IR I certainly agree with your comment about conservation of homeland oil. As everybody knows by now, every drop of home oil that can be conserved for later use will help the ever worsening issue of supply security and interruption, if nothing else.
A few decades of meeting less than one half of the almost always increasing national demand hasn't gotten anywhere in the past, so its proven that it isn't a reliable energy strategy for the future. As we have already seen, it will result in very expensive oil .. at best. Everyone seems to think that drilling at home will make cheaper oil available to Americans, but they also fail to recognize that the domestically produced oil price went up in accordance with market conditions too. That logic fails.
As far as offshore drilling is concerned, I grew up on the Gulf Coast and have done a lot of scuba diving off the rigs there. While they may not be the prettiest things in the world, they are relatively clean these days and do attract much sea life. I for one don't believe that they are the cause of very much oil pollution. While there is some natural seepage of oil from Gulf of Mexico bottom, I believe that much of what is seen is the result of the shipping traffic and balasting operations, not necessarily related to the petroleum economy alone.
Personally I don't like wind turbines or vast solar fields located in highly traveled and visible scenic areas either, but they obviously have environmenal benifits over offshore drilling, coal mountain mining and coal, oil and NG burning power plants. I also think its better to spend money on green power in any form than on an oil war in Iraq. (I say that, because even Allen Greenspan admitted it was common knowledge.)
While the present financial crisis is blamed on other things, I believe a good portion of the past USD devaluation and the forthcoming recession was caused by pumping 20-25 billion out every month for foreign oil. In the last 30 years, I have noticed that whenever oil prices spike for a year, 2 years of recession or a near-recessive US economy is the result. This time the effects of those two factors have to be multiplied together as well as to that of the war cost. What I find really incredible is with all that, everyone still wants a tax cut. Does everyone think those bills never need to be paid? The only practical way to pay for it all that I can see is to allow massive inflation and pay them back in cheaper dollars. That is also the fact that doesn't get mentioned when some say that "The taxpayer made money" the last time they did it with the mortgages in the 90's. Sure the taxpayer made money, but only because the inflation rate made it possible to sell the properties off at a higher price. So what this new bill will do is put everything on ice, until the inflation rate heats up and brings the prices back to the level they were or higher. Man.. you can do a lot of stuff with the books when you don't include the inflation that I think is sure to follow. You think its been bad this last year? Nothing to what's going to happen next year. I hope I'm wrong, because inflation and recession isn't a very nice thing at all.
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
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