"Oil, Oil Everywhere, And Not A Drop...
...To refine and squeeze off into my gas tank."
With rigs and refineries shut down thanks to Katrina the price of Gas shot up 30 cents today in Dothan. Perhaps events along the gulf coast will tip the scale toward drilling in ANWR. Another option would be to stop production of 40 different grades of gasoline and settle on just five or six as a national standard. The environmentalists can't have it both ways* any longer. Something's got to give, and politicians are going to have to relent to constituent demands or risk losing power.
Time will tell, and it shouldn't be all that long either...
*Demanding cheaper, cleaner fuels, and lower prices at the pump.
With rigs and refineries shut down thanks to Katrina the price of Gas shot up 30 cents today in Dothan. Perhaps events along the gulf coast will tip the scale toward drilling in ANWR. Another option would be to stop production of 40 different grades of gasoline and settle on just five or six as a national standard. The environmentalists can't have it both ways* any longer. Something's got to give, and politicians are going to have to relent to constituent demands or risk losing power.
Time will tell, and it shouldn't be all that long either...
*Demanding cheaper, cleaner fuels, and lower prices at the pump.
from the mind of... Eric | 5:17 PM
7 Comments:
the problem isn't environmentalists the problem is an administration that doesn't understand preventive spending. They'd rather pay ludicrous rebuilding contracts to companies like Kellog/Brown/Root than to spend a little bit so the corps of engineers can maintain the levies. They'd rather appoint a political friend of the president to head FEMA rather than a person experienced with dealing with disasters and recovery.
The Problem... is Liberalism and its insane desire to fix what doesn't need fixing. Environmentalists purport to be the sole guardians of Mother Earth-- as if there were such a person. It is the height of conceit to think that man could alter this earths environment to the point that he could unnaturally increase the entire worlds average temperature. The earth has warmed and cooled on its own from time immemorial. Ten million people armed with hand-held hair dryers could not alter 100 square miles of Antarctica's environment.
Let's take oil for instance... everyone goes apocalyptic when an oil tanker ruptures and creates a slick along 50 miles of coastline. Is it tragic that birds and marine mammals die as a result? you bet'cha, but it's hardly a disaster. Oil, after all, comes from the earth. It's a naturally occuring element. The La Brea Tar Pits? A naturally occuring phenomenon.
Environmentalists get all apoplectic, when anything goes against their perception of what is, or is not environmentally safe. They are the next best thing to homegrown terrorists. That is what they foment more often than not... Terror.
ANWR? A frozen wastland 9/10ths of the year? A delicate ecosystem? The entire world is a delicate ecosystem, but one that corrects itself, and does not consult us when it chooses to do so.
We have no control over weather. We cannot make it rain, freeze, hail, or flood, by the sheer force of our will. Neither can we create tornado's, hurricanes, or stop either by that self-same force of will. It is therefore ludicrous to think one man-- the enemy of the opposition party, lest we forget --is responsible for the environmental woes of a nation, let alone the world. Kyoto would have been an economic disaster for this country. Plain and simple... As if one man's signature would have saved New Orleans from disaster.
Liberals and, ergo, environmentalists, are fear mongers. It's the only tool they know how to use to get what they want; not what's best for all people, but for themselves alone.
Everything else is distraction...
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...!"
...Including finger-pointing and the favorite game og liberals everywhere, The Blame Game.
It would take almost a decade to build the infrastructure needed to pump responsibly in ANWR. Even if you threw away the environmental hurdles that drilling for oil anywhere faces. The oil problem stems from the fact that TOTAL world oil production has only grown by 2-million barrels per day (bpd) while global demand for oil has grown by 4bpd.
Most oil is produced in other countries anyway. don't throw up the strawman that environmentalists keep America from being oil self-sufficient. It's corporation that don't want to lower their profits by investing in alternative fuel developments or new exploration and production in other countries.
If everyone in America went to hybrids tomorrow, and not a single gas guzzler was on the road thereafter, we would be back in the same boat we're now in, in just 6 years.
Bitching about the length of time it takes to build "responsible infrastructure", and using it as an excuse to not do nothing, is an responsible position to take. Regardless of how long it takes, it still needs to be done.
Besides which, without profits, where's the incentive to produce? I think Russia tried that already. And it failed miserably.
There's nothing wrong with profit.
Geesh, I really should have proof-read that last comment. Lets try again...
"Bitching about the length of time it takes to build "responsible infrastructure", and using it as an excuse to do nothing, is an irresponsible position to take. Regardless of how long it takes, it still needs to be done."
There, that's better.
I'm not attacking capitalism. I think that capitalism is a wonderful mechanism for growing wealth in a country. But a capitalistic system also needs a strong government to oversee and regulate it. Otherwise profit concerns will override the needs of society to the eventual detriment of the corporations. If goverment didn't pass disposal regulations then corporations could dump hazardous chemicals wherever they wanted destroying rivers and other natural areas. Without worker protection laws companies would instuitute sweatshop labor policies all to stay compeitive and maximize profit.
It doesn't matter where you'd like to drill the Earth is running out of fossil fuels. Cheap gas is gone. Soon cheap plastics will be a fable of the golden days. Then yopu have cheap fertilizers and cheap food disappearing over the horizon. This is a crisis that the government should have been preparing for decades ago. Now what will you do when you can't afford gas to fuel your car, and you can't afford to buy a new solr vehicle?
As to corporate oversight by the federal government, it is necessary, no doubt. The "sweat shop" statement, however, is a little over the top. Corporations can do nothing on their own, they are run by people, and people can be very unscrupulous, but I think you don't give the American people enough credit. Americans will not tolerate unscupulous "entities" for very long-- Enron is a prime example. Lot's of folks lost more than just their shirts, and politicians, often enough, are forced to take notice when the villagers get restless.
As to the rest. You're absolutely right [bet you never thought I could agree with you]. But hindsight being what it is, it's pointless to blame the government for not doing enough in decades past. People tend to only respond to what is perceptible to them at the time. No one, 40-50 years ago thought there would be an oil crisis 40-50 years later. Without such knowledge there was no incentive to develop the technologies you and I both wish were now available, and cheaply.
It takes crisis to make most Men look to new horizons. There are always plenty of dreamers, and ide-ists [if that's not a word, it should be!]. But rarely are dreamers in charge of the purse strings.
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