Not only are high oil prices hurting our economy and household budgets, they are also funding anti-democratic governments. In an article in the latest Foreign Policy magazine, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that “the price of oil and the pace of freedom always move in opposite directions.” In fact, the magazine attempted to chart how when oil prices are low, governments such as Iran have been much more open to the west and to democracy than when oil prices are high and they no longer have to care.
Instead of pointing fingers and proposing short-term fixes that would have minimal impact on the world oil market and our national security, how about Republican and Democratic leaders, including President Bush, committing this country to freeing itself from its dependence on foreign oil, similar to President Kennedy’s challenge to put an American on the moon by the end of the decade?
As we noted in our editorial Friday: “If the United States is as ‘addicted to oil’ as Bush said it is during the State of the Union address — and it is — what it needs is the leadership to kick the habit, through a moon shot-like initiative on energy independence. As entanglements such as Iraq should have taught us by now, too, finding new ways to power our country also could serve the goal of securing it.”
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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55 Comments
Phillip, are you kidding? Big Oil is Big Business is Big Money. Energy independence is impossible until we take back our government from the strangle hold of Big Oil/Big Business/Big Money. Cheney comes from Haliburton, Bush comes from Texas oil (he couldn’t even find oil in Texas), Condi comes from Cheveron. Congress is bought and paid for.
I predict we’ll see lots of smoke and noise from Washington, but no real change. There’s nothing those bastards can do. They’re addicted to the money. The oil supply is finite and we’ve either reached the tipping point, or we’re very close to it. The pirates in Big Oil are going to squeeze us for every drop of money until the whole thing comes crashing down around out heads.
We should have done something 35 years ago when there was still time.
XXX
All the more reason we should not be threatening the supply of oil right now. Oil independence is a good thing, but right now our economy is based on oil and we’re not protecting our interests by not protecting that supply.
Making war on the oil supply is idiocy, while making peace is the smart thing to do.
What would the United States lose by making peace with the Arabs?
Nothing.
Ed you forget one thing. If shrub makes war or even threatens to make war in the middle east then oil prices will go up to over $120 a barrel (a price esitmate I heard from a reporter from Newsweek) which is roughly a 50% increase from what it is now. Prices at the pump will rise to around $6 a gallon (same source) and the oil companies will BANK!!! The 40 billion exxon made last year will look like pocket change. They have all the money and oil they need so they don’t give a rats ass about the rest of America.
As for the government running out of oil to fight this war, do you really think shrub is filling the stratigic oil reserves to the brim for the security of America?
It’s time for change. Tar seeps were used for millenia to obtain sealant for boat hulls. The first oil discovered here was initially envisioned as a limitless source of lamp oil. But inventive minds developed amazing uses for it, ranging from fueling high speed conveyance machines to creating life-saving drugs.
Oil has only been essential to humanity for a little more than a century–essentially less than two human lifespans. This does NOT suggest permanency. Maybe four human lifespans: maybe three centuries.
It’s time to start working on new energy sources.We have plenty of creative geniuses who can do this.
A couple months ago, during Senate hearings investigating allegations of price-gouging, Exxon-Mobil’s new CEO Rex Tillerson was asked by Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), “How much money are you spending on alternative energy research?”
“One hundred million dollars.”
“Over what period of time?”
“Ten years.”
“So you’re spending about $10 million a year, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Tillerson’s predecessor, Lee Raymond, made $686 million over 13 years. (KC Star, yesterday.)That’s $53 million a year–one guy warrants five times as much money as 21st-century energy research.
What is wrong with this picture? Shell and BP are investing heavily in alternative energy research, such as hydrogen, wind and solar. They see a different future. Whose vision is better?
The added point of reversing the Global warming issue is in play too, since emission is a factor. If wars are fought over oil, stopping wars could be a matter of stopping the demand for oil. Cynic that I am, that could only mean we will fight over something else….Religion has always been a good fall back as to a reason.
