Meant to post this a couple of days ago when it happened, but I was just cleaning my desk, saw it again, and realized it was timeless.
State government employees were rioting in Srinigar, India (and you libertarians think our state employees are a lot of bother), demanding regularization of their jobs and a hike in their pay. Or something. You know how it is with foreigners, always rioting about something. But at least this time, you might be able to identify with them. Energy costs seem to have set them off.
Anyway, the police dispersed them with PURPLE WATER, shot from water cannon. Doesn’t it seem like a better place and time for something that psychedelic would have been Chicago in 1968? Everybody would have just stopped struggling and gone, Whoa…!
John Denver would also say–and truly mean,
‘Far Out’ !!!
There are riots going on in many of the Europeon countries as well. They are protesting the price of gas. Some stores do not have any food on the selves and gas stations do not have any gas in the tanks. There was a long story on Public Radio this morning.
When are the people of the USA going to follow the leader? I hope that it does not happen. The same thing can be accoumplished by not driving except the necessary trips.
The dumb____ in this country will not plan to open the oil fields and start planning ahead to end dependence on foreign oil. They want to turn food (corn) into gas for your tank (ethanol).
We better start the salvation of the people instead of the salvation of the snail darter etc. The people in Atlanta, Ga. worry about enough water to drink when the Corps of Engineers want to be sure that enough water stays in the rivers to supply the crustations etc that live in the water.
crustations? Is that like some kind of hippie?
We need to start drilling in Alaska. It goes against all that is sane not to.
We cannot become oil independent unless we make a massive effort to conserve. Drilling will do little. If ANWR oil was flowing today at it’s maximum flow rate, a rate that will only last 3-5 years, we’d still be importing 60% of our oil.
Here’s my solution:
Eliminate the import tarrif of Brazilian ethanol.
Impose a new tax incentive for car manufacturers to increase production of hybrid and eventually electric cars.
Increase tax incentives to increase wind and solar power installations.
Increase the gasoline tax to ensure gasoline is permanently @ $5/gallon and rising. (This is Brad’s idea and a good one).
Invest in algae fuel research.
Increase rail transport of goods. Perhaps we could find a way to electrify the rails.
Build nuclear power plants. This won’t help in the short run but is crucial for long term conversion to electric power for everything.
Increase public funding of public transportation. If it becomes both very expensive to drive and people have a public transportation option people will use it.
Notice I said nothing about drilling in the ANWR or in the continental shelf. It won’t help get us off our oil addiction and I find this to be a misguided solution that just misleads the public into thinking they can continue to drive huge vehicles. Given that the oil industry has thousands of unused drilling permits I’m not sure what the fuss is all about. They’re certainly not going to drill 50 miles off shore in the Atlantic any time soon.
Bud — You wouldn’t believe the roadblock the governor of Alaska is hitting — trying to get “approval” to tap OUR OWN country’s oil. It is outrageous. At some point, the economy of all-that-is-sane will have to override the economy of the wood-ducks-n-polar-bears.
We may soon find ourselves fighting over oil like the settlers in this country fought over water.
PS
Maybe that is why we are in Iraq after all. It was not about WMD it was about oil. We have boots on the ground. I vote for that.
Not either-or. AND.
Drill. Conserve. Refine. Mass transit. Nuclear power. Speed limits (REAL ones). Explore. Develop alternatives.
Only when we’re doing it ALL will we move appreciably in the right direction.
Energy Party!
Over here, “You know how it is with foreigners, always rioting about something.”
Over there, that danged nativist Bob Conley.
I just don’t know what to believe. Mr. Warthen is apparently two people, or he thinks certain forms of political incorrectness are incorrect only if someone else does them.
But one thing I do believe: Even if we do “eliminate the import tarrif of Brazilian ethanol” and “increase rail transport of goods,” I don’t see those things having much effect on riots in India.
And something else, too: I don’t want bud as energy czar, nor Mr. Warthen.
I guess the really good news for some is that CO2 emissions in the US will decline dramatically as automakers, and not just the big three, close manufacturing plants and shift production to Mexico and other locations where small cars can be made profitably in an era of $4-6 per gallon gas.
