Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
Y'all should watch James Burke's Connections instead. Older but more balanced.
Why are we in this crunch?
1. Because we've spent the last 15 years trying to make the two most populous countries in the world capitalist and affluent. Guess what? We're succeeding, and they're outcompeting us for natural resources.
2. America has collectively refused to do anything to help with the problem. Offshore drilling for oil? 90% of the US continental shelf is shut down to drilling. (the other 10% had already gotten started before the eco-simps got their moratorium.) No ANWAR, no matter how carefully its done. Colorado oil shale? Now that it's profitable, it's now No Way Jose.
Nuclear power. NIMBY'ed to death, even though we know where and how to handle the waste. New oil refineries? We've finally gotten the first new one in 30+ years thru the regulatory gauntlet. And then the very same people who caused all of this whine that civilization is going to come to an end. To quote Wyoming Knott in Heinlein's Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, "Rockheads, you deserve to starve!"
Despite all the roadblocks, we greedy, vicious, bloody-minded capitalists will still get the system working back to snuff in another 7-10 years, if you <bleeping> pessimists and no-growthers will just get off our backs (and out of our wallets). To quote James Burke's Connections (last episode) "Technology has always caused problems in the past, but it's then solved them later. Why should now be any different?" And so say I.
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Great points all. Though I would not say it is fair to say that "America has collectively refused to do
anything." It has been largely Democrats in Congress who refuse to do anything. Attached is a graphic that compares Democrat vs. Republican Energy Policies.
Methodology: Retail gasoline prices are the result of literally hundreds of factors including crude oil supply, global demand, refinery capacity, regulation, taxes, weather, the value of the dollar, etc. Therefore it is impossible to say with certainty what one individual action will do to the overall price. However, based on what we know about the impact of crude oil supply and prices it is possible to develop some potential ranges of impact on gasoline prices for certain policy changes. For example, using the methodology employed by Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats that suspending shipments into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (between 40-77,000 barrels of oil a day) would reduce gas prices by at least 5 cents, bringing ANWR online (at least one million barrels of oil a day) could impact gasoline prices by between 70 cents and $1.60.