Optimistic as I am, perhaps we stop the reasons for war we may finally stop fighting and make a logical decision. I don’t know…Maybe that killing each other for something that it make more sense to share as we all need it. Mean we would be better off…I know that sound stupid, like killing does not make sense right?
Good posts, all.
You don’t put two oil men in charge of changing the system for energy independence.
Dick Cheney threw the doors open to big oil as soon as he got in office, never revealing who was there or what was said during “energy policy” meetings, remember?
These are the people who CREATED the problem, these are the people who PROFIT from the problem. Bush used to get sneering laughs on the campaign trail by ridiculing solar power. Reagan ripped Carter’s solar panels off the White House.
And we expect these people to solve the problem?
Just get Congress to repeal the first and second laws of thermodynamics. I’ll bet you could word a question on the subject in such a way that quite a few would agree that repealing them would be good for the country’s energy policy.
Oil independence has to be a bottom up rather than a top down proposition. We already have a power generating windmill and solar panels at the Santiago compound. We are also looking at out fitting our Durango to run on cooking oil.
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Having worked on SynFuels a quarter-century ago I find this all rather amusing. Had we proceeded with that and other R&D we would not be in the situation we are in today.
We had started on a road to energy independence in the late 70s; however by the mid-80s we had abandoned it completely in favor of oil company mergers and the recreation of the mega-oil cartels.
Ed makes a good point. Gas prices started to soar right after word got out that Bush wanted to nuke Iran.
Maybe some consideration should be given to the volitility of the market.
XXX,
Ed is right to a point but it is primarily a demand rather than a supply issue. China and India have seen their oil usage increase exponentially over the past decade as both countries have experienced wild economic growth. Think about those 2 billion people moving from bikes to scooters to cars and you get the picture.
V.L.R.B!!
The U.S. needs to apply a windfall profit tax to oil companies. Take the proceeds and invest them into technological research for alternative energy sources, and more efficient use of what we have. It is obvious that like building more refineries, the oil companies will not truly act against their own profif motives.The Dems. ought to adopt this as one of their platforms. When the mid-east sees we’re serious, prices would start to come down. But it should not be a deterrent from proceeding. It is about our national security.
U.S. blocks UN draft pressing Israel to stop aggression.
http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=11058And we wonder why?
The Windfall taxes the government collects from gasoline is an issue. The government made over $100 billion dollars last year in gasoline taxes. Big Oil’s profits are much less than that.
Basically, we are addicted to oil, but don’t put all the blame on consumers, some of it goes to government. They are addicted to the taxes from oil as well.
Anything that would be an alternative to oil also needs to be an alternative to tax revenues for the government. They will not do without.
The government should be lowering its taxes to help ease the current spike in oil prices. Consequently, the administration’s move to inspect big oil for price gouging is like trying to nail jello to a wall.
Makes me look good.
http://hawanja.com/bad_bush_list.htm
As strange as this sounds, I’m not sorry gas prices are so high, and I don’t care if they go a lot higher. The only way we will ever change our wasteful lifestyle is when we can’t pay the price anymore. Alternatives will not be taken seriously until we can no longer afford fossil fuels. I don’t feel a bit sorry for those who choose to drive big, gas guzzeling cars, they are selfish, unpatriotic, and should be ashamed of themselves.
I’d go along with you on that Damoon if so many folks on the low end of things didn’t get hurt in the process.
Anybody notice that over the last several years we keep playing the same game?
Price spikes then gradually comes down and finds a level.First it was the $2.00 level that was unthinkable. Then last year $3.00 a gallon and back down to the middle twos.
Now we are being told to expect higher than 3. So I predict we will surpass 3 this Summer and then settle back around 3
Can you see what is happening here? It’s like boiling a lobster. You don’t throw it into boiling water. You put it in the water and increase the heat gradually……so the lobster doesn’t notice. Same thing with gas prices. Oil is not significantly more rare than 2 years ago. Refining cost about the same. Yes more is going to other countries but not in amounts to justify these price jumps in just 2 years.
