October 03, 2005
The Bait And Switch Continues
Just as the Bush administration used 9/11 fears to whip up support for attacking Iraq, and the 2003 California wildfires as an excuse to cut down healthy forests far from populated areas (homeowners still suffer from massive wildfires every year), they’re now using gasoline price spikes caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to roll back regulations that keep our air clean and our country beautiful and livable.
Republicans want to open up, not just the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, but our beautiful coastlines to oil drilling. The new legislation would also "prevent local officials from having a say in refinery siting and would clear the way for the Bush administration to allow not only refineries, but also coal-burning power plants, to expand without having to install new air pollution controls."
Here's the big problem: None of these measures is going to solve our energy problems. They're not going to bring down the price of gas, and they're not going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The age of cheap gasoline is over, and opening up the ANWR -- the last large oil field in the US -- will only reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 4% about ten years after the start of drilling.
In the mean time, Americans have a lifestyle to maintain and we'll burn anything to keep our refrigerators and cars running as long as it's cheap. We will slide backwards to maintain our way of life -- rolling back all the gains we've made on clean air and clean water -- because it's the easy path. Every step will seem reasonable and justified, until one day we wake up to our kids hacking their lungs out and unable to find our coal-powered cars through the smog and we'll ask "How did it come to this?"
I'm not just throwing out a hypothetical slippery slope argument either. The retrograde move has already started. To bring down the price of gas, President Bush suspended gasoline regulations responsible for the clean air we enjoy today. Does anyone think Republicans will reinstate those clean air measures? And even if they wanted to, the public outcry against "raising" gasoline prices would make it politically difficult, if not impossible.
Becoming more reliant on oil is not the solution to our current and future energy needs. Rather than "temporarily" rolling back environmental regulations and subsidizing new refineries and drilling that won't make any significant difference, President Bush should wage a major two-pronged offensive to rapidly commercialize alternative energy sources and to make more efficient use of the energy we have.
Posted by American Pundit at October 3, 2005 11:18 AMAP,
Unfortunately, as the sheep bleet “two legs bad” and the dogs keep everyone in line, Napolean and his pigs continue to rape the farm. Can Snowball come and save us now that our windmill has fallen?
I wonder if George felt our nation would ever reflect his farm so well as it does now?
Posted by: Dave at October 3, 2005 12:17 PMPresident Bush should wage a major two-pronged offensive to rapidly commercialize alternative energy sources and to make more efficient use of the energy we have.
Unfortunatly, he seems incapable of doing this.
Promising americans will be back to the moon by 2018 seems more important for his agenda, I guess.
In the mean time, Americans have a lifestyle to maintain and we’ll burn anything to keep our refrigerators and cars running as long as it’s cheap.
Could it be maintainable as-is even?
Without a quick change in your country’s energy “little” addiction, I ‘m wondering.
Maybe driving SUV only in city streets is not a lifestyle, american or not, that worth to be maintained at any cost? Those diesel or hybrid cars, after all, show some success to move several people from point A to point B with way less energy, right?
Are SUVs such progress big step in your lifestyle???
Can’t you live with timer switches in your stairs?
Do you really need street lamps in cities being always on, even during daylight???
Time to think about your lifestyle real values.
I bet this reality is something no government is ready to tell Americans, eyes to eyes.
They’ll lost the very next election for sure. Whatever wing.
Remember: your country burns 25% of the World oil.
Yep, 2% of world population is consuming one quarter of world oil!
I’m not even talking about being responsible for 40% of the whole CO2 emitted.
One day it would stop, no way around. The sooner, the better. For americans and for all the planet.
PS: in “lifestyle”, there’s “style” but not before “life”. Some meat for though.
Well, what do y’all expect? Bush and his cronies in the “awl bidness” and the Automakers don’t give a damn about the environment…they have been waging a low-profile info-war for years to convince the general mass of beer-sucking TV addicts that anybody who says anything about the environment is a “nut”, so they can keep peddling their oil and SUV’s, chopping down the forests and polluting the air and water. Every time the price of oil goes up a buck a barrel, Bush makes millions through his Carlyle Group investments…same with Cheney and some of these other sleazebags.
