Thread: Drill here, drill now, pay less!

I'm going to organize this reply in two sections, first those things he said which I disagree with, and second those things where there is agreement.

First off, I find it funny that within the span of one breath, Newt disparages the search for scapegoats, then proceeds to blame the entire situation on liberals. One wonders if he forgets the Republican majority in Congress when he was Speaker and when he failed to deliver on his Contract with America, a majority which survived into Bush's Presidency, when little was done about this energy problem other than to give the most profitable businesses in world history tax subsidies. Let's deal with nuclear power first. Newt blames the lack of progress in building nuclear power plants on "liberals" and presumably he means environmentalists. Darn those powerful environmentalists. In truth, it was conservatives more than environmentalists who stood in the way of nuclear power, and who used the mostly divided and largely ineffectual environmentalist lobby as political cover. The reason for this is simple. It takes massive taxpayer subsidy to build a nuclear power plant, and this is because these things are darn expensive. So expensive that it takes decades to make back the money it costs to build them, thus private investors don't fund them unless they've got significant public backing and insurance. Conservatives, as their name implies, are loathe to spend public money on something that might actually be domestically beneficial, they'd rather spend it on wars or in making their business buddies richer. Couple that with the simple fact that there's simply not enough uranium to replace our on-grid energy needs, and you have a non-starter when it comes to blame for the current crisis.

Let's look at his shale oil argument next. While it's true that the US and Canada have massive amounts of shale oil, relatively little of this is purified and refined into useful products. Economics is the reason once again. It's simply more expensive to get the shale out of the oil than it is to go after more pure sources, even with today's $130 dollar a barrel oil. What Congress recently opposed, and rightly so, was the use of public dollars to research the purification and refinement of shale oil, and to subsidize its production on the market. These subsidies would be going to pre-existing oil production and refinement companies, who, as we already mentioned, are already the most profitable businesses ever seen. Rather than spurring innovation and entrepreneurship in energy, these subsidies would calcify an already largely monopolistic market. For people who are always praising the effectiveness of the free market, conservatives seem loath to permit it to harm their favorite businesses.

Coal is another interesting aside, because by and large, coal is used to produce electricity or steam, not gasoline or anything in the transportation sector. Our crisis is largely a transportation energy crisis, not an electricity generation crisis. I don't know about the rest of you, but my electricity bill has not really skyrocketed in recent months, where my gas bill and home fuel bill has. This is because oil produces less than about 20% of our electricity, coal produces the vast majority, nuclear produces less than 10 percent, and wind less than one tenth of one percent. While there are ways of turning coal into liquid fuel we could use in our cars and trucks, this process is also prohibitively expensive with current technology, and dirty to boot. Couple this with the fact that coal mining, especially mountaintop removal mining, is among the most environmentally destructive activity we engage in, and digging up more coal to burn just doesn't seem to be the answer. Just another red-herring.

I also love how conservatives claim that just drilling more holes in the ground to get yet more oil (but it would be ours, not some arabic warlord's!) is the answer. First of all, it would take 10 years for any new production out of ANWR or the Gulf to come online and have any appreciable market effects. Even then, the increase in supply is only enough to lower prices marginally, if at all, and there's only enough to last about 15 years. Way to appreciate the crisis here guys, propose a solution that won't work, if it ever works as all, until long after you have to take any responsibility for it.

Finally, to address this notion that liberals have been the cause of this crisis, that they don't appreciate it's causes or whatever other nonsense he was spouting, remember, it was Jimmy Carter who put solar panels on the White House, and Ronald Reagan who took them down. It has been liberals who, for the last 20 some-odd years who have been decrying our reliance not just on foreign oil, but on oil at all. At some point, we have to face the facts. Oil is a finite resource. There's only so much of it on this planet, and when we burn through it, what remains will be too expensive to use as fuel. The only way to get out from under the thumb of foreign oil is to get out from under the thumb of oil itself.

And here's where I find some agreement with old Newt. We do need more nuclear power plants, though those won't solve our transportation energy problems. We also need more funding into fusion power research because there's not enough uranium to meet out needs. We absolutely need to move more towards bio-fuels such as cellulostic ethanol and bio-diesel. That is how Brazil gained energy independence, not through drilling more oil wells. Those wells would have been drilled in any event, yet more than half of Brazil's fuel for transportation comes from bio-fuels, mostly ethanol produced from sugar cane. But bio-fuel production also needs to be carefully regulated to ensure that it does not negatively affect food production and food prices in the US. We've already seen farmers start to grow nothing but corn, effecting the price of wheat and soybeans. While I agree that the impact remains relatively small compared to the price of transport, monitoring is needed to make sure that remains the case.

The single most effective thing we could do to get out of this crisis is to start building electric cars in large enough quantities to make them affordable as replacements for the average gas-powered car. Batteries are sufficiently advanced to get you a 100 mile trip, more than far enough for most usage so long as you're not a power junkie, and can be completely recharged at home at night, or in less than 15 minutes at a high voltage recharge station. All that's needed is the mass-production that would make them affordable, and consumer subsidies to help those who would otherwise not be able to afford it able to replace their gas car with electric, and help make it profitable for car manufacturers to embark on a new kind of production. This isn't a quick fix, but at this point, there's not much likelihood we'll find one of those. Even releasing the Strategic Oil Reserve will likely do no more than halt the current price increase for about a month or so.

Combine that with research into and subsidies for decentralized power generation, such as wind power, solar power, geothermal power (probably the best way to heat and cool a home), and other sources you can install in your own home and generate your own power (often with some extra to feed back into the grid) and our energy crisis will be licked. It's a long, expensive, hard road that will leave us a lot better off, both individually and collectively, and it's a road we should have started on 25 years ago in the last oil crisis. The failure to travel that road, however, lies squarely with conservative Republicans and capitulating Democrats, and not liberals.

Lib or Conserv. the asswipes have put us in a position where we have not made refineries, drilled for oil, constructed power plants, constructed dams or made nuclear power plants for 20 something years. So it would take 10 years before the difference would be felt? So? If we do not start now we will be that much farther behind. We need sane energy policy now, not later.
Libs are the only ones that have said in the past that $5.00 a gallon gas would be good for the environment! Libs blame big oil for the profits they are making? The tax on the gas is larger than the profit of the "big bad oil companies" by about 900 percent. Everyone needs to get their heads out of their butts and be real. People have an environment impact because we process energy in the form of food, water whatever. Get over it! The only thing that the Libs have been doing about the raise on gas prices, which they wanted, is try to take more money in taxes and give it to people who can not afford the gas prices they wanted.


R

Naw!!! I am not going to rise to the fly on this one..... Keeping my Foot firmly implanted in my mouth...

Damn Glen. I really like you! You know that?!?!

LOL

Drill for more? No way, Mark! Let's ONLY discuss other options, rather than drill for more while we decide what to do

How do you talk with your tongue that firmly implanted in your cheek Lee?!?

Originally Posted by sicboater

How do you talk with your tongue that firmly implanted in your cheek Lee?!?

I mumble a lot

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . It's the Platform, Stupid | PBS
interesting article about new gasoline substitute... NOT made from corn, and will work in a normal gasoline engine without mods. (right now, only exists at 104 octane, so would be better in a sports car, but the company website indicates they are exploring lower octane formulations as well)

Say what you will about Gingrich. He is the mental giant of our time among the political thinkers.