We are being ACCLIMATED to artificially higher prices.
Some good ideas upthread but as Damoon says, it won’t change until it hurts so much that we won’t take it anymore.
But getting oil men out of the White House couldn’t possibly make things any thing but better. Maybe don’t wait for another election to do it.
WriterdogMan, we have to have wars. How else are we going to support the gigantic Military Industrial Complex and population explosion.
DamoonGood postYou have me convinced now all you have to do is get everybody else to fall in line
Damoon,I have to agree with you. The next thing government needs to do is put a 2 dollar tax per gallon on the public. ALL the tax money going to research on alternative energy. Look what they pay in europe for gas. We ain’t near that yet. Energy is too cheap in the US. We need to start paying the gtrue cost, with the profits going to alernate energy research.
Once we switch over to alternatives, we need to keep those taxes in place. To keep the research going.
Basically, we are going to pay quite a bit to have energy in any form in this country. Something to get used to.
JM
ALL of the tax revenue from the current Federal tax on gas was supposed to go to highway infrastructure. Guess what?
Joe
I disagree with a $2 tax on gas. What we need to do, and I cant believe that I’m saying this,(being a good supply side conservative Republican) is set a price FLOOR on the price of oil coming into this country. I’m not sure how we would work this out but the purpose would be to maintain a minimum price for oil that will sustain the cost of exploiting coal liquification production and oil from shale production. Very clean diesel can be extracted from coal. We have enough coal and oil shale to last us for decades but the price needs to be maintained at a level that the production is cost effective.
This coupled with a wholesale program to switch the majority of our electricity production over to Nuclear. These things can make us independent and sustain us until other technologies can be fully developed.
The reason for the price floor is as soon as we start to scale up coal and oil shale exploitation the world oil prices will plunge to the point that the new industry would fold. But the additional cost that the floor creates is the cost of energy independence.
Heckler,
“ALL of the tax revenue from the current Federal tax on gas was supposed to go to highway infrastructure. Guess what?”
And whose fault is that?
Heckler - it would be easy - simply impose a stiff import duty on foreign oil. It might be made variable depending on our trade deficit with each country involved.
Any tax on our devasted economy right now is a bad idea.
It has a crippling rippling effect on the damage Jew-Gas has already wreaked on the American family.
The Zionists should feel the pain of having NO US support. There’s your enemy and they know it and I’ve linked where they’re worried about what they’ve done.
Middle America has suffered enough.
JM Walker
Politicians. Money grubbing politicians.
Price floor’s a better idea than a consumption tax, imo. Of course, the devil’s in the details.
It’s also probably a non-starter politically, since in order to be effective it would have to legislate a price above current and any reasonably possible future price. In other words, Congress would probably have to legislate a floor that would result in a price about what Europeans pay now: US$6+/gallon.
Yes, that’s $6 US per gallon. At least.
A better idea, but good luck.
I’d like to toss out an idea Nathan and I were discussing at the last meetup: nuclear/hydrogen.
Bush likes to talk about hydrogen but never says anything about how to get it. That is both disingenious and dishonest. People of the sort who think Saddam did 9/11 probably think Harry Potter can just wave his wand and water will split spontaneously to make hydrogen. Doesn’t work that way. My idea is to use nuclear and wind power to generate the energy to split the water and make hydrogen. Nuclear can be fueled by back-mixing weapons material with depleted uranium to make fuel-grade material. Ruins it for weapons use.
Hmmm…like I said, the devil’s in the details.
A starting price of US$4/gallon, or so, would probably start the ball rolling. The floor price could always be adjusted later….maybe.
Of course, that’s just the problem, the political end. Lately Congress rarely if ever seems to pass legislation favorable to the US as a whole (and instead prefers special interest legislation that does not overtly harm the US as a whole).
Great idea, Ben. Nuclear energy has apparently found its place as, incredible as it seems, nuclear accidents now seem far less risky than rogue nuclear attacks from bug-eyed Islamist oil suppliers.
