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Tag(s): Automobiles; Corporations Automotive; Corporations Oil; Energy; Energy; Energy Conservation; Energy Exploration - Offshore Drilling; McCain-John; Oil; Oil Profits; (more...) Responsibility; Security; US Foreign Oil Policy; Unemployed; War For Oil (less...)
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September 7, 2008 at 06:59:08

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Headlined on 9/7/08:
McCain's Offshore Drilling Approach is Bad For America; We Need a Better, Smarter Approach

by Rob Kall Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Offshore drilling is a ruse to get votes-- a ruse that sells out America by leading us down the wrong path. The old saying says that only a crazy person keeps digging to get out of a hole. Well, continuing to drill for oil, as the primary solution to our energy problem is that kind of crazy.

Excessive, unnecessary energy use, as we have become accustomed to, is a dangerous threat to our national security. We can continue to drive our cars, heat, cool and light our homes, and still reduce our use of energy. The problem is-- we don’t demand better automobiles and technologies that use less energy.

I blame our legislators for failing to stand up to short sighted special interests

There’s another story-- of Joe, who is looking for his lost key under the street light. A good Samaritan offers to help him look. He asks. “Where do you think you dropped it?” Joe points to a spot 50 yards away. “Then why are you looking here,” the Samaritan asks. “Because it's easier to look in the light.” The truth is that offshore drilling will not produce usable oil for five to ten years. But it looks easier because it's what we've done in the past to maintain our fossil fuel addiction.

We need strong leadership to move America fast to alternatives that are reusable. We need to start implementing energy use reduction approaches like a national speed limit and an “energy conservation corps.” If we cut our fuel use 20%, we'll stop using the amount of fuel offshore drilling might provide us with in the five to ten years it takes to get up to speed.

We have to get tough with American automobile manufacturers. They are coming to the government for huge loans—probably, within the next year, asking for over $50 billion for the several big auto companies combined. We should not give them a nickel unless they drastically improve the miles per gallon their vehicles produce. The current goals, set by a cowardly congress in 2007, are totally inadequate-- aiming to increase the average mileage of new cars and light trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, compared with roughly 25 miles per gallon today. The congress should insist upon 35 MPG by 2015, 50 MPG by 2020 and 80 MPG by 2025.

And they should set benchmarks along the way, so the auto manufacturers will get breaks in having to pay back the loans, if they meet the goals. They can find the money by ending subsidization of oil companies making obscene profits and by adding surtaxes for the vehicles that get the worst mileage. They should repay the borrowed money directly to consumers, by giving discounts for the highest mileage automobiles.

Let’s talk a bit more about the idea of reinventing an “energy conservation corps.” My father joined the conservation Corps back in the mid thirties, when the job was to replant and revitalize the national forests. Today, college and high school grads are having a hard time finding jobs, with unemployment at six percent- and that’s using the fudged numbers the Bush administration appointees have provided. (If you believed there would be WMDs in Iraq, you may choose to believe the economic numbers Bush administration people supply. I don’t. )

A modern day conservation corps could give out-of-work new grads and laid-off unemployed workers real work that could return their self-respect and local income taxes. The new conservation corps would be mandated to save energy. Some workers would walk the streets optimally inflating automobile tires—with legal permission to do so without car owner permission. Some would use infra-red thermal heat sensing technology to assess homes and apartments to identify heat leaks, providing free reports to home owners on how to save money and how much they’d save. Some could even provide free sealing strips and simple supplies and install them in homes. It would be much better to provide $100 in free labor and $50 in insulation supplies, which would save $500 or $1000 in heating bill costs AND lower America’s need for foreign oil, than to just give away $1000 as both candidates are talking about.

Instead of just handing out $1000, require people to show proof that they’ve done something— options from a checklist of possible ways to cut energy consumption in their homes and cars.

It’s time we develop a new sense of patriotic self responsibility. We must develop a change in attitude that deals with our energy-addiction as a national security issue that we solve by cutting our energy use and demanding that our elected leaders take smart, visionary steps and make tough laws that support energy independence through alternative energy innovations AND bold conservation approaches.

Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com and is a columnist with Northstarwriters.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.

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11 comments

Darren Wolfe is the former Eastern Vice Chair of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Puerto Rico and lived in Venezuela for seven years, including the first year of Chavez' rule. His articles have appeared in OpEdNews.com, the Libertarian Penn, and the Nolanchart.com. News services such as the New York Post.com and Rational Review have published links to his work.