Chrysler’s dead, Ford is on life-support, and GM’s hope for salvation is the Volt. Yet GM may find itself in the position that Toyota is: Prius sales sank 40% in May . How did that happen? Toyota can’t get enough batteries. The dirty little secret of hybrids and electrics is that the batteries are both a boon and a headache, loaded with nasty toxic stuff, and while not really high-tech, do require care in manufacturing. (Google “Hummer is cleaner than Prius” for a bunch of links discussing the lifecycle environmental costs of the two vehicles.) Electrics and hybrids will remain an engineering challenge as R&D on batteries and fuel cells continues; Google “Tesla electric” to find out about its transmission challenge.
More details here.
I don’t much like Joe Wilson but his article in The State this morning wasn’t half bad. I would have liked to see something about wind and solar power and maybe a comment about the atrocious waste of resources devoted to driving monster SUVs. Still, he did have some good ideas. In particular he said (paraphrasing) “conservation should be the centerpiece of our energy future”. How true that is.
Overall sales in 2008 have slightly surpassed ’07 sales through May, with a total of 79,675 units moved this year compared to 76,747 last year
-an excerpt from Mike’s “Prius Sales are Down” article.
So there is a bit of trouble ramping up battery production. That just proves the point I’ve been trying to make. We need to invest MORE in this type of technology, not ignore it and hope we can drill our way out. The fact that batteries are scarce just proves that we’ve been on the wrong track. But we’re finally coming around. But if we start harping ad-naseum on all this “drill in the ANWR” nonsense any hope of progress will be thwarted.
The Bush Administration lies again. From the AP:
Cheney’s false comment on oil drilling attacked
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer
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China is NOT, repeat is NOT drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s time to put a stop to this lie.
I’m intrigued by bud’s statement:
Do we need a Manhattan / Apollo Project to do so? The fact is that lots of folks, Uncle Sam included, have been dumping tons of money into batteries and fuel cells of all sorts, but run into technological barriers.
If you sit down with a nice bottle of Chianti Classico or a twelve-pack of your favorite brew and cruise around, you’ll realize that both Manhattan and Apollo were remarkable accomplishments that poured too much money into driving existing technology to its limits. I’ll not argue that the Manhattan Engineer District and the creation of the Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford sites were a waste of time and effort, mainly because we were engaged in existential war and had to apply every resource to winning.
I will argue that the world economy today is large and powerful enough to do the same thing more efficiently for future power sources, and that the US is best suited to capitalize on the science that will get us out of the fine mess we’re in, provided that we don’t screw our economy up too badly.
And to avoid screwing things up too badly, we need to do a bunch of things at once, something that Vespucciland is eminently capable of doing. Drilling is but a part, because we’ve what’s called “legacy” concerns — a fleet of petroleum-fueled cars that folks rely on for personal and bidness transportation. I’m not going to be the guy to stand up in front of a crowd to announce that folks are going to have to cut back for about ten or twenty years while we straighten this out. I’ll leave that to bud and contribute to his memorial fund.
Manhattan / Apollo won’t work for batteries and fuel cells because most existing technologies are at the end of development and can’t get much better. Something totally new is required, and the Manhattan / Apollo model can’t produce such. My fervent hope is that some guy in some garage will come up with the solution that provides the key to cheap and efficient mobile power sources. My fear is that it will require polar bear livers and spotted own lungs…
Mike, you sure are gloomy about this. I’m confident that we can move from the petroleum based economy to one of renewables. Most of the technology is pretty mature right now. We just need a bit of a push. Wind energy, for example, is certainly mature enough to make a real difference. All the major bugs have already been worked out. And the problems with the lithium-ion batteries seem to be worked out as well. It will be very interesting to see how the Tesla performs in the real world. With a 200 mile range this could be a harbinger of great things to come. Of course the price needs to drop. For now the best course of action seems to be hybrid cars. They are somewhat expensive, yet not exhorbitantly so.
What we simply must get away from and fast are these huge truck-based SUVs that get 15 mpg or less. No one is suggesting that our “legacy” way of doing things is going away immediately. But we need to move pretty fast. Oil is running out. No amount of drilling is going to change that. Instead of 525,000 oil wells why not 525,000 wind turbines? It accomplishes the same thing and keeps the air clean at the same time. That’s a win-win for everyone.