George Will explains high gas prices
Columnist George Will has a good piece in the Washington Post about high gas prices and the current lack of domestic energy supply. He writes,
“One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there. One million barrels produce 27 million gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel. Seventy-two of today’s senators — including Schumer, of course, and 38 other Democrats, including Barack Obama, and 33 Republicans, including John McCain — have voted to keep ANWR’s estimated 10.4 billion barrels of oil off the market.”
Will goes on to point out who is drilling for resources off our coasts.
Drilling is underway 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are.
People can continue to complain about high gas prices, but they should realize that environmentalists and the loony left has been blocking efforts to explore for oil and gas in Alaska and off our coasts. Part of our current supply problem is due to the fact that for decades the left has refused to allow us to expand American energy supplies. Instead, they’ve forced us to get much of our energy from foreign sources. It’s time the American people sent a message to Congress that we should begin to drill now, so that we can produce more domestic energy in the future.
June 5th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
It really pisses me off, we have enough oil, right here in the USA and off of our coasts, to keep this nation well lubricated for the next 100 years at least, and if the brainiacs can’t come up with an alternative to oil by then, THEY have a problem…
June 9th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Drilling for more oil domestically is a very shortsided solution to our energy needs. We would blow through 10.4 billion barrels in no time and be back in the same situation. We need to put serious dollars into R&D for renewable energy, because the geographic infrastructure of America is based on the abundance of cheap oil. To clarify, regardless of what the gasoline costs I still have no viable alternative way to travel to work and my internship. Gas could cost $10 a gallon and I would still have no choice but to fill up. I would rather have a pristine ANWR than drill for oil that will last 6 months and drop prices at the pump by 20 cents a gallon.
June 9th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Even if we put billions of dollars into renewable energy, we wouldn’t be able to meet our growing demand with renewables alone. We do need to increase the supply by drilling, building more refineries and building nuclear power plants.
Private sector research and development of solar, wind and biofuels is fine, but government subsidies and mandates doesn’t make any sense. For the last few decades the left has blocked efforts to increase our domestic supply. The political pressure is finally building to expand the supply.
http://www.gaspriceprotest.com
June 9th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I think it is in our interest to subsidize renewable energy research and development if we hope to sustain something approaching the current American lifestyle.
Oil is going to get more and more scarce, and thus more and more expensive. If Americans can’t afford to buy cheap goods from China because they are spending more and more income on gasoline the economy will teeter.
It will be difficult to maintain the suburban lifestyle under this new economic order and quality of living will decrease as oil prices increase, eroding the middle class and crushing the poor.
American infrastructure will not be able to adapt quickly enough to higher energy costs, as previously stated. So the danger is not just that gas/transportation/freight costs will continue to rise, but that our infrastructure is not designed for $4 gas.
We must find new alternative fuels and utilize a broad array of current methods in order to solve this problem. Domestic production increases are not the permanent solution we need.