Question is, what are we gonna DO about it!?! While we sit around blogging and impotently flapping our jaws, he’s busily loading the Supreme Court with unqualified puppets of the far right, signing away our rights, and fouling the nest.
If we want to cut our dependence on oil, we have to 1) get rid of the SUV’s and Monster Pick-ups and Hummers, 2)Stop wasting plastics and other oil-based products, )3 Re-Learn to use natural fertilizers, and Let These Bums Know that They better change by getting them and their finances Investigated In Public!
Posted by: capnmike at October 3, 2005 01:13 PMEverybody here is ready and willing to blame George Bush for this mess.
How about all the presidents between Teddy Roosevelt and now? As long as the automobile has been around (Teddy Roosevelt), we have relied on a limited amount of a “natural” resource. Did you hear Eisenhower screaming about alternative energy sources? How about Kennedy? Johnson? Nixon? Nobody?
How many presidents and congresses invested money in nuclear fusion? Wallpapering the American midwest with solar panels? Sticking windmills anywhere there is the slightest amount of wind?
None?
Correct.
And now we are paying the price for the distinct lack of foresight by all (ALL) the congresses and presidents between the invention of the automobile and now.
To point the finger at George Bush and claim it’s all his fault is just patently stupid.
But to address the subject at hand, I say better late than never.
Congress and the president must…must…sit down and hammer out a workable and REAL energy strategy. One that ignores gasoline and instead focuses on energy sources that will never run out. Nuclear fusion…solar power…wind power…water power…you name it. If we start today, maybe…just maybe in 20 or 30 years we’ll actually be accomplishing something.
Posted by: Jim T at October 3, 2005 01:17 PMJim,
We didn’t have an oil crisis until ‘73. From that point forward every president but Bush43 has had the environment and conservation and alternative fuels as major elements of their agenda, effective or not. That includes Bush41.
I don’t blame Bush for the crisis, I accuse of him of being a stupid ostrich who denies global warming and a myriad of other real world cocerns by spewing platitudes to a political base. What’s his answer to expensive gas? Drive less?!? Bush needs to get a freakin grip.
Posted by: Dave at October 3, 2005 01:56 PMThere are some basic questions that need answered.
Why haven’t we built many major power supply systems in the last 30 years?
Why haven’t we built anymore refineries in the last 30 years?
Why do we have 40 different grades of gasoline?
Regulations are needed, however regulations for regulations sake are ridiculous. They all need re-evaluated.
America is about freedoms…do we wish to tell people how green they are mandated to live?
Who decides?
I think you let the market take care of it…
Posted by: Discerner at October 3, 2005 01:59 PMGood post, Pundit. Seems to me we keep throwing money at the problem instead of trying to fund a more viable long-term solution. I believe the answer lies somewhere between what Jim T and Discerner have stated.
Because oil is a finite resource, yet the only one that currently exists with the technology to develop it and the infrastructure to deliver it, I do believe that we should build a few more refineries…especially after Katrina. That said, we should also develop a more long-term policy that gradually weans us off of oil for renewable technologies that currently exist but are now too expensive and/or unstable to deliver to the consumer. In other words, fuel cell and hydrogen technologies should be funded, and funded now.
Fuel cell and hydrogen technologies already exist and have proven themselves (visit plugpower.com). The problem is price (for both) and deliverability (for Hydrogen). Still, both of these issues will be solved eventually, and the sooner they are funded, the quicker the results will be.
Hybrid (gas/electric) tecnologies are also very promising; Toyota, Honda, Ford, Nissan and Lexus have already proven that. And while finding the money will always be a problem in Washington — especially with an administration that’s put us $7 trillion in debt — the real hurdle will be the oil companies and their lobbyists. They are not about to loosen their grip on Washington anytime soon, and Washington is not about to forget them, as evidenced in part by the most recent energy bill.
The truth is that we desperately need a more forward-thinking energy policy. The unfortunate reality is that it won’t happen anytime soon…not until politics as usual becomes less usual.
Posted by: Mister Magoo at October 3, 2005 03:05 PMThere’s a book called Ubiquity by Mark Buchanan about the behavior of complex systems and behavior at critical thresholds, and among the particular phenomena examined were grassfires, forest fires, and grasshopper infestations.
