s shortages, due to the Arab oil embargo, to heart and develop alternative energy sources over the past three decades. We had warning. We could be thumbing our noses at the middle east and Venezuela if we had.
This will not be over until the high energy prices have triggered a recession in our country. Only then will things like ANWAR and oil drilling off of Florida be on the table. Hopefully by that time, the recession causes the price of oil to crash through the floor.
There is no easy immediate way out of this. Even leveraging everything we have, it would take five years to work through this.
We should start leveraging all of our oil assets now. We should also be working to get ebergy sources wherever they can be gotten. This means windmills for the plains, geothermal plants out in Wyoming and Colorado, wave generation stations off of California. Solar panels for houses, and more energy efficient equipment everywhere.
The ultimate answer has to be technology. I believe exploration of space gives us the best chance to evelop that technology.
No there is no easy way out, it will take time and investment in using the resources we have here in North America.
Look to what Sasol & ESKOM are doing in South Africa for the answer...
Nuclear power and syngas production...
There’s one economic fallacy in the middle of the article: Concerning the oil pumped out of the ground here in the U.S. Hanson implies that the oil companies should either be taxed on that oil, or compelled to sell it for less than imported oil—otherwise they are reaping a “windfall.” This is a slight variation on the perennial nostrum that says that gas stations should be forced to sell the “cheap” gas they may have in their tanks at a fixed price, and not be allowed to raise their price until the tanks have been replenished with “more expensive” gas. As though the price of a commodity was somehow a physical property attached to the actual molecules.
It is futile and destructive to attempt to enforce a different price for a portion of a fungible commodity—in this case, on the basis of the “cost-push” fallacy. To the extent that the cost of producing domestic oil is lower for some reason—TO THAT PRECISE EXTENT domestic oil is keeping the price of imported oil down.
It is imperative that we stop the flow of cash to the Mad Mullahs, Islamo-Marxists, Political Fantasists, and spiritual/psychological infants in oil-rich regions. We are spending billions of dollars weekly, in order to provide the Baby with a Hammer.
Question is, what’d we do with all the money we saved during the years when oil prices had gone down?
Yes.
—Drill Anwar, and use the environmentalists to grease the treads of our tanks (bulldozers)
—Drill other areas of our country (same thing with environmentalists)
—Aggressively build nuclear power plants (same thing with environmentalists)
—Develop better battery technology to have more electric cars in use
—Look at hydrogen as a way to transfer the nuclear energy to propel those electric cars
—The little things, more energy efficient air conditioners, water heaters, and furnaces in homes. Possible tax incentives for people to upgrade.
No, there is no way out. The last chance at that was creating the Dept of Energy to develop alternative fuels after the Arab Oil Embargo. The time since then has been wasted and there is no second chance. All we can do is try to ride it down.
That is contradictory. Recession will eliminate development funds altogether.
that is brilliant. Well every college kid in America needed that lava lamp in their dorm room.
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