Anyone interested in a good game of chess can challenge me below, if you dare. LOL

http://...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Darren WolfeDarren Wolfe is the former Eastern Vice Chair of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Puerto Rico and lived in Venezuela for seven years, including the first year of Chavez' rule. His articles have appeared in OpEdNews.com, the Libertarian Penn, and the Nolanchart.com. News services such as the New York Post.com and Rational Review have published links to his work.

Anyone interested in a good game of chess can challenge me below, if you dare. LOL

http://...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Progressive fascism

Welcome to the "progressive" world of tire inflation storm troopers & a government controlled car industry (in other words a dead one).

If you want to look at energy consumption look at the subsidies that it gets. The government builds all these socialist roads for people to drive on. The big cities' socialism makes life there intolerable. The suburban municipalities want development to increase their tax base. So they encourage building more houses, malls, industrial parks, & office buildings. They build the socialist schools themselves. Put it all together & you have massive unnecessary energy use. Instead of people living in a more efficient city they sprawl out into the countryside while the cities die.

This is the price we pay for having the government run our economy, & you want them to take even more control? Why? So they can mess things up even more?

Instead of bailing out the car manufacturers if they do a, b, c, the government should not bail them out period. They should also not impose costly regulations, taxes, & unions on them. Then they could compete on the world market.

You want to put people back to work? Let's give them real jobs, not make them a tire inflation Gestapo. If this idea of yours were actually implemented the politicians will no doubt attach fines to the process to pay for the policing.

Anyway, what ever happened to the 4th Amendment? You can't have government agents charging onto private property to see if people's tires are inflated properly. This would be just as wrong as the police in Minnisota raiding houses & arresting people because they might (yeah right) riot. See the connection here? You can't pick & choose your liberties.

I love this one, "I blame our legislators for failing to stand up to short sighted special interests". What else do politicians do but cater to special interests? It would be like you asking a spider to stop eating bugs to expect them to do otherwise.

"The state — or, to make matters more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting ‘A’ to satisfy ‘B’. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods."

— H.L. Mencken

That sums it up well. What it comes down to is that government doesn't work.

A free society with a free market, where people & companies bear the costs of what they do directly, would have avoided the energy situation we now face. Adding more government intervention to fix the past interventions that failed will only make things worse.

by Darren Wolfe (7 articles, 201 quicklinks, 106 diaries, 780 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 10:09:45 AM

I am a Geophysicist. Please remember that when you try to tell me somethong about the oil industry
Steve CampbellI am a Geophysicist. Please remember that when you try to tell me somethong about the oil industry

You, sir, are Americaphobic

Rob Kall's Offshore Drilling Approach is Bad For America;
Submitted by Geophys55

by Steve Campbell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 12:53:26 PM

Explain

Not that I disagree necessarily, but you should explain why you see things the way you do.

by Darren Wolfe (7 articles, 201 quicklinks, 106 diaries, 780 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 8:28:54 PM

Politically, I lean Libertarian. When discussing issues, I will slam Dems and/or Republicans.

Now, when it comes to really irritating me, just make an unfounded charge; I will call out whomever makes the charge if there are no facts to back it up! Another version of this is when I see something that is just plainly silly/ridiculous.

An example could be something stated which could be very easily disproved. Another example, and I see this frequently: Rather tha...

to see more of bio, click on member name
steve scheetzPolitically, I lean Libertarian. When discussing issues, I will slam Dems and/or Republicans.

Now, when it comes to really irritating me, just make an unfounded charge; I will call out whomever makes the charge if there are no facts to back it up! Another version of this is when I see something that is just plainly silly/ridiculous.

An example could be something stated which could be very easily disproved. Another example, and I see this frequently: Rather tha...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Well, Rob, you miss quite a bit in your article.

here is the short list.

1. The US has not had a cohesive energy policy since before the mid 1970's...

2. The US has not built serious energy infrastructure, to speak of, since the 1970's...

3. 12 years ago when people wanted to start drilling, the VERY SHORT SIGHTED politicians, catering to special interest, said "It would take 10 years to make that a reality." (that was 12 years ago...)

4. Does anyone truly believe that it will take all of 10 years if it was not for the fact that government policy, put in place by VERY SHORT SIGHTED POLITICIANS, catering to special interests, creates hurtles nearly impossible to leap??

5. there are no alternate energy solutions that will be able to come on line due to the severe lack of infrastructure, caused by the same short sighted politicians catering to special interests...

6. other solutions, such as ethanol cause more pollution in production, cause inflation of food costs, and lower gas mileage in automobiles. This is fact, it is not debatable, it is not even being argued against. The same short sighted politicians have created policy, catering to special interests, that keep the US using this Ethanol for fuel DESPITE the knowledge of how bad it truly is for the nation...

