People are actually wearing these t-shirts
OK, I don’t like Obama’s proposal to open up vast areas of the Atlantic coast, Gulf of Mexico and Alaskan coast for offshore drilling. There isn’t much oil and gas there–not enough to feed our oil-thirst for more than a few years at best–and many of these areas are already completely despoiled and need to be protected, not ravaged once again. Oil and gas companies will certainly be happy to bid on the new blocks, nevertheless. All the infrastructure to siphon oil and gas out of these tiny little fields is already in place, so their costs will be low despite the paltry return. (They also won’t have to pay for protection as they do in Nigeria and Iraq etc etc.) So long as prices stay high, they’ll be able to make a tidy profit.
But I don’t think it is fair to call Obama’s plan the same as Bush/Cheney/Palin’s. Bush, Cheney and Palin claimed that offshore drilling was sufficient to solve our energy crisis altogether. That’s not what I hear Obama saying about this plan. This is about the government making some money by selling these leases–and we should watch carefully to see where that money goes–to ease the necessary transition away from oil and gas. Very different. Bush saw offshore drilling as a cure, which was dishonest and unfair. For Obama, it’s a band-aid.
Offshore drilling is not going to make oil cheap and it’s not going to allow Americans to continue wantonly burning crude. It isn’t going to liberate us from foreign oil, either. It’s a drop in the bucket. We’ll still need to do all the hard work of transitioning away from hydrocarbons. Obama seems to understand this. And that’s crucial.
I know it will never make the mainstream media, but I think Obama is trying to convince himself and perhaps a few other people that this move might slow down peak oil a couple of years.
Gas is already back to 3 bucks and I personally am betting it makes it to 5 bucks a gallon within 5 years, unless of course the USA drops into another recession and takes the world with it like 2008.
Why NO ONE will *man-up* and admit we have *too-many-people* is I think the true indicator of the sorry state of our society.
The Club of Rome knew this was a problem in 1973. However the USA choose to ingore that warning, and Jimmy Carter’s warning, and the Union of Concerned Scientists’ warning and Paul Erlick’s warning etc. etc.
It’s past time to stop using foreign oil! Maybe we will always need some oil, but we just have to stop depending on Middle East oil. There are 3 fairly easy things that all of us can do now to make a difference. 1- Stop pumping gas into your car! If you have a gas guzzler now, convert it into an electric car (see this blueprint for example). No more gas! 2- Stop using electricity off the electric grid! Either build solar panels (like this one), or build a cheap magnetic generator (like this one). Not very hard! 3- Learn to bike or walk! If you are only going a mile to the shop, walk or bike there. My 2 cents.