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Lubing the wheels of change requires a plan where no one is a loser. In economics, this is called the strong Pareto criterion. In daily terms, it might mean that we shave off some of the social benefits of moving to this economy to pay for their retraining and unemployment. This way only the people unwilling to learn and work will be left behind. That's not collateral damage; that is justice.
Well, jaw-dropping as it is, it's finally good to see the bald-faced admission that the intention of Obama's energy policy is to crash the economy -- and Brian Merchant is all in favor of that.
At a time when the country is projected to be $9 trillion in debt (it was $7 trillion, but apparently they made a slight boo-boo), and the administration claims it wants to reduce foreign energy imports -- well, what could make more sense than crippling domestic production?
Our only saving grace is that there will be some massive house-cleaning come November 2010, and that Obama has all but sealed his legacy as a one-term president.
I can't believe the newspaper industry hasn't already implemented this strategy:
HEY IF PEOPLE USE THE INTERNET TO GET THEIR NEWS IT WILL KILL THE NEWSPRINT INDUSTRY AND PEOPLE WILL LOSE JOBS!
I don't know about you but I haven't seen a lot of people bemoaning the loss of traditional media jobs other than those directly affected. That is the price of progress in any industry: jobs move from the old processes to the new ones. Lots of people lost jobs when computers overtook typewriters in popularity. And lots of jobs were created. To say the status quo is important for keeping people employed is to say the progress has moved far enough and this is where we stop.
Good luck with that.
Hey waitforit
Three words
Clean Energy Economy
We don't want to wait for it.
So the report is telling us that this bill would reduce our dependence on oil which we cannot produce enough of at home? Sounds like a pretty clear good to me.
To Anonymous:
"Three words
Clean Energy Economy"
Hey anonymous, three words for you: "The, Easter, Bunny"
If you actually imagine you run a modern industrialized economy using sunshine and unicorn farts, you are seriously on crack.
Or did Obama just invent Star Trek dylithium crystals and forget to tell us?
Toyota and Honda have announced fuel cell cars by mid decade. If they can make them affordable, it is the end of the oil industry as we know it. Stanford has done a study, if accurate, that shows a best case-worst case scenario for hydrogen produced from wind powered electrolysis that driving a fuel celled vehicle will be the equivalent of gasoline being $1.20-$3.20 per gallon. Basically, the same as what it costs to drive now, so why do we need new refineries? The political problem will be banning or keeping oil prices high because there will be massive downward pressure on oil prices within 10 years.
I'm not sure what to make of this. The problem with this post is that it fails to mention whether the reduction in domestic production is due to a real reduction in petroleum usage, or if it just means that we import a greater percentage of oil. After a very quick trip to API's website, I was able to get the numbers.
(link here: http://api.org/Newsroom/upload/ENSYS_W_M_Briefi...)
The report states that domestic production could drop by 4.4 million barrels a day, while the rest of the world's "refining throughput" could INCREASE by 3.3 million barrels a day. "US consumption of imported refined products is projected to increase from 9.6% in the baseline case to up to 19.4% of US product supplied." While I'm all for reducing oil consumption, the solution is not to send production overseas.
Please provide the whole story in the future. Your post is deceptive. You completely ignore the parts of the study that suggest that overall GHG emissions worldwide would not decrease significantly, and that production would mostly just be shifted to other countries.
Liberals in the US seem to thrive in a fantasy world of unintended consequences.
By kneecapping domestic refining capacity, all that will happen is that capacity will be moved out of the country. Unless Merchant imagines a situation of government controlled energy rationing, the demand will not decrease one iota.
Canada is the single largest foreign supplier of oil and gas to the US, and we have some nice, tastey sources for you, including our oilsands supplies. As a Canadian who makes his living in oil and gas, people like Brian Merchant are my best buddy.
So, to my American friends, I say go right ahead and shoot yourself in the foot. I'll be happy to provide you with all the bullets you want, provided you can afford them.
"Our only saving grace is that there will be some massive house-cleaning come November 2010, and that Obama has all but sealed his legacy as a one-term president."
waitforit: Did you forget who we just got out of office? Do you really think Obama is so much worse than GWB? It's pretty unfortunate if you do...at least now we have a president working towards the ultimate goal here, which is the reduction in total usage of fossil fuels and the reliance on them.
Nick" If you actually imagine you run a modern industrialized economy using sunshine and unicorn farts, you are seriously on crack."
