President Obama has a solution to the Gulf oil spill: $7-a-gallon gas.

[impalanar]

We really need to stop Obama from helping us any more.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/gallon_gas_9GlF3o1xIcIBelOV3k0RsK


That's a Harvard University study's estimate of the per-gallon price of the president's global-warming agenda. And Obama made clear this week that this agenda is a part of his plan for addressing the Gulf mess.

So what does global-warming legislation have to do with the oil spill?

Good question, because such measures wouldn't do a thing to clean up the oil or fix the problems that led to the leak.

The answer can be found in Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's now-famous words, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste -- and what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."

[Lazarus]

You know I'm not a fan of these threads and dont keep up much with them but my friend does so I asked him his opinion on the article. I'll post it for discussion since you are probably bored and maybe I can learn something from the debate.

I haven’t read the whole article, but this is interesting: “The American people didn't seem to think that the so-called global-warming crisis justified a price-hiking, job-killing, economy-crushing redesign of our energy supply amid a fragile recovery.”

I wanted to comment on that part though, I’ll probably read the article little by little because I have a lot of work I’m doing. I think that mentality is yet another example of people crying and whailing and not actually *THINKING RATIONALLY.* Here is why I say that, what that line above is basically saying is that during a recession and fragile recovery, they government shouldn’t invest money that would wean us off of foreign oil *and create thousands of jobs* because that what investing in clean energy will do. Here is the thing, the US uses roughly 900GW of electricity each year. Scientists and researchers have estimated that the US has roughly 850GW worth of potential electricity that can be harnessed from the SUN out in the SW alone. Other scientists have estimated that the US also has roughly the same amount of potential wind energy of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as well as North Dakota (all three of those combined). So, let us do the math, 850GW + 850GW = 1700GW of electricity which is FAR FAR more than what we use today and it would be clean. Our *ENTIRE* power grid would be based off of clean energy which would be great for the environment. Now, here is the other thing, those Solar panels aren’t going to build themselves, those wind turbines aren’t going to build themselves either, you know what will build them. *PEOPLE* People (lots of them) will have jobs, GOOD paying ones too because this isn’t just any o’le construction job. So, what’s the downside?

O..M..G, can’t believe they said this: And the logic of getting us off oil imports via a unilateral measure that punishes American coal, oil and natural gas never made any sense at all.

That line is funny and sad. The burning of COAL is *THE* primary reason the atmosphere has so much excess C02 right now. Not to mention that it is the burning of coal that has caused all of our rivers and streams to have too much mercury in them. And of course it is UBER smart to just keep using a resource that is finite right? Let’s just overlook the fact that the sun will be burning for billions of years and that the wind will always blow. Oh and the fact that solar and wind technology has been proven versus “clean coal” technology which is still on the drawing board. These people are talking crap.

[DecepticonDon]

Laz, if so-called green energy can be produced....without the aid of taxpayer subsidies, I gladly welcome it.
But the government pushing and giving money to private companies to build power generation devices(whether solar or wind), so that they can then charge consumers is bogus.

Or if taxpayers subsidize the building of it, we don't get a power bill.

[wallypiper]

One of the failings of capitalism is that it depends on the creativity and vision of individuals when it comes to making decisions that are based on anticipation of future trends and events. At it's core, capitalism is system of reaction. A demand exists. Suppliers react. Suppliers enter a market. Consumers react. That all works really well for a lot of things but it doesn't work well when it comes to making strategic decisions like "let's quit burning so much oil (which creates and always will create massive flows of wealth from us to the oil producing nations. We will never really be an oil producing nation again compared to the middle east and Russia.) or "let's try to find alternatives to burning coal (which is a terrible polluter but a very economic and convenient energy source if you ignore the pollution). I don't know of any other way to get the US to move in the right direction on energy besides government nudging. Right now, the money doesn't work out. The technologies are all new, developmental and expensive. If they were competitive there would already be solar farms and wind turbines supplying our electricity. Government subsidies for these technologies can help get them over the hump. We have spent lot's of money developing weapons with almost no civilian payback other than security. We spent lots of money to go the moon and build the shuttle and ISS with only peripheral benefits to society (Don't go off on me, I LOVE the space programs and thing they were great investments. They are, in fact, great examples of good government direction of resources into an area that pure capitalism wouldn't pursue.) If we make the same kinds of public investments in developing alternative energy sources, we will unhook ourselves from the yoke of foreign oil and end our damaging use of coal as a primary source of electricity. Note that private space launching is starting to become a reality. There is a small but real market for space launch services and companies are starting to develop the means to serve it.

