Results tagged “politics” from Green Mesh

Rep. Todd Platts, R-York County, voted with his fellow Republicans against the (energy) bill, calling it an example of "what is wrong with Washington."

Instead of addressing the interest of all Americans, Platts said the bill would continue to prohibit drilling in the locations where most of the oil and natural gas can be found. inyork.com/ydr 08/18/08

And in about 7+ years when this oil and gas hits the global market (a free and open oil market) where the value is controlled by those who have most of the oil (OPEC), the price effect will be nothing. The thirst by developing nations will continue to pressure that market and will only be more severe in following decades.

Oil is a dead end. The cry for drilling will continue until the day we run out and then there will be panic for a solution.

What is wrong with Washington is that it has allowed it's vision to be powered by whatever the monopoly is of the time.

What is wrong with Washington is that we should have been building a national resource of renewable energy decades ago so we wouldn't be so controlled by this mess now.

What is wrong with Washington is that it lacks innovative heroes who can dig through the think of the crowd, the flow of money, and look beyond the rhetoric of the day to the survival of future generations.

Congress' earlier attempts this year to renew wind, and solar tax credits, with a measure proposing higher taxes on the oil and gas industry to pay for it have been shot down.

"It's pretty remarkable. ... Wind turbines are used in political ads, yet we stand on the verge of not extending the credit which supports the growth of the largest-growing sector of the utility and energy area in the country," - Hunter Armistead, head of renewable energy for Babcock & Brown, the private-equity firm with 20 U.S. wind farms generating 1,600 megawatts wsj.com

House approves offshore drilling with alternatives, drillers revolt - greenmesh 9/08

The House voted today 236-189 to allow oil drilling off the nation's Atlantic and Pacific coasts if states agree -- but only 50 or more miles out.

The bill rolls back $18 billion in oil industry tax breaks and imposes new oil and gas royalties, while giving tax incentives for wind and solar industries and for conservation. (AP)

President Bush vetoed the bill saying "its a waste of time" and opponents argue that 50 miles is beyond where most of the estimated 18 billion barrels of oil is located.

Republicans who recently shouted "Drill Baby Drill" at their national convention hate the bill and the Democrats say drilling needs to be part of a comprehensive alternative plan.

The Republican's believe that the bill is an election year gimmick against the will of the people which is to lower gas prices.

Fifteen Republicans crossed the aisle to support the bill Tuesday. Thirteen Democrats voted against it.

Since we really don't control the the world oil market, of which the rest of the world has the majority of the oil and the oil we drill in the future will just flow on the world market.
Domestic drilling + OPEC = no impact (greenmesh 9/08)

As the United States feeds a global economy with outsourcing and imports the demand for global oil will just increase far greater than anything we can drill.

Even if we drill tomorrow it will take years before oil hits the world market.

The drilling initiative is almost pointless in the long or short-term, though it squeaks out a tiny addition to the world oil supply beyond the next decade.

The alternative is to...find an alternative? I don't get the problem with the bill.

OPEC oil ministers agreed today to trim overall output by more than 500,000 barrels a day in a compromise meant to avoid new turmoil in crude markets while seeking to bolster falling prices.

The news sent oil prices rising. Light, sweet crude for October delivery rose 97 cents to $104.23 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. (AP)

Oil had a short-lived dip below $100 due to sluggish demand and weakening global economies.

During the Republican National Convention, more than once, the people in the crowd responded to speakers with the chant, "Dril. Dril. Drill." It's an exciting knee-jerk reaction akin to the gas tax holiday (greenmesh 5/08).

We import over 50 percent of our oil from foreign entities that control the global price based on their own internal manipulation of the supply.

Of the 1,143.355 billion barrels of world proved reserves of oil, the United States has 20,972. (U.S. Energy Information Administration 8/27/08)

It really doesn't matter how much you drill here when someone who owns the majority of the resource can manipulate the price. It isn't like we get to keep what is drilled for ourselves.

Oil companies are global companies. When they are given the green light to start drilling that company sells the oil on the global market. Then those who have a majority of the resource (OPEC) manipulate their output to regulate price.

So drilling domestically really won't change the equation other than bolstering profits for global oil companies constantly thirsty for new sources of oil to prove to stockholders that there is a future supply of oil.

And it makes a great chant for conventions by people who are longing to take the situation unsolved for decades, because it is too profitable for those who control it, into their own hands and start boring it with a drill.

We are just feeding the machine by drilling with no short or long-term solution for consumers. If anything, if we don't let global oil companies drill our oil sometime decades from now, OPEC will suck themselves dry and we will still have dwindling reserves. This isn't likely though because we are always tapping our own reserves.

We Should be chanting, hydrogen hydrogen hydrogen... or solar, solar, solar or maybe, Think, Think Think !! and come up with some plausible alternative energy sources and implement them.

I can recall presidents since the 1970's, Republican and Democrat, all saying we need to free ourselves from the dependence of foreign oil. Some were mildly successful.

Here we sit in 2008 with the same dependence on foreign oil we enjoyed thirty years ago chanting "drill, drill, drill".

I was thinking about this while lying under my
motorcycle doing the 6000 miles service.

Being green around the year 2000 meant driving a tiny hybrid Honda Insight with a "Save the whales" bumper sticker plastered between those funky rear fender skirts. These lone conservers were few and far between navigating a sea of SUV's, consuming 5 times the fuel, labeling them liberals.

I have never understood the label liberal because it's often applied to one who chooses to conserve resources (or reduces profit?); which would be conserve-ative..? It's one of those strange spins of economic-politics, like having a trade embargo with Communist Cuba for 40 years when Communist China has become our dominant trade partner and labor force.

The innovative minds of yesterday that invented (and capitalized on) modern convenience, today capitalize on those inventions and innovate new layers of surcharge and ownership, adding layers upon layers of costs to consumers.

Green today means more about marketing than solution. Under the complicated layers of production of products and energy delivery, consumers have realized that they need to take steps to simplify and extract value out of everything that empowers their existence, but are left with more green static than tools to fix problems.

Capitalism is this wonderful/horrible thing where opportunity seems unlimited yet the long-term prognosis screams metastasized cancer without a moral thread sewing the futures of consumers together.

CEOs have replaced feudal lords. It's questionable which leader has a greater motivation to support their underclass.

I ran across this interesting, ranting article from a South Africa paper, How hybrid cars cause hunger thetimes.co.za The hybrid part doesn't make sense, but the historical perspective is fascinating.

The author relates modern agribusiness selling food stock to the highest bidder (corn for ethanol) to the emergence of apartheid where black people were forcibly removed from fertile farming land, relocated to unproductive land and forced to work on big commercial farms as underpaid laborers..

Patel points out that in the 2000 years before the British arrived in India, famines occurred once every 120 years. After the British imposed the market on India's agricultural production, famines occurred every four years.

Despite the shortcomings of feudalism prior to the arrival of the British, India's landowners fed peasants when harvests were bad. For millennia, a moral economy prevailed, which ensured that nobody starved.