Posted on 01/24/2008 7:15:13 AM PST by xjcsa
With oil prices still flirting with $100 a barrel, everyone is talking about the need for "energy independence." Late last year, President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007; Sen. John McCain has declared, "We need energy independence"; and Sen. Barack Obama has called for "serious leadership to get us started down the path of energy independence."
This may all be good politics. But the idea that the United States, the world's single largest energy consumer, can be independent of the $5 trillion-per-year energy business -- the world's single biggest industry -- is ludicrous on its face. The push for energy independence is based on a series of false premises . Here are a few of the most pernicious ones.
The five myths:
1 Energy independence will reduce or eliminate terrorism.
2 A big push for alternative fuels will break our oil addiction.
3 Energy independence will let America choke off the flow of money to nasty countries.
4 Energy independence will mean reform in the Muslim world.
5 Energy independence will mean a more secure U.S. energy supply.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Most of this is true, but we can also buy our oil from anywhere. The lion's share comes from Canada and Mexico.
1. Agree. World demand for Oil is currently increasing. Even significant reductions by the US in oil consumption would be offset by foreign oil demand (e.g., China). However, reduced use of foreign oil would reduce the volitility in the US economy brought on by uncertainty in the energy markets.
2. Disagree. Nukes, domestic oil drilling, coal, railroad deregulation (freight), and wind farms in Cape Cod* could all bring fairly rapid relief.
3. Perhaps. I’d rather they didn’t bomb us with our own money.
4. Agree.
5. Disagree. Since I started brewing my own beer, I’ve never had a supply problem...now that’s security.
dung.
* Well maybe not, but it would piss off Ted Kennedy which is a desirable end in itself.
Fair enough; thanks for the data.
I think he ended up finding it without me; I saw that discussion on another thread here.
Nyu kyu lar!!!!
The ultimate in Green Energy.
But NOOOOOOOOO....
I also sent the author of the article the same information.
He thanked me for the corrected source of data.
We wouldn't need them either if we lifted all the restrictions on domestic drilling and on building nuclear power stations. (Oh, and if we hadn't allowed them to nationalize those oil fields. They had been the property of American companies up until around the 1950s.)
I think increasing the supply of energy in all forms will decrease the value of oil. This will help economies everywhere. This will give less power to thugs.
Remember, the world's population is growing at 57 million people a year [the size of Italy] and will continue to do so until at least 2050. Remember that the growing affluence of India and China will increase demand significantly. Remember that the population of the US increased 100 million since 1970 and 21 million since 2000. In another 23 years we will add another 60 million and by 2060 another 167 million, 105 million from immigration. We are going to have to run to stand still if we want to maintain the same standard of living.
The demand for oil is going to increase, not decrease, no matter what we do in the short term.
While in Beijing there are still 2.4 million people who ride their bicycles to work every day, nearly 1,000 new cars hit the streets daily. China's roads are expected to be clogged with 170 million vehicles by 2020 says the World Bank -- by which time the country would have surpassed the United States in total car ownership.
"No one is doubting that more and more Chinese people are going to reach that threshold of affordability -- to buy their own car," said John Humphrey, manager of China operation for the U.S.-based car industry consultants J.D.Power Asia Pacific. "The pace of change we have seen in China's auto market is astounding but demand is still growing." Seven million cars are sold in China each year. That means China this year left Japan behind to become the second-largest car market in the world after the U.S., where more than 16 million cars are sold annually
Wrong. Our plan is to use their oil up first then we will have our own here and they have nothing. This is a secret and shouldnt be talked about.
There is more oil in the oil shale in Colorado and Utah than in Saudi Arabia. Anwar and the gulf could provide enough oil to make us independent form Mexico and Venezuela. If we did not import such massive amounts the world price would fall and we would have a steady price that would would not fluctuate much. What would be gas price for $30-40 per barrel oil?
You have to be smoking crack. That would 'mess us up' about as badly as if we had lost WWII. You rip even 10% off our oil supply and the economy goes into a tail spin. Take away 60%, and it totally collapses. It wouldn't be gas lines or fuel rationing -- it would quickly be bread lines.
The problem of foreign oil is not so much that it funds terrorism, but that our dependence on foreign sources of oil leads us to be beholden to the national interests of those countries we get it from. Instead the US government should be led by the interests of the American people, rather than the interests of foreign nations.
Keep in mind that a fossil fuel is more energy-efficient than any of these “alternative fuels,” which makes it all that much more difficult to replace oil, natural gas, coal, etc.
Saudi Arabia represents about 10% of our imported oil. Canada provides almost twice a much. And you can add Nigeria to the top five. Saudia Arabia, Mexico, and Venzuela are roughly the same in terms of imports.
And completely wrong except for the correct assessment that the “alternative fuels” obsession is a diversionary boondoggle that will not solve anything.
Economics 101: It does not matter if we, the world’s largest consumer of oil, don’t get our supplies from the Persian Gulf primarily; if we become a net exporter and overall demand drops dramatically, funds to Saudi Princes who fund Wahabbism and to the Ayatollahs of Iran and to Chavez drop dramatically. They also drop for Mexico so that it, finally, will have to become more like us and actually stop being a failed state dependent upon oil revenue and remittances that lives by exporting its poverty to us. They then become desperate to keep up the easy revenues to which they have become addicted and depress prices further. Since they have either, as in the case of Iran and Venezuela, damaged and even destroyed the rest of their economies and put everything in the oil basket, their populations work assiduously to get rid of them because they know their dictatorship is heading they, the people, for want and scarcity. In the case of Saudi Arabia, they never had an economy, so the oil is their only tool of dominance. As the oil revenues fall they have to either modernize or lose their leadership role. The power of the Wahabbi clerics diminishes as entrepreneurs in the Islamic world begin to outdo the oil barons.
This author is simply wrong. There is a huge difference between starving terrorism and letting it enjoy wealth that increases with every increase in our need for fuel for our military.
We point out again, and this author does not discuss, that the proposition that Allah gave them the oil to use as a sword against us, fuels the terrorists. The delusion that Sharia law works and that it would be better if mankind were ruled by it in its form from the 600’s is completely enabled by the illusion of wealth from the single crop economy of oil. Take it away by reducing aggregate demand to the point where oil income is way below what these nations are spending and their power is broken. They have to accommodate to the modern world.
The Washington Post is only interested in losing the war to enhance and preserve its own illusion of power, the house organ of the bankrupting welfare state.
Oil is a global commodity. It is fungible. It matters not where we buy it from.
And if pigs had wings, they could fly.
Or we could just produce all the oil we need, since we leave most of it in the ground and burn it and refine it better.
We could, of course, again spend hundreds of millions on the promise of oil shale and get nothing, do another Synfuels and waste more hundreds of millions. We are already doing that with ethanol. Even though we already have gasoline that you can burn in your care much more efficiently and reduce aggregate demand and cost dramatically, we don’t use it. Instead we spend enormous amounts on chasing clean coal.
We can either continue to boondoggle and subsidize the problem or we can win the war; we can’t do both as a strategic reality.
Never did make a lot of sense to coerce a wheat crop in the desert.
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