asking Al Gore to run in 2008!
Why would anyone endorse more oil rigs off the Florida coast?
Posted June 17th, 2008 by seafoxfp
I watched Senator McCain run his push for more State run offshore oil drilling and then I watched Governor Crist the very next day agree with his fellow Republican. For years Floridians have fought endlessly to keep drilliers off our shores and then it ends up as a solution to our fuel problems? Our fuel prices are up because our dollar has plumeted in value because of the war and our foreign debt. It would take more then a year to pass the legislation and then contractor bidding and protesting before we see any oil from these contracted companies. We need relief right now.
I emailed Governor Crist and told him that we need State insentives and tax breaks for solar panels, solar heaters, windmill generators and engine updates to run off less fuel or even conversion kits to use water for fuel. The Wenkel was used all over Tennessee and it just took a crank to get that engine to run and it would power the whole house all night. The guy that invented the technology did so two hundred years ago and I tell you old tech beats walking anyday.
We need incentives that will reduce the cost to install and update to cleaner technologies. I heard a contractor say in would take $250,000 to install a roof mounted solar panel system; who is that guy kidding. That is the tech we need, but the prices are rediculous. Florida needs to support a green program now instead of pushing Bush's old retoric. Sorry, I didn't like Bush very much.
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The Real Reason Fuel Prices Are Up
When I was in college, 25 years ago, the professors predicted that there was going to be a severe energy shortage. This fact was obvious to them, even then, due to their study and projections of world overpopulation,(which was and is still occurring). Our fuel prices are up now because so many other countries are expanding their manufacturing. (If you doubt that, look at all the things that China used to make by hand but now makes by machine.) Anyone who has ever studied economics knows about the law of supply and demand. High demand with low supply equals high price. THAT IS WHY fuel costs are up and will CONTINUE TO GO UP until we become self sufficient using a number of factors.
According to these same professors, solar and wind alone WILL NOT BE ENOUGH, all directions need to be maximized. We need not just solar and wind with engine updates we need to update and maximize our drilling efforts to keep us afloat while we develop new energy saving technology. The rest of the world is 50 years behind us and will not give up their expansion until they catch up with us. If we can keep our economy afloat,(drilling will cool the speculators who are also driving up the prices of oil), while developing new our new technology we will be able to lead the way for the rest of the world with innovative energy saving technology as they start to run out of oil.
The big thing right now though is to drill, thus cooling the speculators, reduce the size of the government, thus allowing a reduction of the state and federal taxes on each gallon of gasoline, stop giving federal incentives to oil companies, (price of a barrell of gas is incentive enough), and give incentives to those developing new energy saving technology.
It's not speculation
You are right, it is demand that is responsible for the high prices right now. The oil companies are sitting on God-knows-how-many acres that they're not drilling, because they WANT to keep supply down. Any "ban" on offshore drilling is having NO effect on prices. Nobody's built a refinery in years, because they WANT to keep supply down and prices high.
It is too late for drilling. It would take years for that to contribute a fairly insignificant amount of new oil to the global supply. The new supply would be sold to the highest bidder globally and not sold cheaply in the US. And it would do nothing to help avoid the environmental crisis that we now face.
Solar and wind may not be enough, but we need to adopt them with the fervor that is appropriate for the magnitude of this crisis. Let's stop looking for easy and ineffective answers like drilling, and get to work on real solutions. For one thing, we need to have the alternative energy tax incentives renewed.
It's the GOP that's standing in the way of that, and it's the GOP that is responsible for the supply-side problem we faced now. They dismantled Carter's laws and allowed the mega-mergers of oil companies to the point where ExxonMobilShellChevronTexacoGulfWhatever have more control over our government than we the citizens of this once-great nation.
Mc Flipper: The $300 million is the Answer
A Prize for McCain
A meaningful alternative to special-interest subsidies.
By Jonathan H. Adler
Speaking Monday at Fresno State University in California, Sen. John McCain put forward what may be the most promising and important energy-policy proposal of the campaign: a $300 million prize for the development of advanced battery technology. “In the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure,” he noted. Yet rather than have Washington pick winners and losers from within the energy industry, McCain suggested that the government should reward innovation and actual achievement. “From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.”
