Oil won't run out in my lifetime.
Gas is a necessity, not a luxury. If the price of a Big Mac rises skyward, sure you don't have to buy it, but gas is a necessity.
politics, global warming, and gas prices
by Junction-Guy 15 Replies latest jw friends
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Junction-Guy
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hamsterbait
Had the West developed altenative sources of enegy after the 73 oil crisis - which was deliberately created by OPEC,
we would not have had the Gulf War, and the waste of lives we are now regretting.
Of course Reagan repealed the progressive laws for fuel conservation - his pal Margaret Thatcher wanted to sell British oil and make 8 000 000 000 a year out of it.
There are so many easy ways of getting energy. In states where there is plentiful sunshine, wind rivers or coast line, there should be much more use made of this.
Dammit - you can power a light to read from a LEMON. Even just a small glass of vinegar.
HB
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Forscher
AGW is a sham.
Anybody remember the gas crisis of during the Carter administration? OPEC cut back on the oil supply and drove the prices through the roof. Carter instituted price freezes and a "windfall profits" tax on the oil companies. It only made things worse! We learned several things from that fiasco. It is dangerous to our economy to be too dependent on foreign oil. Taxation doesn't work, it exacerbates the problem. We were promised by our politicians that they would work to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Guess what didn't happen?
Instead of increasing domestic production, our politicians worked diligently to decrease it. Instead of increasing refinery production, our politicians helped wacko environmentalists to hinder it. And there is plenty of blame to go around because Democrats and Republicans both held control of the federal government at one point or another during that time. Both ignored the problem.
So what is the proposed answer by our Democratic controlled Congress? A "windfall profits" tax, the very same thing which didn't work the first time around. How did Einstein define insanity?
Republicans want to drill in ANWAR. The same old refrain. Democrats say that it is a very limited reserve of oil to begin with and would somehow destroy a "pristine wilderness." I guess they have a point about the small amount of oil there and the expense of shipping it back to the lower 48. But guess what? There is an oil field right here in the lower 48 which has an estimated three times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Or enough to keep us going for another couple of hundred years. But Democrats placed it completely off-limits to the oil companies years ago. There is a massive reserve of oil off our east coast and in the Gulf Of Mexico. But, once again, it is off limits up to fifty miles off the East coast and throughout the eastern half of the Gulf coast. and the current Democratic Congress wants to increase the distance off the coast were drilling is prohibited. Now how, pray tell, is that going to alleviate the problem long term?
Instead Pelosi and company want to raise taxes, and exacerbate world food problems by forcing cars to compete with people for available food (biofuels). Be careful about proposed solutions coming from environmentalists. More than thirty years ago we were told that switching to lead-free automobiles would reduce pollution since the only products such vehicles would produce were water vapor and carbon dioxide, a perfectly harmless gas. Now those same people are telling us that carbon dioxide gas, from electricity production and lead-free cars, is the sole reason for the world warming up and we must eliminate both or face extinction within this century.
The current proposed solution is to switch to biofuels, which will only produce water vapor. But guess what? Some of the "global warming deniers" point out that water vapor is known to be a much more intensive green house gas. Guess what the next refrain will be if the global warming fascists succeed?
I don't think it is all that hard to guess what the real fascists are up to given my last two paragraphs.
The more immediate problem appears to be oil speculators. They are bidding up the price of oil all out of proportion with the supply and world demand. Those folks are making tons of money for doing nothing towards producing or supplying oil to the consumer. I'll lay that one at Clinton's feet since the oil futures market was deregulated in 1999 and our increases in oil and gas prices coincide with that happy little event.
In my opinion the solution is to put a stop to the speculators. Don't tax the oil companies since that will only cause them to reduce the supply even further because of the loss (confiscation) of their profits. Increase the domestic oil supply. That is the best mid-range solution. Tap the reserves in the Continental U.S. and off-shore. If off-shore drilling is such a bad thing, why does Norway allow it off their shores? One doesn't get much more left-wing than Norway so it can't be all that bad.
Long term solutions would include greater reliance on nuclear power and other sources of power production. We might want to consider a biofuel like methanol, which can be distilled from most any woody plant and does not place fuel production into competition for food resources.
Forscher
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Junction-Guy
I agree Forscher
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Forscher
Thank you JG
I'll give the Bush haters their due, but only just. Clinton set us down the road to our current gas price hell. But Bush, an oil man, should've had no problem seeing where that was leadings us through the years and put a stop to it. But he let his ideology get in the way of common sense and we are were we are today.
I am not going to let the Democrats off the hook though. They controlled the Senate for six of Bush's eight years and the House for the last year and a half. Our biggest price increases occurred during those times with the last increase of almost two dollars, or about half, occurring during the year and a half they controlled
both houses. Think about that one.
Forscher
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Junction-Guy
It is interesting that you mention Bill Clinton. Back in 1998 gas was at an all time low, it got down to 68 cents a gallon, then what did Bill Clinton do in 1999. It is almost like he didn't want us to have cheap gas.
But yeah the republicans are just as much to blame as the dems too. The globalist repulicans that is.