"Drill, Baby, Drill"
While I am upset that gas prices are going up, the fact that we have not learned our lesson and haven't started taking a preventative approach to the oil issue is rather discouraging. We use one quarter of the worlds oil while we only own two percent of its reserves and only account for 4.5% of the worlds population. Therefore drilling itself will not ensure any sort of energy independence.
Last Thursday the House passed the first of three bills which will ask the Interior Department to accelerate drilling permits without proper environmental reviews. One of the bills that passed is called the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act.The bills, which are expected to clear the House but not the Democratically controlled Senate, would expand drilling to offshore Virginia and require the Interior Department to act within 60 days on permits for companies searching for oil offshore. After BP did we not learn anything, these bills are reinstating the leases and opening up protected coastal waters. Have we already forgotten the event that released 5 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico, did we forget that we released 53,000 barrels a day for more than three months? The Energy Information Agency projected that there would be no price impact whatsoever. Thus, focusing on energy efficiency should be a top priority.
Senator Max Baucus in Montana is looking to draft a bill that would repeal the $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies to the oil industry and use the proceeds to develop efficient cars etc. Oil companies have money and they should be the ones paying out of pocket. Ending tax incentives for the five largest oil and gas companies that announced the billions of dollars that they had made in profits is necessary. Last week, Exxon Mobil reported profits of nearly $11 billion in the first three months of the year, a 69 percent increase over last year. Meanwhile, Shell reported profits of $7 billion, ConocoPhillips reported profits of $3 billion, Chevron reported $6.2 billion and BP reported $5.5 billion.
The BP crisis was supposed to be a wake up call. The attitude among Americans is not helping either. We need to start thinking for the long term rather than complaining about the 4$ at the gas pump. Right now we are on a one way track to a larger economic recession. In a time of desperate need for jobs, why are we not focusing on energy efficiency. Republicans are trying increasingly hard to ease the pain at the pump while accusing Democrats of wanting to be hooked on foreign oil. They continue to use the argument about the cost of gas to get legislation passed. More drilling domestically does not mean lower gas prices, it just means more profits for Big Oil. Many experts say that legislation will not reduce the price at the pump.
Oil is traded on a world market, and the United States does not have enough petroleum to increase the global supply, which would reduce demand and thus the price for fuel.What comes out of the outer continental shelf is about 1 percent of the world total, and that's not enough to affect world prices. The oil and gas industry has actually given $8.8 million to the campaigns to the drilling bill's lead sponsors. This is not a fair system, the American government is only further proving that it choses big money over national priorities.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/opinion/07sat1.html?ref=politics
6 comments:
Americans tend to look out only for their immediate wellbeing. The spoiled, materialistic attitude of Americans does not reflect to extreme economic suffering as a whole, but only a small taste of future economic trouble that has people crying about not being able to afford luxuries. American attitude is worse than the tight spot we are in.
I don't feel like we will be able to change the minds of the american people because giving anything up in their daily lives means a step backward on the prestige scale for them. I say let gas hit $12 dollars a gallon, let the oil companies make their money off of the laziness of americans. The only thing that even makes it on the radar for most americans is an issue that hits them in the wallet. I say jack up the price of gas and then we will finally get somewhere on money being allocated for research and development of more efficient cars and alternative energy. We are a smart society when our beloved money is at stake. Hopefully in the future large groups of people will realize that you can't take the money with you when you die. I don't see that anytime soon.
I agree, Americans need to start thinking in long term when it comes to fossil fuels. American's also tend to just want to forget things; for instance BP. American's need to change to fuel efficient cars, this pieces of legislation are not helping promote this idea.
I actually watched this debate on CSPAN and was mortified when some Republican House members got up to promote these subsidies. The only thing that the Democrats could do was have Representatives from Texas and Louisiana get up to defend their economies which had been devastated by BP. One Rep. from TX (D) just got up and said...Have we completely forgotten about the devastation that was the BP Oil Spill? What is wrong with you people? I also agree to what Scott said...let oil hit a ridiculous amount and see how much people really are willing to pay for gas. Its outrageous.
I agree with Scott, in that the only way to force people to recognize there needs to be a change is to "hit them in the wallet." People need to be shocked into doing something different, and telling them that it's good and they should do it is not going to create a change in their daily routine or their method of thinking. To create a positive outcome, you have to create a negative reason that people will stray away from the original one.
I agree with this post. People somehow forgot about the BP disaster and are only concerned with getting off of using "foreign oil". People think that by drilling our own oil all of our problems will be solved and we will be a wealthy country again...trickle down economics will work! But our US oil wont have a large impact on the price of oil and it wont completely sustain our national need for oil. We are single handedly ruining our country, our political system and our environment with this crazy idea of Drill, Baby, Drill.
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