Heckler, I was actually being saracatic about $2 tax per gallon of gasoline.
What I was meaning to say is that alternative energy is fine, but the government will have to assure itself that no matter what energy sources we use now and in the future, must be taxed.
Nucular energy would solve many of our energy problems if it wern’t for the waste. Until that problem is solved I vote nucular energy OUT. Nucular waste is not safe to transport or store.
The trouble with nuclear is the waste product which remains dangerously toxic for a very very long time.
I am only bascially aware of the separation of hydrogen from oxygen in water (electrolysis) I don’t know the power cost vs. harvest. Too hydrogen is extremely volatile.
Clearly we are going to have to do something to get away from petroleum. Petroleum is “easy” and China and India are going to want more and more of it.
It may be that we have to reform the “car culture”, at least until we find alternative fuels. Maybe it’s time for no more drive throughs where engines idle. Also we might invest more in our diesel or mag lev railroads instead of flying so much.
On the face of it, hydrogen sounds good, but as JR says, it’s extremely volitile and difficult to handle. The cost to infrastructure would be tremendous. The only cost effective way to transport and store hydrogen is in liquid form. I can’t even imagine self-service hydrogen stations. Can you imagine a car wreck with highly flammable and under some conditions, explosive liquid hydrogen involved?
Ban idling at drive-thrus? I’m all for that. Include trains that leave me idling for 5-10 minutes, with traffic backed up for blocks, and I’d be one happy camper.
Israel knows they’re guilty for all the high-priced gasoline problem and their newspaper on talking about how they must walk on “eggshells” when dealing with the United States so as not to be punished for what all they’ve done. So if Israel knows all about it, it seems almost comical that you all won’t even discuss it.
Afraid you’ll be called “anti-Semitic” if you critique any of the trouble they’re causing?
And making us pay for it?
Come on, let me hear all about why we have “Jew-Gas?” Israel knows why and don’t try to pawn it off on the oil companies { before “Jew-Gas” the oil companies were charging a dollar a gallon }.
Do these bastards care about foisting their Jew-Gas on the American family? No, they could care less. they only care about themselves. Read all about them.
Haaretz:
“The approach that the Holocaust must not be compared to other genocides has meant that a high school student in Israel knows nothing about the genocide of the Armenian people, the genocide in Rwanda or even the slaughter of the Roma, or Gypsies, during World War II. Teaching of the Holocaust in a way that presents only Jewish uniqueness leads to a conviction that the Jewish people will always dwell alone, that gentiles must not be considered, that all of them are Amalek, and therefore universal morality and international law are of no importance.”
These twisted minds will not even consider the 25 million Joe Stalin killed. They’ve too selfish for that.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/710503.html
XXX,
You’re first post was right on the money. 35 years ago, we WERE moving forward on alternative fuels–the Carter administration put all kinds of tax incentives in place for things like solar panels. Most of the solar panels you see around these days are from that era.
The problem was very simple–Ronald Reagan. He trashed it all. He ridiculed it while he trashed it. So did Bush I and so did Bush II. It wasn’t a priority for Clinton, but at least he didn’t ridicule it.
Two, your assertion that hydrogen is extremely volitile and hard to handle is true, but compared to what? It’s no worse than natural gas or propane. It’s much BETTER than gasoline.
Try shooting a tank of hydrogen and a tank of gasoline with a high-powered rifle bullet, and you’ll see what I mean. The former burns with a clean flame–the second explodes.
And how many times has that happened. Why don’t you knock it off and deal with the real problem, the one killing the American family?
” As we noted in our editorial Friday: ”
The problem is that you didn’t give one sentence dealing with the “problem.”
And that is the problem.
There is 3 dollar Jew-Gas
Which is killing the middle-class American family.
Now how do we divert attention away from the real problem to distraction Americans from the fact that Zionist Israel is threatening to attack the world oil supply with nuclear weapons { Chernobyl is still radio active after 20 years.