7. People like you look to those same short sighted politicians, catering to special interest, for a solution, and then wonder why they are not receiving one...

This is something to think about while your freedom of speech is stomped on by your candidate for president as he creates the NATIONAL POLICE FORCE, to protect the children, as opposed to protecting our rights as he SWORE to do....

Ciao, CZ

by steve scheetz (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 693 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 2:45:26 PM

*** I'm a freelance computer programmer from Austin, TX
Robert Knowles*** I'm a freelance computer programmer from Austin, TX

Conserve now.

Any energy policy, especially when one comes to discussing a publicly-owned, non-renewable, and strategic resource as oil, should have conservation and oil alternatives as it's first and second components. Period.

Short-sighted policies, like DRILL NOW, only delay the inevitable.

Why is it that conservative voices who instinctively decry leaving massive government debt to future generations always seem to want to drill and consume every last drop of such a precious resource NOW, and leave those future generations with nothing? Does it make any sense to allow it to be squandered propelling individual commuters in their 13 mpg 6000 lb Lincoln Navigators around town?

Most pro-DRILL NOW proponents simply want to reduce the price of gas at the pump NOW, to continue an American life-style utterly dependent on oil. Of course there are no economically competitive alternatives to oil, the government has subsidized the oil industry for decades, and subsidized the bizarre politics of entire regions of the planet for decades so that Americans have cheap oil.

If oil were priced at anywhere near the real cost of it's consumption then other alternatives would be far more attractive. The entire cost of oil is simply the price that it takes to drill it NOW and move it NOW. No value is placed at all on the substance itself while it's in the ground. No pricing is based on the value of future goods and services it can produce, if conserved now and used later. No pricing considers the estimated $1.00 per gallon cost in ameliorating environmental effects of CO2 like global warming. No pricing considers the health and environmental costs of emitting hazardous gasses and particulate matter into the atmosphere where it continues into the lungs of the population.

Free markets, as they exist now, rarely consider the true costs, and hence true price, of a resource like oil. No value is given to the obvious characteristic that it's non-renewable, it's simply exploited NOW. So no value is ever given to it's future utility, and that is especially important when the resource is publicly-owned. Given the difficulty of determining the true value of oil, how can the country decide if it's actually made the best deal it possibly can when it yields up this resource for exploitation by private corporations?

I can't help but think this will become increasingly obvious to future generations when they look back and see how this ever-diminishing resource was simply squandered.

Conservation is of the first importance, and the basis of a permanent solution, not some short-term solution like DRILL NOW. Let's CONSERVE NOW and save this truly valuable resource for a time when we've learned to respect its value.

by Robert Knowles (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 59 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 4:17:51 PM

I am a mechanical engineer with over 30 years experience in the steel and energy industries. I watched the death of the U.S. steel industry caused by greedy union bosses, corporate CEO's and excessive government intervention. I now see the same thing happening to the U.S. energy industry. The U.S. has the ability to be the greatest and most beneficent nation the world has ever known. We can feed more people, cure more sickness, and educate more individuals than any nation has ever done befor...

to see more of bio, click on member name
MarqmanI am a mechanical engineer with over 30 years experience in the steel and energy industries. I watched the death of the U.S. steel industry caused by greedy union bosses, corporate CEO's and excessive government intervention. I now see the same thing happening to the U.S. energy industry. The U.S. has the ability to be the greatest and most beneficent nation the world has ever known. We can feed more people, cure more sickness, and educate more individuals than any nation has ever done befor...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Drilling is the answer -- For NOW!!

Comment from Ratings: Having Congress mandate an 80-mile per gallon car is a little like having Congress mandate that the earth’s climate stop changing. It is a nice idea, but not very helpful. We cannot convert every car on the road to run on natural gas or bio-diesel in 5 years. Nor can we instantly create alternative energy sources to provide the electrical base load needed when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Drilling will reduce our dependence on foreign oil while allowing technology a chance to develop the alternative sources. We need to start developing our own resources and stop expecting the rest of the world to give us whatever we want just because we are the last superpower.

by Marqman (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 4:42:17 PM

*** I'm a freelance computer programmer from Austin, TX
Robert Knowles*** I'm a freelance computer programmer from Austin, TX

Gas prices too high, or ...

... is it a national security issue?

So, Mark, with your plan (DRILL NOW) is your goal to reduce the price of gas? Or is it to reduce the American dependency on foreign oil?

