Exploration for Oil and Gas to be permitted off East Coast
The United States government is planning to permit oil and gas exploration off the U.S. East Coast (in particular off the coast of Virginia).
Looking for more fossil fuels? That's fine, so long as we don't use them to "grow the economy". If instead, these high-grade resources were put towards making what we have now better instead of bigger, I would say drill now. Use this and Marcellus gas to smelt aluminum and make cement for sustainable development projects, not to light up more of Las Vegas and air-condition sprawling suburbia.
No Taxation without Representation!
It is interesting to note that with the various efforts pushing for "freedom" and railing against "taxation without representation" and any kind of government management of the health care system, fully socialized or otherwise, we already have gross taxation without representation - subsidized driving.
Fuel taxes do not cover all of the expenses required to operate the road system. In addition to road building and maintenance, services such as snow removal, highway patrol, street cleaning, signage and signal costs, and emergency response are all part of the road and highway transport equation. All of us pay for these through our income and property taxes (property taxes are ultimately paid in one's rent if they own no real estate). Lower fuel costs also encourage consumption, so there is a social/national security/health/environmental cost being subsidized as well.
The high fuel taxes found in other industrialized countries exist because they fund their road systems with this rather than from general funds. For the Tea Partiers, I would think they should support higher fuel taxes and removal of road expenses from the general fund - tax only those who are consuming fuel and hence using the road system.
Why should I subsidize the caraholics? Like the guy who drives his car one block to class each day and spends enough time finding a parking space to walk all the way around the block. Why should I subsidize the shopaholics? (Yes, those shipping trucks do a number on the roads). I don't hear a whole lot of complaints regarding this tax on those of us who do little needless driving and consuming. I would, in fact, much rather pay for a "bum"'s health insurance than to subsidize highway transport that I do not use.
But, reducing consumption is not the "American Way", reducing consumption and encouraging local commerce and public transit is too "greenie hippie", and raising the gasoline tax is far too visible - even if it does make things more economically just. So this gross taxation injustice will likely stay under the radar, far from the chaos of the health insurance debate.
Petropolitics works both ways
News reports have come out, Iran has apparently developed a missile with a fairly long range, along with the discovery of possibly additional nuclear fuel refining facilities. Though nothing TOO drastic has taken place yet, I am sure that there are people out there who would like to see Iran stormed by the U.S. military. I don't think any military involvement should ever be necessary. We may need to take a look at our own lifestyles and what makes them possible. Call it surrender? It's much better than the alternatives. War isn't always about killing people and blowing stuff up. They say freedom isn't free - I say if need be let us take a different approach rather than sending our citizens into danger and spending vast sums (of money and natural resources) to destroy.
Iran's entire economy is mostly based upon petroleum. Who consumes this oil? Bingo. Look in a mirror. Even if the United States does not buy petroleum directly from Iran, our status as having per capita consumption far above everyone else in the world (barring say, Saudi Arabia where they use oil to generate electricity and smelt aluminum and the UAE where they use it to make indoor ski resorts and artificial islands shaped like palm trees), we are essentially the ones would would be expected to reduce consumption, especially considering our concern with Iran.
Iran needs buyers for its oil more than the world needs Iran to buy oil from. If world oil consumption drops, prices will tank. Bring consumption down by a measly three million barrels per day (cut the American consumption of 20+ million barrels per day by just 15%) and Iran is no longer required on the world oil market. They may still sell their oil, and someone will certainly buy it if the price is low enough, but not enough money will be made to support their economy.
Technically there is enough oil in the salt caverns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to fill up our Ford Explorers and heat our McMansions to 72 degrees for a month or so. It would allow for a maximum of seven months of full-bore business-as-usual driving, flying, shipping, and burning with an import deficit of 3 Mbbl/d. Aggressive measures (and no doubt some sacrifice) would make that deficit permanent - would we be willing to change - resisting the urge to consume even at rock-bottom prices? The resulting low oil prices would not sit well with the oil industry or the people who make fortunes pushing around papers on Wall Street with numbers of oil barrels on them, but nearly everyone that the U.S. loves to hate would be hurting. They may have to reconsider the way that some of them treat their people, because their people will be what makes their economy work, not oil bought by some faraway "consumer" (a.k.a. an American Citizen).
Petropolitics works both ways.
The Ideology Conundrum
A few days ago, an article was written in the Telegraph speaking of how the city of Flint, MI is considering the elimination of many abandoned properties due to the shrunken population and revenue drain resulting from the city caring for property and land which is no longer inhabited.
Upon reading (some of) the comments section, I became slightly ill to my stomach and contemplated throwing the computer out the window. 845 comments were posted to this article as of 2:50 PM June 17...an absolutely immense number.
First of all, the majority of people posting comments to this article read the headline and then scanned the page, saw the name "Barack Obama" in the article, and automatically began spewing endless garbage about how our "freedoms are being taken away" and how Obama is "worse than Jimmy Carter" and society is "reverting to socialism/communism/statism/totalitarianism/fascism/insert favorite non-capitalist economic ideology here" If they have (D) after their name, they are lower than scum. Jimmy Carter told the people to turn their thermostats down two degrees and make a few sacrifices like they did during the World Wars. I guess those sacrifices aren't patriotic as they used to be...
