I'm not saying any of that is wrong, but it's not really a reason NOT to allow drilling or at lesat leave it up to states.
You act as though allowing drilling will make the govt/companies not be able to invest in wind power.
If companies can drill and make a profit, its not like it costs the government anything. In fact it will produce more tax revenue which can go towards supporting renewable energy in its infancy, as happens now.
If, as you say, it wont decrease oil prices, then its not like drilling here will make more demand and lessen our drive towards renewable energy. It wont lower prices and make it harder for renewables to compete.
So you have lots of arguments of why drilling wont help the price of gas/oil. But what are the arguments for why to not at least allow states to choose to drill?
Are you just concerned about environmental damage?
As i said, i could giev a fuck about the alaska drilling. I just dont think we need to invest any government money into that. It's a waste of investment. I am definitely against expanding off-shore drilling in the gulf.
I just find it all entirely pointless and not worthy of our attention. At best, we toss in a small amount of oil into a quickly shrinking finite global supply.
We have the capability of dramatically improving our energy situation if we got serious about it.
One example.
The majority of our gasoline consumption is by industrial vehicles, and they are almost entirely running diesel. Switching from traditional trucks to hybrid trucks would save perhaps 30% a year in energy costs for these companies. 30% is no joke, albeit it's still relying on oil long-term.
Why not give them major tax breaks to switch?
Mack and others have the engines already. It's all there. I suspect it's a question of capital and perhaps some minor infrastructure hurdles. SMALL POTATOES for america if we got serious.
We could implement massive matching-fund programs for municipalities and states that want to experiment with large scale wind energy.
USA is the world's leading wind energy producer. Did you know?
We just knock Germany off their pedastal and we could go soooo much farther with what we've learned in recent years. Wind is only about 1.2% of our total power and we could try to invest at the federal level and aim for like 10-15% in the next 10 years. Small potatoes for such a large nation with so much strong wind available. Denmark is at 20%.
Solar energy is also maturing very quickly, and there's no reason for the USA not to be the leader in this technology.
We need to not only be in this in terms of our own national security, energy and stuff... but we need to be in this as a business sector, to lead it and export our technologies.
19% of our energy is from old nuclear plants. We need to update them and to build new ones. There's no reason we cant be looking at larger and larger amounts of non-fossil fuel energy in the USA within 15-20 years. Even worrying about offshore drilling and all that crap is a distraction.
