No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States.
-- George Washington
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The President Says...
"We will protect our environment. But when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it."
They don't allow us to build a refinery in 30 years. Then they use the "we can't drill ourselves out of the energy crisis" line. Then of course, Carter's solution to the oil crisis was to switch to coal, and no self respecting environmentalist ideologue would ever allow that to happen. Add in the NIMBY tactics to any and all alternative fuels and you've got a recipe for, well, the energy situation of today.
Hold on now...how many years did Bush have a Republican Congress to get some movement in building refineries, increasing oil production here and such?
Protecting wildlife and the environment is important, but sometimes you have to deal with the problems of the here and now before dealing with that which would be nice to do.
Cameron, we know a great deal more about global warming than we knew in 1979. The coal solution sounded rational then, it doesn't now.
The industry blames environmental regulation for their failure to build refineries, but that's BS. They chose short-term profit over long-term investment.
A casual look at the economics of the oil industry and the actual proven reserves in the US make it quite clear that we can't drill ourselves out of the energy crisis.
Then I'm sure that the proposed refinery in South Dakota will sail right through.
Just don't tell that to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Plains Justice, Save Union County Committee, Save Our Siouxland Coalition, Citizens Opposed to Oil Pollution, and the Dakota Resource Council - all of whom are environmental organizations vehemently opposed to building the nations first refinery in 30 years.
Um.....Yeah. I don't have anything to say about this specifically. I do want to say that you are, in fact, my most favorite genius friend. :) And in answer to your question on Greg's blog, Room 143. He'll be there through the weekend, surgery on Thursday.
What is good about our dependency on oil, seriously? It's messy, it's expensive, it's a limited resource... it's an imperfect system at best. There is so much potential out there for better fuel sources that we haven't even tried to tap or develop...
because of our dependence on oil. And because our oil companies have powerful influence and lobbying capabilities.
Oil hasn't been expensive until recently. Sure, the 70's had some artificially high prices, but OPEC finally took some economics classes and upped supply. Frankly, today's prices are fueled by something similar - an artificial shortage. There is oil, but we aren't allowed to get it.
Why oil? Because no other energy source comes close to supplying energy as cheaply or efficiently as oil. I tend not to buy into "Big Oil hiding alternative energy" conspiracy theories because if they're really as greedy as Democracy Lover thinks they are then they'd dump OPEC oil and sell the alternatives that they control.
Car companies are going out of their minds trying to tap into the alternative market right now, but even Honda has to sell the new vehicles at a loss because they're so expensive.
Now, if President Carter's advice had been heeded, and we had switched our energy from oil to coal, things would be far different. OPEC would have been broken. We have so much coal we would be energy independent, and still had cheap fuel. Vehicles would have been converted to run on electricity. City smog would be gone. And demand for alternative sources of electricity would have increased as well, slowly moving us away from coal - at least partially.
But again, no self respecting environmentalist would follow Carter's advice. So we stuck with oil. And OPEC kept it cheap enough to keep us from developing alternatives. In the end it became a case of cutting off our nose to spite our face.
8 comments:
Yep, that's our liberal, Democrat, environmental extremist Jimmy for you. He was rational, not an ideologue.
Too bad his party wasn't.
They don't allow us to build a refinery in 30 years. Then they use the "we can't drill ourselves out of the energy crisis" line. Then of course, Carter's solution to the oil crisis was to switch to coal, and no self respecting environmentalist ideologue would ever allow that to happen. Add in the NIMBY tactics to any and all alternative fuels and you've got a recipe for, well, the energy situation of today.
So thanks, you non-ideologues.
Hold on now...how many years did Bush have a Republican Congress to get some movement in building refineries, increasing oil production here and such?
Protecting wildlife and the environment is important, but sometimes you have to deal with the problems of the here and now before dealing with that which would be nice to do.
Cameron, we know a great deal more about global warming than we knew in 1979. The coal solution sounded rational then, it doesn't now.
The industry blames environmental regulation for their failure to build refineries, but that's BS. They chose short-term profit over long-term investment.
A casual look at the economics of the oil industry and the actual proven reserves in the US make it quite clear that we can't drill ourselves out of the energy crisis.
Then I'm sure that the proposed refinery in South Dakota will sail right through.
Just don't tell that to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Plains Justice, Save Union County Committee, Save Our Siouxland Coalition, Citizens Opposed to Oil Pollution, and the Dakota Resource Council - all of whom are environmental organizations vehemently opposed to building the nations first refinery in 30 years.
Um.....Yeah. I don't have anything to say about this specifically. I do want to say that you are, in fact, my most favorite genius friend. :) And in answer to your question on Greg's blog, Room 143. He'll be there through the weekend, surgery on Thursday.
well...
What is good about our dependency on oil, seriously? It's messy, it's expensive, it's a limited resource... it's an imperfect system at best. There is so much potential out there for better fuel sources that we haven't even tried to tap or develop...
because of our dependence on oil. And because our oil companies have powerful influence and lobbying capabilities.
What's so good about oil? Serious question.
Oil hasn't been expensive until recently. Sure, the 70's had some artificially high prices, but OPEC finally took some economics classes and upped supply. Frankly, today's prices are fueled by something similar - an artificial shortage. There is oil, but we aren't allowed to get it.
Why oil? Because no other energy source comes close to supplying energy as cheaply or efficiently as oil. I tend not to buy into "Big Oil hiding alternative energy" conspiracy theories because if they're really as greedy as Democracy Lover thinks they are then they'd dump OPEC oil and sell the alternatives that they control.
Car companies are going out of their minds trying to tap into the alternative market right now, but even Honda has to sell the new vehicles at a loss because they're so expensive.
Now, if President Carter's advice had been heeded, and we had switched our energy from oil to coal, things would be far different. OPEC would have been broken. We have so much coal we would be energy independent, and still had cheap fuel. Vehicles would have been converted to run on electricity. City smog would be gone. And demand for alternative sources of electricity would have increased as well, slowly moving us away from coal - at least partially.
But again, no self respecting environmentalist would follow Carter's advice. So we stuck with oil. And OPEC kept it cheap enough to keep us from developing alternatives. In the end it became a case of cutting off our nose to spite our face.
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