1. Blame it on Oil Company greed.
2. Filling the reserves.
3 Oil addiction.
4. Not tearing-up the wilderness to produce a little more oil.
5. Having cars that use gasoline.
6. General bull=shit.
7. No mention of Zionist Israel { or making peace with the Arabs }.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration sees no direct evidence of profiteering by big U.S. oil companies and is doing all it can to tame near-record prices, U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman said on Sunday.(snip)Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if oil companies are exploiting consumers, Bodman said “we see no evidence of it, but this is one of those situations where I guess I would call it ‘trust but verify.”‘
—-
Is anyone surprised at this? Bush is saying, “Well, gee, folks, I tried, but there’s just nothing I can do about this,” as if we’re all just supposed to dig deeper, eat less, live smaller (sorry, but for some, a smaller cardboard box just won’t work), and suck it up.
They aren’t going to do anything, except make it look like they’ve tried, then be “so sorry.” We, the people, are being screwed.
shrub won’t do anything about oil/gas prices. If he did it would mean less money in his pocket. I’m going to be interested in shrubs finances after he gets out of office, is there going to be a sudden increase in his earnings from oil interests?
KCC has it right about hydrogen. Ben has an excellent idea on turning water into its constituent parts. Nuclear energy plants could do it. Use nuclear energy to both turn water into hydrogen and oxygen and produce power at the same time.
If it can be got passed the environmentalists, it could be done. I’ve also seen many proposals for using the ocean currents to produce energy. Tides come in and go out at exact intervals. It wouldn’t be hard to do, although the ocean is highly corrosive. Lots of interesting ideas out there.
By the time you get your contraptions going we won’t have any “toasters” to plug in.
We stop the Jews right now. When Bush hinted a couple of days ago, the oil traders started oil downhill.
Am I the only one with the guts to take on Jew-Gas?
How about showing some guts?
Agreed, JM.
I used to be against nuclear power mainly because nuclear power requires plutonium, the most toxic substance every created on earth and a component of a nuclear bomb or a dirty bomb.
But the trouble is, we’ve got to have some kind of power. Even burning WOOD produces greenhouse gasses (although planting trees to replace the fuel reduces greenhouse gas).
If nuclear plants could split water into hydrogen at the same time, which could then be piped into natural gas lines for water and home heating, it would be a tremendous advance for the industry and for the planet.
I’d be all for that.
And then on to FUSION technology, so we can vaporize all the nuclear waste we’ve produced so far.
Ed, the Zionists that have created Israel cause many, many problems in our world, granted.
But price gouging at the pump can be fully explained by disasterous Bush policies that 1. cut the supply from Iraq and 2. benefit the big corporate interests who put Bush in power.
Invading Iraq helps Israel and the Zionists who control it, yes. Calling all muslims fighting nationalist battles (like Al Qaeda in Arabia and the Palestinians in the Zionist state) “terrorists” works in Israel’s favor too.
But more basic and fundamental forces are at work to high gas prices . . . they charge what they can because they can.
Israel is only a tangential influence in this case.
3 years ago, the time we’ve been in Iraq, gas was a buck, so much for that horseshit….
The price spiked directly on the threat. there’s no getting away from that……….
When the oil traders start Monday-Tuesday, watch this G-d flap-mouthed Rice drive the price with theses veiled threats: “WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned on Sunday the United States might take steps outside the UN Security Council to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear program.
Rice, who appeared on several Sunday television talk shows, said Washington still had a number of diplomatic steps it could take through the UN Security Council against Iran. However, if the Council did not act quickly enough, Washington and its allies [G-d Zionist Jews] would not wait.”
Atomic warfare, and count on Pakistan and maybe even Russia getting into the fray, once it starts, it will not stop.
Competition works across all “pumps,” or they don’t get the money if they don’t drop the price.
That’s no where near the problem.
You’re listening to and repeating the Zionist Propaganda.
Hey Ed, my african car b runnin’ good on dat jew-gas fo sho! :)
V.L.R.B!!!
Got duct-tape?