Based on even a cursory glance at gas prices and auto sales this summer, it's obvious that at about $4.00 - $4.25 gallon, Americans passion for gas-guzzling SUVs tends to diminish -- market forces at work -- and if they could afford a Hummer, they can afford a Civic, and they (at least) can still make it to work. Maybe $4.50 is a good price for gas.

Frankly, back in 1973 when the Saudis stopped shipping because of our support for Israel, I thought we should have started back then doing everything we could to conserve. But we didn't. Ironically the solution (and to some, an economic and political coup), was to just befriend the Saudi ruling family with gifts of advanced military systems and ask them to keep pumping to keep prices low.

That "friendship" generated a new and incredibly ambiguous balance of power in the Middle East. That friendship eventually led to the actual placement of military troops in Saudi Arabia, not to mention all of the other sheikdoms who promised Americans a continuous flow of oil. Those "friendships", replete with supporting US forces, are the reason given by most observers, including Osama bin Laden, for why Islamic fundamentalists dislike America so much that they'll commit suicide to harm us.

And now, after a continuous series of wars, and a political environment where progress for peace has been stalled for decades, we still don't conserve and still drive bigger and more inefficient automobiles.

So maybe you're right, maybe we can't do it in 5 years, but we absolutely need to make conservation THE TOP priority. We've already waited far too long. The consequences of providing Americans with cheap gas are actually just far too expensive, and maybe cheap gas isn't so cheap after all.

BTW, Congress actually can mandate higher mileage cars and experience shows that the industry, in spite of its truculence, can actually meet them, and I have no problem with Congress doing so. All of those cars do, after all, affect the quality of the air that I and my family breath.

by Robert Knowles (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 59 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 5:51:04 PM

60 yr old mother of 2, grandma of 3.
I believe that all commodities should be nationalized. All of the oil that is pumped in the U.S. comes from public lands. Therefore, all profits from that oil should belong to the citizens and NOT to a few corporate CEO's. That should have never happened.
I firmly believe we need a single payer health care system. It makes NO sense AT ALL to pay insurance companies to deny health care to people in need instead of paying the doctors who provide the...

to see more of bio, click on member name
weslen160 yr old mother of 2, grandma of 3.
I believe that all commodities should be nationalized. All of the oil that is pumped in the U.S. comes from public lands. Therefore, all profits from that oil should belong to the citizens and NOT to a few corporate CEO's. That should have never happened.
I firmly believe we need a single payer health care system. It makes NO sense AT ALL to pay insurance companies to deny health care to people in need instead of paying the doctors who provide the...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Drill HERE, Drill NOW: NOT!

After traversing Cuba, forecasters said Ike would enter the Gulf of Mexico, where 4,000 platforms produce 25 percent of U.S. oil and 15 percent of its natural gas, and point toward Louisiana and Texas.

So OKAY! Let's put 4000 MORE platforms out there and when the next disastrous HURRICANE shuts them down or destroys them, the oil companies can hike the price of gas again 5, 10 or 20 times what it is already "While they fix them", and then keep the price up there AFTER and FOREVER after keep raking in those profits. That will help us a LOT. RIGHT?

by weslen1 (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 48 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 8:09:05 PM

Socialism, not

While an interuption of oil production in the Gulf would raise prices, not adding to the production with new wells will do the same. At least while the new wells are producing (which will be most of the time) they will be adding to the supply & pushing the price down. Bottom line, your post makes no sense.

Try learning something about economics:

Supply and demand

The Law of Supply and Demand

by Darren Wolfe (7 articles, 201 quicklinks, 106 diaries, 780 comments) on Sunday, September 7, 2008 at 8:42:02 PM

I have worked as Union Electrician in a good part of this land. And the Union Brothers taught me well about how things should work
Michael DeweyI have worked as Union Electrician in a good part of this land. And the Union Brothers taught me well about how things should work

How

Comment from Ratings: You hit the nail on the head of a very important topic. I keep reading more of these things and my blood will be boiling so much during the Winter alone in this Huge House with Oil Heat...I could get by without the female writer I'm looking for...

by Michael Dewey (4 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 211 comments) on Monday, September 8, 2008 at 3:32:36 AM

Speaking of th auto industry:

Automakers Go Hat in Hand to Congress

September 8, 2008

"Auto industry allies hope to secure up to $50 billion in government loans this month that would pay to modernize plants and help struggling car makers build more fuel-efficient vehicles." (Washington Post, Sunday)

This is how such things are done these days.

FEE Timely Classic
"Entrepreneurs and the State" by Burton Folsom, Jr.

by Darren Wolfe (7 articles, 201 quicklinks, 106 diaries, 780 comments) on Monday, September 8, 2008 at 7:54:39 AM