Obama slams McCain over oil tax breaks

start drilling, i say. we depend far too much on foreign oil. and make more hybrid cars.

Bill Clinton may have dropped the ball but the first real attempts at alternative fuel research actually began under Carter and ended when Reagan stopped funding for it and told us to party like it was 1999. I'm getting a little weary of Republicans blaming Democrats, or tree huggers, or greenies or whatever they call them..for the current cost of oil when that's a load of crap. It's a very complicated issue and there's much more involved than most people take the time to understand.

I do however think most people realize that we will one day run out of oil, I don't believe it will be in my lifetime, but we know it's going to happen. This is a geological, not a technical reality. Oil is a finite resource that occurs only in special circumstances. We have long ago tapped the easiest to find and produce big fields.

I agree that the difficulty with solutions involving only pursuing alternative energy sources (corn is only one example) is that they are still too far off. We would need both the infrastructure and the will to make it happen. A potential long term solution, but not a viable short term one.

Drilling on the other hand sounds good, but offers neither short term nor long term solutions really. For the sake of this argument, let?s overlook the fact that oil companies already have rights to something like 50+ million acres they are currently not drilling, and let?s drill some more. Even the White House estimates that the oil to be gained by new offshore drilling would only add a little less than 1% to world supply. It would take from 8 to 14 years to start to bring this extra oil to market.

Now setting aside the to drill or not to drill debate for a moment, let?s talk about speculators, i.e. the real reason we are currently paying out the wazoo for gas. They are no longer regulated. This is the driving factor behind our current gas prices. Why not as an immediate response to sky high gas prices we reinstitute the regulation of the energy speculators that McCain voted to deregulate. See this video link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdRbuUQNcxw

Speculators are overwhelmingly active in 6-month to 1-year futures, so that new less-than-1% addition to oil supply that we won't see for about 10 years, that will do nothing at all to counteract whatever effect speculators are having on the market right now.

Food for thought

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/david-vitter-has-a-new-fe_b_108244.html

Gas is already over $10 a gallon here in the UK

I'm not trying to be sarcastic here - but when I've been in America, I see a lot of large cars - more than over here - and these will use a lot of fuel.

Dare any politician in American suggest smaller more fuel efficient cars to reduce fuel consumption?

I'd maybe suggest democratically elected politicians in the end daren't implement deeply unpopular - but perhaps necessary - measures in the knowledge of what would happen at the polls.

you know I will not read the huffington rag just as much as you would not watch foxnews

I'm getting a little weary of Republicans blaming Democrats, or tree huggers, or greenies or whatever they call them..for the current cost of oil when that's a load of crap. It's a very complicated issue and there's much more involved than most people take the time to understand

I think we can both agree that it was BOTH sides that got us into this mess, and it is going to take BOTH sides to get us out..
There seems to be one big word that was left out of the congressional dictionary and that word being ..Compromise.... and that goes for both sides.



I do agree here to a point...

Shale oil...
https://ostseis.anl.gov/guide/oilshale/index.cfm

Canada got the jump on us with their technology on how to extract the oil from the ground but the good ol'e USA perfected the technology and can do it with a minimum footprint.

https://www.pttc.org/workshop_summaries/204.htm




100% in agreement here...

We need to Compromise and do both short term fixes until we can get to the long term ones

I guess $5.00 a gallon for fuel would seem like Christmas if you?re used to paying $10.00, but we?re not and our economy is taking a beating because of this. It?s true that very large vehicles are a big part of our problem. In parts of the country outside of the most prominent cities, we rely heavily on cars as our form of transportation. Many of our suburbs do not have mass transit for a variety of reasons. We just have not spent the money to set up infrastructure and mass transit in the US. So when you're only form of fuel goes out the door or becomes out of range as far as affordability goes, everything is going to cripple along with it until it can be replaced.

Electronic cars are developed and ready for mass production if there is a demand for them but we would need real nuclear power in every city. If that was the case oil issues in regards to vehicles would be history. These cars do not produce much pollution, but the real issue is how the electricity is produced, and the demand for electricity would be much higher if these cars replaced fossil fuel cars. But the reality right now is that our country is not equipped for the masses to use electric cars.

Lol... alright fair enough, but check it out just for the comedic value. It's rather entertaining.




I totally agree.