The new Republican strategy is to drill, drill and drill some more. This is supposed to help the economy national security and probably health care. My question, is their any oil producing country that is nice to live in? This is not completely rhetorical, as far as I know most if not all countries that produce oil as their primary export are autocratic places that have very bad standards of living and our known for human rights abuses. Does the US really want to join Saudi Arabia and Iran as oil producing powers.
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Meta
What’s your preferred alternative? Nuclear?
Wind, solar, conservation, all seem preferable to drilling which will not lower prices as opec nations can just lower production to keep prices at whateveer price they wouls like.
Unfortuately, even if we covered all our land with wind and solar farms (outsourcing our food production to where?), we would not match even all of the coal firing plant output, not to mention the petroleum and nat gas outputs. That’s like saying we will shift to GDP per capita of China, which sounds reasonable until you realize that everyone will live on a tenth of what we live on otherwise.
Even if conservation can cut 20% of our energy demand, where are we going to find the other 60% of coal and oil offsets? I think nuclear is the only way, unless people are really serious about diving way, way under our current poverty line.
If you put solar panels on every roof it seems like you could dramaticaly reduce the need for coal fired electric plants, switching to energy efficient appliances saves quite a bit not to mention switching to fuel efficient cars, all of these things can be done without effecting anyones standard of living.
As for agriculture we might be a lot healthier if we could get away from our petroleum based farming. Chances are you might see a return to true family farms instead of the big factory farms if we got away from petroleum based fertalizer chemical based insectacide and shortened the distrabution chain. It might mean that we could only get certain vegetables when they were in season but that does not seem like to high a price to pay, not to mention it might lead to healthier food.
While we cannot completely eliminate the need for petroleum based products we can use a lot less of it and probably improve our lives in the process.
JR: If you are willing to pay 50 times more for your energy bills than you are with current petrochemical solutions, then you would be putting your money where your mouth is. I’m not sure many folks are willing to do that yet.
Not sure where you get this “50xs” number. Yes, solar is still currently more expensive. But as the market for individual solar power has expanded, the price has been dropping. Not only has the price been dropping, but the capacity, efficiency and effectiveness have been improving. It’s not there yet (I hasten to add, anticipating arguments about size and relative output), but it is on its way.
The fundamental crux of one of the key arguments for those who debate on behalf of either a) more drilling or b) continued exploitation of coal and/or nuclear power is to, at best, take a snapshot of current alternative technologies and say, in essence, “there: that’s as good as it gets.” More commonly, they take a snapshot from 10 or 15 years ago and make their arguments based on that.
The fact is, we have never subsidized research into alternative energy sources by more than the barest fraction of subsidy devoted to petro-chemical research and discovery. To simply say, well, nuclear is the only next-best thing is the lazy way out. We haven’t even made a decent stab at sustainable energy yet, as a society.
To conclude that the only technologies that can save us are current technologies that rely on either poisoning and destroying the landscape and result in continued high pollution (coal) or result in a permanent and highly dangerous by-product (nuclear) is a cop-out submitted at the hands of those with the most money to lose by abandoning those resources.
As to whether people are ready for it or not, it’s coming. We can either choose to conserve diminishing petroleum resources as cost-effective suppliers of certain materials and devote our research subsidies to renewable energy sources, or we can continue to exploit diminishing reserves of petroleum to feed an obsolete energy sector. One provides a cushion, one ensures a crash. Given that the marginal dollar devoted to energy research and production is finite, it would seem to make more sense to pursue energy production means that are regenerable and permanent, rather than a solution that may be politically attractive but simply delays the inevitable.
JIm, I think John Stossel is reading these comments, and has an explanation:
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2008/08/20/the_idiocy_of_energy_independence?page=1
In Manhattan, my Con Edison bill has tripled in the last 7 years, up to $170 per month. (Yes, Con Ed is very inefficient about its power generation, but what do you want from a government regulated utility/monopoly).
I’ve got plenty of energy-saving lightbulbs and appliances, and everyone knows a 1200 sq ft apartment is much more efficient than the average domicile.
Mayor Bloomberg’s wind turbine proposal could end up costing $24 billion, just to meet residential demand. That would be $3,000 per person, or let’s call it $7,500 per household. And remember, this is just the cap ex for the turbines. It doesn’t include cap ex for the power transmission or operational/overhead costs. And government programs usually end up costing 3-5 times initial estimates (think the Iraqi War or Social Security).
So 50x is ballpark.
My energy supplier is Maine Interfaith Power and Light. They use a combination of 100% renewable sourcing and 50% renewable generation to supply the grid. Central Maine Power holds the transmission contract. My energy supply costs are about .03 more per kilowatt hour than they were when I was using a standard supplier. My transmission rates have gone down twice in the last 5 years.
Just because NYC is f-ing it up doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the only way to do it.
Maine Interfaith Power and Light Products and Pricing
PS: After reading the Stossel piece, I’m disappointed you cite it. Among his many over-simplifications (and his failure to address the coming reality of “peak oil” — a scenario which is both inevitable and makes his argument about the beauty of trade moot) is his glaring neglect of the vast subsidies and tax incentives currently supplied to the petroleum industry at the expense of offering the same or similar advantages to R&D for sustainable resources and alternative fuels.
Stossel makes his arguments as if the American energy supply market is the very picture of laissez faire capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Stossel would subject alternative fuel R&D and renewable energy R&D to the strict dictates of a free market, without first dismantling the subsidy and tax-break architecture enjoyed by the petroleum industry. That’s his idea of a fair fight.
Presumably, it’s also his idea of smart energy policy. In a closed system, where the primary resource is diminishing to extinction, behaving (as Stossel apparently would have it) like the game will never end, is folly.
While he is right that Canada supplies the a majority of our petroleum, as both candidates know (at least I hope McCain is aware of this), he neglects the obvious corollary: since we don’t need to worry about Canada holding us over the oil barrel (yet), what’s the stir?
The stir is that even a marginal interruption in the import of light sweet crude from, say, the Middle East or due to Russian or Chinese interference, would result in acute economic dislocation. We don’t need to worry about complete energy independence (yet). But we should be very concerned with marginal energy independence. Particularly in light of our current international bungling.
The seemingly unkillable idea that drilling in ANWR and along our coasts is the answer to that marginal need is false. There simply isn’t enough oil in the ground to impact the supply needs of this country in any meaningful way. Best estimates from ANWR indicate less than a year’s worth of oil. Best estimates from coastal drilling indicate less than 3% of total usage–and that only at a year 10+ time horizon and with a limited life after that.
The end of the parade is coming. We can either start forming our own band, or we can pick up the shit shovel and prepare to burn horsecrap to stay warm.
Let’s compare the subsidies to oil vs. the subsidies to education, healthcare, and Social Security. I think oil subsidies would be closer to 0.1% than 1%. If you are really concerned about subsidies, we should talk about where the lion’s share are really going (and which sectors of the economy are also the most inflationary).
I agree that peak oil is a reality, and once we are well past peak oil, crude will reach new highs.
My original question, if you check above, is what is the preferred alternative. Wind is not going to cut it.
By one calculation, NYC will need a wind farm 200 times the size of Manhattan to provide just its current electricity demand.* So it’s not looking like wind right now. What is the preferred alternative, nuclear?
*http://caveatbettor.blogspot.com/2008/08/q-how-much-wind-farm-to-power-new-york.html
Oh, and I agree with you that Con Edison is not doing a good job. Typical regulated government monopoly–the equivalent of AT&T before divestiture.
Brad Lord-Leutwyler
INDEPENDENT FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
http://WWW.VOTEFORBRAD.COM
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