(It really says something about us when we are seen using "fascism" and "socialism" in the same context, or stating that "capitalism == democracy" )
Many other commentators automatically reverted to the backup plan: "If all else fails, and I know nothing about the issue, and don't have time to read the article, Blame Bush!", blaming the economic problems (the tremors of consumer society consuming itself toward oblivion) on past presidents - Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush. If they have (R) after their name, they are uncaring nut jobs!"
The Europeans reading the article also chimed in, describing the lack (or lower level) of sprawl in European cities and how Americans were just asking for this by modeling their lifestyles around unsustainable modes of transportation (the car industry).
The Americans interjected and proclaimed their constitutional right (another abused term) to live in sprawling middle-of-nowhere, USA and consume a disproportionate amount of the world's oil supply. (e.g. I"LL DRIVE A SUV!! ILL PAY FOUR THE GAS THANK YOU! I DON"T CARE WHAT THE SOCIALISTS IN EUROPE THINK ABOUT IT!!!!!! ). I'm sick of those spoiled brats from the land of hybrid cars and married queers telling me what to drive!!!!
The Affirmative Action crowd made their point clear: "The reason for all of this trouble was the fact that these run-down areas are occupied by African-Americans who are never offered the same opportunities as the Caucasian Americans. And it's all the conservatives' fault!!! Bush/Cheney never did ANYTHING to fix this!!!"
The White Supremacy crowd then stated: "The reason is the White Flight - the liberal mayor moved all of these (insert favorite racial slur here) into the city when white people did not want to live near them."
The American workers made their point: "These damn loonies are trying to control our lives. They are destroying the free market and sending jobs over seas with all these free trade treaties!"
The land of the free... Free also happens to be the most abused and misinterpreted word in our society.
We blame the Democrats, Republicans, capitalists, socialists, Muslims, Christians, Jews, blacks, Asians, anarchists, atheists, whites, Hispanics, non-heterosexuals, heterosexuals, industrialists, and environmentalists for each and every problem. Everyone is locked into their own ideology despite the fact that one single ideology will never produce a desirable end product for society.
Is it still Capitalism when Walmart is the only game in town? Is it still personal care when we institute a federal (versus state or local) approach to social programs? Is it religious freedom when one single set of religious principles determines who may love and marry one another? Is it good ecological practice to dump usable resources into a big hole in the ground simply because it costs less money? Can racism go both ways? In a society where the majority of the population is addicted to caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, or some crazy anti-psychotic which can be synthesized only in the presence of a platinum catalyst at 100 atmospheres pressure and 200 degrees temperature, is it sensible to leave one of the largest potential sources of government revenue and jobs (cannabis production) in the criminal underground on account of "it is a DRUG"? Is your neighbors' "right" to drive big diesel trucks with smokestacks belching black smoke for show justified when they begin affecting your health and dirtying up your house?
In order to actually get something done, we will have to begin making compromises and realizing that there is no such thing as a perfect system; the most perfect the system can be is when it includes elements from all of the other systems. We will have to do what is RIGHT rather than what makes the most money, what scores the most brownie points, or what our conscience/personal impulse may tell us. It will be a wonderful day when legislation is considered based upon the weight of its potential benefits and downsides for society rather than the letters "D" and "R".
Solar Thermal should take priority
With all of the interest in renewable energy in the United States, there seems to be a serious misalignment of priority.
Everyone seems to be buzzing about photovoltaic (PV) panels (which convert sunlight directly into electricity). Meanwhile, we have millions of electric water heaters all around the country which are guzzling up valuable kilowatt-hours in the name of heating water to coffeepot temperatures, and millions of homes with electrical resistance heating which convert the most versatile form of energy known to man into incredibly useless 72°F space heat. Energy may not be created or destroyed, but it surely loses quality. Try running your new ultra-fast quad-core PC on 72 degree space heat. Oh, yeah, the exhaust coming out the back of the PC is hotter than 72 degrees - if only we could violate the second law of thermodynamics...
My point is that we are concentrating far too much on creating electricity from the sun's dilute light and heat while at the same time we are turning electricity into dilute light and heat. Photovolatics are expensive. Solar thermal collectors (which skip the electricity step and directly utilize solar heat) are cheap. Why the focus on PV? If you have to power a plasma TV or computer, then PV is necessary. If you only need to heat water, cheaper and more efficient options are available.
A few steps to boost renewables and reduce coal:
- Stop burning natural gas solely for heat.
- Stop using electricity for low-grade space/water heating.
- Burn natural gas in cogeneration units. Get the electricity from it, then take off the waste heat.
- Use Solar energy to meet heating and lighting needs before venturing into producing electricity.
When you install a new fancy-schmancy $30,000 photovolatic array on your roof with feed-in back to the grid it is somewhat discouraging to know that all of the electricity created by your system will be guzzled by your neighbors' electric water heaters so that they can stand in the shower for two hours.
There is also much desire to reduce the use of natural gas for electricity generation. Instead, what should be reduced is the use of natural gas solely for heating. Unlike sunlight, natural gas burns at a high temperature and allows for the efficient production of electricity (combined gas-steam cycle generators approach 60% heat-to-electricity efficiency). The waste heat of natural gas power plants can also be utilized for heating, and the low emissions and small footprint of gas-fired generation equipment makes possible placement in urban areas where this waste heat can be actually utilized. By using solar for heating, gas can be directed into power plants (and possibly vehicles) where its high level of exergy can be utilized. The smaller capital cost of gas-fired generation coupled with greater thermal and electrical efficiency and utilization of the waste heat would mean that even economically coal units could be shut down.