[Rhodes22-list] McCain Seeks to End Offshore Drilling Ban (political)

[Brad Haslett]

Mike,

We have an energy policy now? All this time I thought it was "let's hope
this changes".

Let's do a quick review.  Nixon reacted to the 1973 embargo by fixing
prices.  That really worked, we got long lines at the gas station. He
developed other "issues" and Ford took over. Ford supported increased
offshore drilling, expanded use of coal, more nukes, more refineries, and
synthetic fuel production - all ideas that got shot down in the Congress.
Carter pretty much said the same thing as Ford but added solar panels to the
White House (they're now at the Carter library) and told everyone to wear
sweaters. Reagan pretty much ignored energy except for de-regulating the
natural gas industry.  Bush 41 suggested opening up ANWR, ease regulations
on nukes, promote renewables, and build more gas pipelines. Clinton said we
could be energy independent without nukes or ANWR through natural gas. The
price of natural gas skyrocketed, but otherwise Clinton ignored the issue
but for taking 1.7 million acres of coal off the market in Utah. Bush 43
fell prostrate before the Corn God (ethanol) and jaw-boned a line of
thinking along the lines of Ford and his father, but in the long,  did
pretty much the same as his predecessors in the previous 40 years, nothing.

Now let's take a look at the future.  Suppose some of the more inarticulate
members of Congress get their way. Congressman Maxine Waters (D-CA) wants to
nationalize the US oil companies (actually she started to use the word
"socialize" a few weeks ago, couldn't think of the right word, then said
"we'll take over and run your company")  So you're a US oil company exec
being forced to listen to this idiot in a sub-committee hearing and you're
thinking, "great, we can't drill here, we can't drill there, and they want
to seize our remaining reserves and sell them below market until the shelves
are bare". Oil from shale requires lots of energy (nukes), oil from coal
requires lots of energy (nukes), oil from tar sands requires lots of energy
(nukes), ethanol is a wash and an environmental disaster (plus it makes the
Cheerios expensive), so there you have it.  Our energy policy is to hope the
Middle East "plays nice" and change their backward ways on their own.

I have my own reservations about the ANWR reservation because we'll need
that oil at some point for defense.  I'm not worried about the 14 caribou
who might bitch about the 1/10 of 1 per cent of land they won't be able to
graze on and everyone who talks about the place being "pristine" has never
been there and will never go in their lifetime.  We didn't spill a single
drop of oil in the Gulf of Mexico during Katrina so drilling the East Coast,
West Coast, and off the Coast of Florida seems to make sense. Who knows, we
might find something big like Brazil recently did.  Of course, Brazil is
spending $30 Billion (with a B) on that project (that oil ain't exactly
cheap) and I'm thinking the average US oil exec is is wondering, "If I risk
$30 Billion on a project and it pays off, will these bastards seize my
'excess' profits?"

Here's the bottom line and it isn't pretty.  There's only so much oil in the
world and most of the cheap and easy stuff is in countries that don't like
us.  We'll never run out of oil (despite the  understood decline of known
reserves) but the stuff gets increasingly expensive to find and extract.
Most of the replacements for transportation fuels from coal, shale, tar
sands, etc. require lots of energy to produce (nukes) and have serious
environmental side effects.  Solar and wind have only a negligible effect on
the whole equation. Everyone wants a Manhattan type project for some
'mystery shit' type replacement, say hydrogen, which whatever the outcome,
probably will require vast amounts of energy (nukes) to transform another
form of energy into transport fuel.

Make me the President for one day and I'll solve this problem.  President
Haslett to the Nation: "Boys and Girls, you're in deep shit whether you know
it or not.  I'm going sailing tomorrow so I don't have a lot of time to
explain this to you.  We're going to pass out licenses to anyone who has the
money and the responsibility to build nuclear power plants, and if one ends
up in your backyard, tough.  We're drilling off of every US coast.  BTW, the
fishing is really good near the platforms.  Quit bitching about the price of
gasoline.  I'm passing a new tax law so the cheapest it will ever be is $3
per gallon and it will rise 10% per year for the next 40 years. When gas
gets to 6 bucks a gallon some kid will find a cheaper substitute tinkering
in his garage since that's how we got in this mess to start with.  If crude
oil gets really cheap and the federal government hauls in a butt-load of
money on the "differences tax", we'll retire the debt with it so don't get
all greedy about some new 'gubment' cheese program or anything like that.
There's still plenty of work to be done in this country and Lord knows you
folks are creative about finding ways to get other people to do it for you.
You people have had it too good for too long and if you don't like my
program you can kiss my ass and vote for hope and change, whatever that is".

Wanna be my campaign manager?

Brad



On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Michael D. Weisner <mweisner at ebsmed.com>
wrote:

> Here it comes Rhodies, the man just erased 8 years of energy position.
> Drill our way to a lower price for gas!  Oh, yes, build nukes, too.
>
> I guess the polls indicate that no one will get out to vote if the high
> cost
> to fill the tank renders the trip unnecessary!
>
> AAA has reported that people are running out of gas at increasing rates
> simply because they cannot afford to fill the tank and try to drive to and
> from work anyway.  They are recording the events since some people have
> been
> running out of gas regularly just for the free gallon of gas from AAA.
>
> McCain Seeks to End Offshore Drilling Ban
>
> http://tinyurl.com/3julmd
>
> or (the original)
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/16/AR2008061602731_pf.html
>
> Mike
> s/v Shanghai'd Summer ('81)
> Nissequogue River, NY
>
>
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