Today President Bush gave a speech on the energy problems facing our country. He laid that blame on a paralyzed and incompetent congress. That's right where the blame belongs. Congress has been feckless and brainless my whole life. Rare are the congressmen and senators who actually stand for something - Duncan Hunter, J. C. Watts, John Kaisach, Bob Dornen, Spencer Abraham and few others. Even Newt Gingritch fell into the standard political traps when he was Speaker of the House.
Bush advocated deregulating the oil industry so that they can open new oil fields and build new refineries. He especially brought up opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). He noted that opposition to drilling in ANWR is now considered a litmus test for environmental orthodoxy.
I would go further. I would say that opposition to new drilling in our current context is unpatriotic. Buying oil overseas has become a national security issue. We are actually funding our own enemies. Further, the price of imported oil fluctuates with the value of the dollar. Biofuels, as they exist today are no answer at all. It places energy and food into competition with each other. Plus, biofuels are generally simply energy conversions. So you have to have another source of energy to make biofuels. I would advocate an all out energy offensive. New drilling anywhere there may be oil including under the ocean and the great lakes. We need new refineries. We should locate all the contaminated industrial sites and let them be developed as refineries. (We sure don't want to put sub-divisions on those sites!) In addition we should build new hydro-electric dams, which, if engineered properly would create new recreational lakes and very valuable lake front property. We should replace all the existing aging nuclear power plants, plus build at least that many additional plants. We should also build new coal fired plants. Aren't those dirty? Not the newest ones. With filtration systems on the stacks, coal can be as clean as any other fuel. Following this plan, we could, in just a few years be energy independent. An energy independent U.S. is much more stable and secure, both economically and militarily.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I completely agree with you. I think God gave us Anwar and other such tundra places as gifts to use. Most enviromental wackos don't believe in a God that gave man dominion over the world. And to take care of it, too, of course. But what good are some of those places if we don't use them? To most enviromentalists man is the world's enemy. If only we hadn't somehow morphed out of the ape :-) The world would be so much better off, huh?
What is really interesting is that we have learned that oil wells, if managed properly, will rejuvinate themselves. As I understand it, if you pump a well dry, it's dead. It's never coming back. But if you just pump off the top, which is usually the "sweet" oil, then shut it down, it will in a certain amount of time refill to where it was when you started. It's just a matter of learning the specifics of each well. This is part of the reason why the Northern lower Michigan oil wells are now set up with a pumps that can be moved from well to well.
Post a Comment