Kristi Noem, Michele Bachmann, and other Republicans are revving up the new version of "Drill Baby Drill!", their unsafe and un-Christian (think stewardship) call to dig up and burn all the fossil fuels we can as fast as we can. Never mind that future generations might not perfect fusion reactors as fast as we hope and thus might still need some oil and coal reserves; Pat Protrollo has SUVs to sell!
Kristi Noem thinks that the only reason we're paying higher prices for oil and gasoline is those darned Democrats won't let her friends in the oil industry Swiss-cheese North America with oil wells. Never mind that U.S. field production of oil increased under the Obama Administration in 2009 and 2010. Never mind that we already have more oil than we can refine at Cushing, Oklahoma, and that TransCanada CEO Russ Girling himself is selling his Keystone XL pipeline as a way to clear that glut and raise oil prices.
Never mind that more oil drilling and piping means more oil spills, more polluted rivers, more sick farmers, and more underestimation of risk from TransCanada and other oil companies.
Never mind that we Americans could reduce our per capita energy usage by 40% and still live as well as the French and Germans. Noem and Bachmann want more, more, more, and they want it now!
Even the leading ladies of the Republican Party are enslaved to the patriarchal "rape the earth" mindset. Drill those holes, blast those mountaintops, and don't think about tomorrow! Women are supposed to be more mature than men, but Noem and Bachmann sound more like teenage boys with hot cars and hot dates.
Unless you want to continue having a recession and us further dependent on radical terror sponsoring nations for energy, what do you propose we do?
Ethanol, nuclear, coal? Everything else is so expensive American competitiveness will decline, worsening unemployment, making deficits worse, and ultimately leading to default.
The alternative option of conservation was clearly stated in Cory's post. Next red herring, please.
Conservation is good and insignificant as an alternative unless again you like poor people being unemployed. Maybe you do, I guess.
Crew cab duallys for Christ!! http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_80af2232-a927-11e0-9a5e-001cc4c002e0.html
Open letter to Governor Brian Schweitzer.
Conservation = unemployment? So during WWII, when every valuable commodity was conserved and recycled for the war effort, everyone was therefore unemployed?
Now if you want to argue that conservatism = unemployment, I'll go along with that.
Whoever comes up with truly green technology - relatively cheap, relatively accessible, and renewable - will make a fortune selling it world wide. A "Manhattan project" for green renewable technology would increase jobs and revenue in the long run - and that long run will come sooner than you think, because fossil fuels will run out. They are not renewable. Not to mention that we wouldn't be in this mess in the Middle East in the first place if it weren't for the oil. Gutting our reserves, taking every drop of oil and coal out of our earth NOW might appear to be cheap, but it is very expensive and very stupid in the long run - because when the resources are gone, without alternatives, there will be a national catastrophe, if not a global one. And conservation is not stupid - true recycling would also increase jobs - it's just that here in America, we've been led to believe for years that we can consume, consume, consume: and there will always be more. For us.
Holy cow, Troy! Look at that graph from Google on per capita energy usage in America. Since our peak per capita usage in 1978, we've done more with less. That conservation and efficiency is why we haven't needed a new refinery since the 1970s. Did that conservation cause a 30-year rut in the American recession? Is that why the middle class is crumbling and wages have stagnated?
Come on, Troy, conservatives should love conservation.
I do love conservation. I'm just saying for it to be significant enough to make up for other energy needs will cause a economic challenges.
Well, we can rise to the economic challenge of building thousands of miles of pipeline, which I've heard compared to building the Pyramids. Why not rise to the challenge of switching off the TV set-top boxes that burn six coal plants' worth of electricity just when they're idling? Six coal plants: that sounds significant to me.
If you have never done any of the Moon Walks, you're missing one of the best conservation events scheduled in the summer Hills (and a great place to meet Democrats).
(wish the FS could arrange some buses, though; maybe the PenDems will think of it)
CAH-
Europeans use less power because they don't live an equivalent lifestyle:
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/what_makes_europe_greener_than_the_us/2193/
Saying that we could just "conserve" to reach power use parity is disingenuous. Reaching European levels would require a radical restructure of almost all American lives.
For example, your choice of home location would permanently limit you from reaching European consumption levels.
Well, then perhaps restructure we ought. Maybe our lifestyle (and even all this high life at the lake) simply aren't sustainable long term?
Cory - bingo. At 5% of the world's population, we Americans consume 25% of the world's energy; Western Europe and America account for 60% of the world's spending; and we produce 75% of the world's hazardous waste (much of which we export). The only way we can continue to consume at our current, carefree level is if everyone else stays poor. But China certainly isn't planning to. Nor is India. Nor other countries. And as they rise, we are going to either have to figure out how to live less wastefully, or get ready to fight the world - forever.
I'm not arguing that we should dramatically restructure our lives to conserve power. That would be pointless and counter productive. We aren't limited by our capacity to generate power. My argument is that looking at Europe as a goal for per person power consumption is pointless because they live such different lives than us.
We could take your idea here to its logical end and just say that everyone shouldn't use any power. That is the best, right? Quality of life is horrible, but we're conserving power.
There are many reason to not use fossil fuels, but an arbitrary power consumption metric certainly isn't one of them.
Maybe we should all go back to horse and buggy days, milk our own cow, can all our own home-grown food, and grow enough grains to feed our cow and horses. Sorry, that "horse" has left the barn and it ain't going back!
Yes, fossil fuels might be finite, but there is still a huge supply. And yes, green energy might one day be the answer, but it isn't now. So why do the libs want to put the horse (green) before the cart (fossil fuels). Right now, like it or not, the world is dependent on fossil fuels and it is incomprehensible that we are not making use of our own resources, while at the same time developing other technologies. They can be done together. It doesn't have to be one or the other immediately.
Conservation is good too, and I believe most people are more conscientious about that. I say most because we only have to look as far as Al Gore to see that the loudest screamers for conservation and green to save the planet from climate change etc are the ones who are the biggest hypocrites as they live in huge mansions, fly private jets, etc, thinking by buying carbon credits it makes it OK.
We should be becoming self-sufficient by developing our own resources, thus freeing us from losing dollars to oil countries that don't like us, from as some believe starting wars over oil, etc.
Folks like Bachmann make life worse for Noem and Boehner than for any liberal or democrat.
That's why I've never understood why Democrats try to defeat her in the House.
Linda is right: South Dakota will be last again: http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/06/30/30climatewire-california-delays-cap-and-trade-auctions-cit-96440.html
If you built a chemical toilet, expect somebody like Syngenta and Hyperion to use it.
Tony, I agree that we shouldn't aim at some arbitrary energy usage number. The Europeans don't. I'm also not holding up conservation as an ultimate principle to be carried to an extreme of zero-energy usage. I'm saying (and so is Eve) that millions of fellow humans manage to live really well yet use much less energy than we do. It just makes sense there's something there for us to learn (and something we'd better hope those millions of Chinese (current per capita energy consumption: 23% of US level) and Indians (8% US) learn.
And Linda, the Europeans haven't gone back to horse-and-buggy days. Check Tony's article: it refers to cultural differences. Europeans make more use of mass transit. They have more energy-efficient housing. Many of them use smaller cars. They generate put far less packaging on their consumer goods and generate far less trash. They have (according to Tony's author) a heightened sense of the social contract and the impact of their actions on other people and the planet. We can debate just how much worse any of those conditions makes their lives compared to ours. But their energy-efficiency, whatever the practical and cultural roots, makes us look like selfish children who want everything we want right now, regardless of how that may impact our environment or deprive future generations of similar opportunities.
New Yorker profile of professional politician Bachmann: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all