You have to wonder what the reality is behind our governments unwillingness to pursue energy development the same way it has pursued weapons and space flight. Maybe because the oil and coal companies have too much power on capital hill and they obviously have big vested interest in hindering that.

Certainly with the current public debt situation, this isn't a good time for massive government spending on windmills and solar panels. But it we wait for the market to bring them along, it won't happen until oil becomes much much more expensive. Think in terms of $200/barrel. When oil flirted with $150, some people started to seriously look at alternatives but cooler heads prevailed, pointing out that there was no shortage of oil and the price wouldn't last. If you read about the future of oil and oil prices, one nearly universal idea is that we will never run out of oil, we will just run out of cheap oil. At some point, and it may not be that far off because demand continues to grow pretty fast, the price of oil will make it prohibitively expensive as a motor fuel or electricity source. If we wait for that situation to come to us, we will be at the mercy of the countries that became proactive before it was a financial necessity. They will have the solution, already developed, ready to sell to us. It probably won't be the Arabs, but it could be. If I was getting filthy rich pumping oil out of the ground, it's certainly one of the things I would be spending that money on.

[jkhonea]

You have to wonder what the reality is behind our governments unwillingness to pursue energy development the same way it has pursued weapons and space flight. Maybe because the oil and coal companies have too much power on capital hill and they obviously have big vested interest in hindering that.

I think that's the crux of the matter.

[impalanar]

You know I'm not a fan of these threads and dont keep up much with them but my friend does so I asked him his opinion on the article. I'll post it for discussion since you are probably bored and maybe I can learn something from the debate.

I haven’t read the whole article, but this is interesting: “The American people didn't seem to think that the so-called global-warming crisis justified a price-hiking, job-killing, economy-crushing redesign of our energy supply amid a fragile recovery.”

I wanted to comment on that part though, I’ll probably read the article little by little because I have a lot of work I’m doing. I think that mentality is yet another example of people crying and whailing and not actually *THINKING RATIONALLY.* Here is why I say that, what that line above is basically saying is that during a recession and fragile recovery, they government shouldn’t invest money that would wean us off of foreign oil *and create thousands of jobs* because that what investing in clean energy will do. Here is the thing, the US uses roughly 900GW of electricity each year. Scientists and researchers have estimated that the US has roughly 850GW worth of potential electricity that can be harnessed from the SUN out in the SW alone. Other scientists have estimated that the US also has roughly the same amount of potential wind energy of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as well as North Dakota (all three of those combined). So, let us do the math, 850GW + 850GW = 1700GW of electricity which is FAR FAR more than what we use today and it would be clean. Our *ENTIRE* power grid would be based off of clean energy which would be great for the environment. Now, here is the other thing, those Solar panels aren’t going to build themselves, those wind turbines aren’t going to build themselves either, you know what will build them. *PEOPLE* People (lots of them) will have jobs, GOOD paying ones too because this isn’t just any o’le construction job. So, what’s the downside?

O..M..G, can’t believe they said this: And the logic of getting us off oil imports via a unilateral measure that punishes American coal, oil and natural gas never made any sense at all.

That line is funny and sad. The burning of COAL is *THE* primary reason the atmosphere has so much excess C02 right now. Not to mention that it is the burning of coal that has caused all of our rivers and streams to have too much mercury in them. And of course it is UBER smart to just keep using a resource that is finite right? Let’s just overlook the fact that the sun will be burning for billions of years and that the wind will always blow. Oh and the fact that solar and wind technology has been proven versus “clean coal” technology which is still on the drawing board. These people are talking crap.

What the line above is saying is the idea of "we want to help bicycle manufacturers, so we are going to flatten one of your car tires and make it cost prohibitive to buy another" is not healthy to a fragile economy. Will it create jobs? Yes. Will it cost jobs? Yes. Will they offset? Maybe. You can't really take credit for giving Bob a job if you cost Fred and Marvin theirs in the process.

I am all for Wind and Solar power, unfortunately a lot of people are against it (ironically, the same people who are against fossil fuels.)

[Jector]

You can't really take credit for giving Bob a job if you cost Fred and Marvin theirs in the process.

We're talking about the government that took credit for giving Bob a job when he never lost the job in the first place. I'm betting they'll take credit for leading one person over the broken backs of several others and call it a win.