It turns out, when you prevent small fires and small outbreaks, you end up creating a situation where one small fire or infestation can sweep over the whole system in a catastrophic cascade of phase change.
Anybody who knows anything about modern forest fires understands that the problem is not these old growth trees, or the small fires that occasionally crop up, but instead the tinderbox of immature trees and unburned fuel on the forest floor which allows these local fires to burn worse, and which altogether ensures that when they all get together the fire is catastrophic.
As for other applications of this notion about critical systems, well, consider this idea: perhaps Republicans have been too successful at stamping out opposition.
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at October 3, 2005 03:33 PMDave,
You’re right. The first oil crisis was in ‘73. That was the first time that people realized that there’s only so much oil in this world and then there won’t be any more. Zero. Zip. Zilch. It was the first time that people realized how much we depended on the good graces of other countries. When we rely on oil, we put our future in other’s hands. Is that acceptable? Not to me.
How much more oil do we have in this world? How much longer are we going to rely on it when so many other technologies are proving themselves viable each and ever day? How much longer are we going to rely on oil when we know for certain that one day it will run completely out?
Here’s the question.
When are we going to do something about it?
Not as long as big oil has lobbyists, that’s for sure. If we wait on Congress…well, we’ve lost again. You saw what happened when Congress was told that Social Security would one day soon run out. The all got in a hurry to do absolutely nothing…except flap their gums.
Social Security WILL run out…and Congress is in no hurry to fix it until it DOES run out. Same thing with oil. The day before all oil supplies in the world run out, someone in Congress will ask, “Hey, you mean I won’t be able to ride in a stretch limo any more?” and then maybe…maybe…somethig will be done about it.
You mistake that the president (no matter who he or she is) can tell Congress to get up off its flat butt and do something about something. The president can talk all he or she wants to, but Congress will go on ignoring the president until it is politically expediant to do otherwise.
So what should we do in the mean time? Drive less. I mean, that’s a “DUH” statement. If you drive less, less gas will be used. It doesn’t take a Harvard grad to figure that one out.
But how about other things? Change the setting on your thermostat. Make sure your tires are properly inflated. Take public transportation instead of driving once or twice a week. Set up video conferencing instead of flying and driving.
All these things are basic. Yet, why has no one in Congress mentioned them? All they can say is, “Drive less? That’s stupid.”
If it saves gas…is it so stupid?
No, we want to continue doing what is convenient for us…and damn what everyone else thinks. We want to drive around the mall parking lot for 45 minutes…burning gas…so we can find a parking space that’s 2 parking spaces closer to the door. We want to drive 3 blocks to get a Big Gulp instead of walking to the 7-11. We want to burn up electricity sitting in front of our big screen TV watching a baseball game while our kids burn as much electricity as they can playing “Final Fantasy” on their computers.
Drive less? Sounds like it would save gas to me.
Let’s see what Congress comes up with that will save as much gas.
(This is the sound of dead silence from both sides of the aisle)
Magoo,
I think you might be right. The answer should be between the extremes.
After all, if we invented nuclear fusion tomorrow, what would happen to the world’s economy when the entire oil producing world finds out oil is useless and not needed? Can you say depression like the world has never ever known?
Stephen,
perhaps Republicans have been too successful at stamping out opposition.
Perhaps that should have been:
perhaps (insert: Congress, Big Oil, lobbyists, Democrats, Republicans) have been too successful at stamping out opposition.
Posted by: Jim T at October 3, 2005 05:42 PMJim T wrote:
“But to address the subject at hand, I say better late than never.
Congress and the president must…must…sit down and hammer out a workable and REAL energy strategy. One that ignores gasoline and instead focuses on energy sources that will never run out. Nuclear fusion…solar power…wind power…water power…you name it. If we start today, maybe…just maybe in 20 or 30 years we’ll actually be accomplishing something.”
Hmmm… this sounds familiar…. oh yeah, I believe a presidential candidate… Al Gore, that’s right! Didn’t Al Gore make a big point of pushing alternative energy sources and even suggested that this would be a growth industry for the U.S.