As outlined by McCain, the prize would be paid the first innovator to develop a battery technology that “leapfrogs” existing electric car and plug-in hybrid technology, in terms of size, capacity, power, and cost. The aim is a battery technology that capable of powering motor vehicles at 30 percent of current costs. This would be a significant technical breakthrough, greatly enhancing the ability of battery-powered vehicles to compete in the marketplace.
Government-sponsored prizes for innovation are based upon the same principle as the patent system: Encourage innovation by rewarding inventors and entrepreneurs with the promise of super-competitive returns. A patent provides such a reward by giving the innovator a temporary monopoly for his invention. A prize goes one step further by placing a bounty on a particular type of innovation, increasing incentives for potential investors.
Another virtue of government prizes is that tax-payer dollars only get spent if the prize goals are met. Traditional subsidies, on the other hand, are paid out up front. Doled out in accord with politically determined criteria, and often awarded to the most politically connected firms, traditional subsidies often fail to generate anything approaching a positive economic return.
Past and present experience shows that prizes are a powerful way to encourage investment in technological innovation. The British empire used prizes to spur innovation in navigation. While governments rarely use prizes anymore (because politicians prefer to give out goodies themselves), private foundations have gotten into the act. The X-Prize Foundation offered the “Ansari X-Prize,” a $10 million reward for the development of a reusable, manned spacecraft, which was awarded in 2004. The winning inventors fulfilled the X-Prize qualifications and proved spaceflight can be more economical than NASA. The $10 million prize also spurred an estimated $100 million in private research on spaceflight technologies. Just imagine how much private research a $300 million prize could unleash.
The proposal of prize for battery innovation is a welcome departure from the traditional stale roster of energy policy measures. Sen. Obama has proposed more aggressive regulatory measures on climate change, but he’s also a big booster of corn-based ethanol. There is a consensus among energy and environmental experts against the broader use of corn-based ethanol, but Obama seems committed to it. The Illinois senator and his campaign have strong ties the corn-based ethanol lobby, as reported in the New York Times. Subsidizing the fuel “ultimately helps our national security,” Obama implausibly claimed in a recent speech. McCain, in contrast, has criticized ethanol subsidies and tariffs on ethanol imports.
While McCain’s prize proposal and hostility to corn-based is important, his energy policy is hardly perfect. In addition to the inconsistencies I noted last week, McCain is urging stricter enforcement of federal automobile fuel-economy standards and continued (albeit less corn-friendly) subsidies for alcohol-based fuels. He lambastes existing subsidies and tax credits as “the handiwork of lobbyists,” but is proposing a new “zero-emission” vehicle tax credit of its own. Despite these flaws, the Arizona senator deserves credit for embracing an energy prize. Promising a direct reward for innovation is the most innovative energy idea to come from a politician in quite some time.
Here is a link to my blog called, "The Politico Insider."
http://thepoliticolinsider.blogspot.com/
I see it is as the typical conservative scheme
He wants to give lip service to his conservative base. They are motivated by a scam that gives power to States that will not do anything to open up more drilling.
A con artist would admire McCain's scam.
Crist is kissing up
He wants to be the Old Man's running mate.
Pandering to the masses
The Repugs think Americans are stupid. The oil companies have lots of leases already that they're not drilling on. Why? Because it is expensive and risky to do exploratory offshore drilling. It would take years to bring this oil to market, it would be expensive oil, and there would not be enough of it to impact the supply/demand imbalance.
And, even if they could somehow extract and deliver this oil quickly and cheaply, there is one problem -- it is still OIL, and burning oil harms the planet.
McCain USED to be opposed to drilling. Schwarzenegger still is.
Endorse This Instead
Instead of offshore drilling, we should be promoting vision like this:
http://challenge.bfi.org/prize/winner_2008.php
Read the "A Tale of the Future (Vision Statement)", it is beautiful and inspiring.