As usual Samuelson does not think beyond the box.
Obama is right. Off-shore drilling will not solve our problem. According to Newsweek???s own fact checkers it will take about 22 years for any one obtained from off-shore drilling to reach the market.
In addition, off-shore drilling contains risks that no one, especially Samuelson has ever imagined. First, it will pollute the ocean. The ocean is a source of food for millions of people. We may need to turn to the ocean at last as a source for ???gray??? water. If permit we turn the ocean into a toilet bowl of toxic wastes, we are, in effect, poisoning our own children???s futures.
Furthermore, drilling platforms, especially int in the Gulf of Mexico, are subject to hurricane damage. As the globe warms, the number of hurricanes and their severity is increasing. The oil industry still hasn???t fully recovered from the damage of Hurricane Katrina. Furthermore off-shore drilling rigs are inviting targets for pirates and terrorists. And piracy is already alive and well. Because oil companies love to recruit cheap off-shore labor from contracting companies in Asia, the chance of pirates and terrorists infiltrating our oil platfomrs ie excellent
Finally, as Air America talk show host Rachel Maddow observed, the oil from off-shore drilling does not belong to the U.S. It belongs to the oil companies that own the rigs. They may decide to pocket the generous subsidies that John McCain is proposing to give them, but sell the oil somewhere else. Also, there is no guarantee that American oil companies will remain American. They may follow the lead of that All-American Halliburton, once chaired by that all- American hero Dick Cheney, and re-locate to Dubai. They may even go to Moscow, the new mecca for multi-billionaires, provided the Russian government, also dominated by multi-billionaries provided them a ???deal??? they can???t refuse.
The rich do not owe any allegiance to America. They only thing they owe allegiance to is their own money.
Although Obama has moved towards ???limited??? off-shore drilling, he???s more than right when he points out the short-comings of off-shore drilling than either McCain or Samuelson
These are only some of the facts that Samuelson ignores. He ought to read his own magazine Newsweek, more carefully. About two months ago, Fahreed Zakaria interviewed genome pineer Craig Venter, who asserts that we can produce a fuel from bacteria. Samuelson ought to read the October 2007 issue of National Geographic which examines all the possible biofuels. Algae, produced from the exhausts of coal-burning power plants offers a lot of possibilities. There???s also a massive field of algae off the coast of Oregon, created by global warming, which is destroying Oregon???s fishing industry. That field could be our Saudi Arabia and Iraq if we had the right ledership.
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The Great Energy Confusion
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To be sure, some contrasts are glaring. McCain and most Republicans support more offshore oil and natural-gas drilling; most Democrats don't (Obama has said he might consider more offshore drilling). The Democrats are deservedly getting pounded on this. Of course, "we can't drill our way out of this problem." But if we don't increase drilling, import dependence will worsen, as production from mature fields ebbs. Since 1990, U.S. oil production has dropped 23 percent, while imports have gone from 42 percent to 58 percent of consumption. Greater exploration is common sense, as more Americans recognize. Support for more drilling jumped from 35 percent in February to 47 percent in June, reports the Pew Center. (Democrats' candor grade: F.)
Senator McCain proposes achieving "strategic independence" by 2025—a seductive but empty phrase. In 2025, oil would still represent a third or more of total energy use (it was two fifths in 2006), with more than half imported, projects the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Although these figures could change, dependence on foreign oil is unavoidable. The projection already assumes big gains in fuel efficiency (the average for new vehicles goes from 25 miles per gallon now to almost 37mpg). But the gains are diminished by a 25 percent increase in cars and light trucks, mainly reflecting population growth (up 17 percent from 2006). Even if oil imports came mostly from Canada and Mexico, hardly ensured, flows could still be affected by global disruptions (McCain candor grade: D).
It's easy to exaggerate how quickly new technologies can improve our situation. Obama says that we can have a million plug-in hybrids averaging 150 miles a gallon on the road within six years (plug-in hybrids run on electricity and gasoline). Sounds impressive. But that would be less than one half of 1 percent of all vehicles, and the forecast is probably a stretch. The battery technology required for plug-in hybrids is still not competitive, adding $7,000 to $10,000 per vehicle, says Brett Smith of the independent Center for Automotive Research. Obama would address this problem by providing a $7,000 tax credit (in effect: a rebate) on plug-in hybrids. For a million cars, that would be $7 billion. These subsidies might go mainly to upper-middle-class buyers, permitting them to flaunt their "green" credentials (Obama candor grade: C).
We are not powerless, and some policies would help more than others. A straight carbon tax, for instance, would be better than a complex cap-and-trade program. But with a growing population and the existing stock of vehicles and buildings, even good policies and technological breakthroughs will only gradually shift our energy consumption. In the government's projection, renewable energy (wind, solar, some biomass) grows seven times faster than average energy use; still, it's only 7 percent of total consumption by 2030. There is no energy paradise into which McCain, Obama or anyone else can lead us.
All this can be seen as the messy process by which democracies reach consensus. "Crises are the only times when we are capable of making difficult decisions," says former Democratic congressman Phil Sharp, who heads the think tank Resources for the Future. High pump prices, he says, "are drawing both parties toward the center": Republicans will be more open to regulation, Democrats to offshore drilling. The next president will find it easier to act. Maybe. But the preamble has involved so many exaggerations and simplicities that it's uncertain whether the ultimate response would make us better, or worse, off.
© 2008
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