Wouldn't we be better off raising CAFE standards and spending money to develop wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear power instead?Is it smarter to drill for oil that may pan out in 40 years or spend money developing alt. resources?
If it would REALLY take 40 years to ';pan out,'; then alternative energy would make sense to me. But since it won't take 40 years, then alternative energy is just a liberal pipe-dream.Is it smarter to drill for oil that may pan out in 40 years or spend money developing alt. resources?
Why is it always the false dichotomy of ';either or'; some draconian measures.
We can't just stop using petroleum, and we do need to develop both alternatives and lower demand.
But the gasoline problem isn't a crude oil problem that drilling will solve. It's a refining problem which the oil companies are not addressing becsause the profit is in short supply.
So keep the supply low by not creating larger refinery capacity, and the prices go up. Supply and demand. Artificially manipulated for the supply siders.
The answer is to do both at the same time. Alternative energies are not viable at this time, and who knows when they will be. Again we don't know how long it will take for oil to pan out, it could be very shortly, knowing all that we now know about oil processes. The smart thing is to allow for both and not limit ourselves to one solution.
Yes, and you are wrong. There is enough shale oil in the U.S. to run America for 125 years without using any crude oil.
Democrats voted against the use of shale oil.
that option was on the table from the time of carter. we have beenworking on all those things and they still have yet to pan out. we can be getting oil from a rig in as little as 18 months, not sure where you got the 40 years. the 18 months is from several oil people. that is best case 3-5 years is more likely. and say we sink billions into alt which i believe is our future, what in the meantime, keep depending on the rest of the world? it all has to be done together.
What if it only took 6 months. Show me how it takes 40 years to get oil to the market please. Don't believe the propaganda.
Why not both?
Oil needs competition. The price is high because they have enjoyed a monopoly on motor vehicle fuel since prohibition.
Let's get alternative fuels online and continue to drill.
And, no, raising CAFE standards is an artificial government solution, not a market solution. Government solutions never Never NEVER work and always Always ALWAYS result in blowback (unintended consequences) that end up hurting the most vulnerable among us while politicians can just print money for themselves rather than suffer with the rest of us.
Kind of a ';let them eat cake'; mentality.
Why can't we do both? it cost us nothing to allow the oil companies to spend THEIR money to search for oil. we just need to grant them permission. also alt energy has a poor track record with unintended consequences, IE birds in windmills and ethanol driving up food prices. There is no panacea.
Isn't it interesting that vehicles on the road today have roughly the same fuel economy as they did over 20 years ago? Precisely why we need to work on fossil fuel alternatives and as the consumer, require corporations to look beyond the next fiscal quarter.
Even drilling today will not effect energy prices for years, perhaps decades.
P.S. Isn't it interesting Big Exxon weaseled out of paying for the Valdez cleanup?
Why can't we do both?
And by the way, wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear are great but have nothing to do with oil. Less than 2% of the electricity consumed in the US is generated by burning oil.
Also, it wasn't conservatives or libertarians who shut nuclear down 20 years ago........
(star)
we have to invest in alternate fuels. This planet gives us all we need with solar and wind energy...even hydroelectric. We just need to learn to harness and cultivate it to our benefit.
First of all, it doesn't take 40 years to get the oil! Company's have estimated a year some places to 10 years. We need to do both! Drill and use alliterative sources but unless we quit arguing who is right or wrong we are gonna be stuck in the same place we are in 20 years from now!
Nope, because your 40 year number is bogus. It wouldn't take 5. We know where the oil is, we simply haven't been able to get to it.
Secondly, again, nope. Oil is a known quantity. We KNOW that it will work efficiently in our vehicles and factories. Windmills and solar panels? Not so much. Those are gambles which don't show much promise. So, basically, even using your exaggerated 40 year number, we're far more likely to see a result from oil in the next 50 years than we are to see anything substantive come out of alternative fuels.
Besides, you'd be hard pressed to find a vehicle that could run on wind, solar or geothermal. A nuclear car sounds pretty interesting though.
Well the renewable energy is a budding industry which is still relatively small and doesn't have very much power.
The oil industry on the other hand has been around for decades and have snuggled up nice n cozy with the powers that be.
That's the one advantage that renewable energy doesn't have, it's the new kid on the block and all the oil industry will do everything it can to keep it small and powerless, planet be damned.
It sure would be smarter to spend the money on developing alternative resources.
Because even if the oil you drill for DOES pan out, that won't stop oil from getting more and more expensive as world demand continues to increase.
Why on earth would we want to remain addicted to something when its price is only going to go up and up and up???
You make it sound as there is a chance we won't find oil if we drill, like it is some kind of pipe dream. And where do you come up with 40 years down the road?
No one is saying that drilling is THE answer. But it is part of the answer along with everything else you mentioned. The fact is, there is no alternative energy source close to being ready to replace oil. So it is a fact we have to continue to explore and bring new oil to the surface so that in 10 years we can be closer to energy independence.
The money you speak of belongs to corporate shareholders, not the Government. So, with that in mind, we cannot force a company to stop making a product that has a very large and competitive market. That is simply unconstitutional.
I agree that we have no choice but to develop viable energy sources other than hydrocarbons but this does not happen over night.
Lifting the ban on drilling will cause speculators to ';speculate'; a future gain in supply. Doesn't matter how long it takes. Commodities are traded in terms of ';future delivery';... The second that federal ban in lifted, and the possibility of more supply is realized, the price will go down. That is just a fact.
Consider that when Israel threatened Iran a few weeks ago, the price jumped 5% in one day. When ';Big Oil'; announced contracts for drilling in Iraq the prices DROPPED more than 3% in one day! When Hersh published his story in the New Yorker about U.S. covert ops being in Iran getting ready for a U.S. invasion, well... look at the market today!
You can't have it both ways. Either world events effect the price or it doesn't... If speculators know that the U.S. is serious about increasing the world supply, just going on trends from than past month, the price would surely go down with the quickness... Not to mention that once the drills start going, what that could do!
We SHOULD be investigating and developing alt. forms, but in the mean time, my car (which I use to go to work and get my kids to day care and by food which is delivered by trucks) all use a byproduct of OIL, so it is important at the same time to take steps to make sure we GET TO THE POINT that we can offer our children and grandchildren alt. sources of energy!
Our children's children will need it, why wait, isn't what we do now for the FUTURE of the country?
DRILL HERE DRILL NOW !!!
DAMN IT ALL
The libofools have been saying this for 20 years! It's amazing how much oil would have been in the supply if you leftists would actually want to DO SOMETHING!
McCain wants to expand Nuclear power, Obama and the dems want foolish windmill power that will kill ';oh-no'; birds!
one would be a sure thing as an investment. we know the oil is there, we know we can get it and we know it has value.
Now it's 40 years?? My God that time frame rises rapidly. Two weeks ago it was 10 years. In point of fact if the oil companies start drilling holes today they could find, extract and refine oil within five years.
I agree that while they are doing this that we should be encouraging research for alternate energy sources but to ignore our own oil and imply that we would need anywhere near 40 years to see results is simply foolish..
alternative resources.
This question is like asking ';is it better to spend money on your meth addiction or to take a taxi to the nearest rehab';
However, we should realistically be at least able to sustain ourselves until the alternative resources are more available.
lost.eu/21618
I agree with you. Everyone right now is in such a panic that they don't realize drilling is a short-term fix to something we need to learn to live without.
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