We call it solar power and hydrogen gas these days, but yes. And here's the really frightening part, it just might work :O
I do agree with the statements regarding the article. If we are going to increase our foreign demand, than I think thats a bit worse than not using our own. However, I think its important to look at who is funding the study, and judge how reliable the information is from that.
This makes me laugh. It won't be the climate bill that reduces refining capacity, but the peak oil crisis heading straight for us. oil production has already peaked in non-OPEC countries, and IEA chief economist Fatih Birol has officially stated that we will reach peak oil in about 10 years. Also, a new assesment shows the biggest of 800 oil fields representing three quarters of remaining supply have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now calculated to be nearly 6.7%, as opposed to 3.7% two years ago.
Sounds like the climate bill is the perfect scapegoat eh?
We already have a nearly unlimited source of energy: nuclear power (yes, I know everyone stopped taking this seriously as soon as they saw the word "nuclear").
I have yet to meet a single person who knows what a Pebble Bed reactor (the current state of nuclear technology) is. Yet they are being used in Europe already and China has contracted for 20 Pebble Bed power plants to be built.
In case anyone has read this far: a Pebble Bed reactor uses billiard-ball sized spheres rather than fuel rods and inert gas as coolant; ie no contaminated water. Due to the design of the reactor, a melt-down is impossible. That is because when the reactor starts to overheat the reaction actually slows down, so a "runaway" reaction is not possible - even if the coolant is cut off entirely.
I have also found that about 95 percent of the population does not know the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion (I apologize for using the "N" word on this site). Again, in case anyone is actually reading this:
- Nuclear fission is the splitting of atomic particles to produce energy (heat). Uranium is used, which leaves us with a lot of highly radioactive waste to somehow store or recycle (though there are several methods available to safely store this waste, nobody can agree on which to use).
- Nuclear fusion is the process by which multiple like-charged atomic nuclei join together. This is what powers our sun. The most likely candidate for fuel is hydrogen and there is virtually no waste from the process. Since the fusion reaction is in the form of a gas (much like a fluorescent lamp works) at 100 million degrees Celsius, any breakdown or breach of containment instantly stops the reaction. The escaped gas would be so diffuse that just about any large building could easily contain a total failure.
So we really don't need to be using oil for energy at all. Yet research funding for developing a working fusion reactor has been steadily dropping - even though success would mean a literally unlimited supply of energy! And I have yet to see a single news item addressing Pebble Bed technology.
The American public needs to wake up again. When I was a teenager I attended numerous protest rallies against an unpopular war and there were public protest rallies on literally every college campus on a regular basis. Now that we are involved in a war for an even more dubious cause, where are the protesters? Sitting at their keyboards? So what? That's not enough!
If we build inherently safe Pebble Bed reactors as an interim energy source while putting real research money into fusion research, we can stop destroying our planet by pumping and burning oil.
"If you actually imagine you run a modern industrialized economy using sunshine and unicorn farts, you are seriously on crack."
@ Nick (and anyone else who may relate an interest in renewable energy to the use of a class D substance)
Thank you for stopping us in our folly of such wide eyed dreamers as T. Boone Pickens or Paul Krugan. Such individuals you have no experience with economics should not be suggesting we pursue renewable energy. Nor should we follow the lead of such young, risk taking companies as Siemens or General Electric.
Ceratainly you, a web forum troll, can show us the best future for our nation and the world.
I think unicorn farts are awesome!! I want a t-shirt made up. Maybe a cycling jersey!
Establish a critical mass of electric vehicles and infrastructure FIRST, THEN start tearing away at the oil producing infrastructure.
Supply shocks unfairly punish the very people the BHO admin says it protects, the lower middle class and poorer folks. Doubling gas prices is good for no one. The best way to prevent this is to maintain or increase capacity. If nuclear, electrics, hydro, hydrogen , solar and wind work better, well then, the pocketbook will decide.
Domestic production must be viewed as a component of America's energy independence. Start tearing away at our domestic production and there might be labels of Anti-American thrown about.
Waitforit is right. EcoRealityChecker is right, Trev has a good possibility of being right in the future, way to go Jimbo ay! good presentation from a different perspective , way to go nick.
Good Luck,
vsk
@ EcoRealityChecker
while I am one of the few environmentalists that shares your enthusiasm for nuclear power, I don't think that meltdowns are a major concern. If properly regulated and maintained, new plants won't have meltdowns.
The current problems with nuclear power include mining uranium, and dealing with waste.
If you want to convince environmentalists that nuclear power is viable, you have to convince them that these problems WILL be solved.