The attack dogs from the other side lied, lied, lied, and spun, spun, spun, and made great fun of the man. Here’s the one guy who, stiff and boring as he may have been, actually looked down the road and saw what was needed for the future. We ran his a$$ off and stole his job!
Reminds me of how big corporations work now. Take a guy who knows the business and has a vision and fire his butt. Then put in a bean-counter who has a flair for making ‘deals’ that have nothing to do with actually creating product or service. This new CEO is worried only about the current quarter’s financial statements - why worry about where the company will be in ten years. They’ll have bilked the investors and ransacked the company to pay their gigantic bonuses and packages by then! Whoo!Whoo! We have our Ken Lay in the White House right now! Care to invest in a good country?
Posted by: Rick at October 3, 2005 05:50 PMFuel cell and hydrogen technologies already exist and have proven themselves (visit plugpower.com). The problem is price (for both) and deliverability (for Hydrogen). Still, both of these issues will be solved eventually, and the sooner they are funded, the quicker the results will be.
You have the right idea Mr. Magoo. The byproduct of wind farms is hydrogen gas… Wind farms generate electricity, the byproduct can fuel our cars… killing two birds with one stone.
What about gas-electric vehicles that use electricity to run the car until the batteries are low and than the gas kicks in to recharge the batteries or until the vehicle travels above 40 mph? That would save a fortune in gas for local driving (speed limit is 35 mph).
Well, here’s the problem… the government isn’t funding any research for those technologies.
If we want to cut our dependence on oil, we have to 1) get rid of the SUV’s and Monster Pick-ups and Hummers, 2)Stop wasting plastics and other oil-based products, )3 Re-Learn to use natural fertilizers, and Let These Bums Know that They better change by getting them and their finances Investigated In Public!
No, we want to continue doing what is convenient for us…and damn what everyone else thinks. We want to drive around the mall parking lot for 45 minutes…burning gas…so we can find a parking space that’s 2 parking spaces closer to the door. We want to drive 3 blocks to get a Big Gulp instead of walking to the 7-11. We want to burn up electricity sitting in front of our big screen TV watching a baseball game while our kids burn as much electricity as they can playing “Final Fantasy†on their computers.capnmike & JimT,
Are you suggesting that people should take PERSONAL responsibility on their own— without being forced to do so by government?! Erm, you realize we are talking about Americans, don’t you? We are so much more evolved than to lower ourselves to voluntarily disciplining our own appetites. This IS a free country ya know.
How many presidents and congresses invested money in nuclear fusion? Wallpapering the American midwest with solar panels? Sticking windmills anywhere there is the slightest amount of wind?
Jim T,
Let NYC, Chicago, LA, Houston etc be plastered with windmills and solar panels.. THEY are the ones that can’t live without noise and lights 24/7. Should be plenty of wind up on their tall buildings.
In other words, fuel cell and hydrogen technologies should be funded, and funded now.Mister Magoo,
YES!
It turns out, when you prevent small fires and small outbreaks, you end up creating a situation where one small fire or infestation can sweep over the whole system in a catastrophic cascade of phase change.
Stephen,
Too bad we rural folk are increasingly being prevented from our annual burnings of fields and yard stubble by liberals so concerned with air quality. Posted by: jo at October 3, 2005 07:05 PM
Rick,
Oh, YEAH…Al Gore. I forgot about him.
Wasn’t he the guy who had a butt-load of trees chopped down so he could publish a book on “saving the environment”?
:-)
Posted by: Jim T at October 3, 2005 08:44 PMWhy haven’t we built anymore refineries in the last 30 years?
Discerner, you should be asking why the oil companies closed down 50 refineries in the 90s. I’ll give you a hint: It keeps gas prices high.
Social Security WILL run out…and Congress is in no hurry to fix it until it DOES run out. Same thing with oil.
Just a quibble: In about 50 years, SS will pay out 80% of benefits (that’s the absolute worst case) until the babyboomer spike is over. It’ll never stop paying out as long as people are paying in.
Didn’t Al Gore make a big point of pushing alternative energy sources and even suggested that this would be a growth industry for the U.S.
So did Senator Kerry — and the same “attack dogs from the other side lied, lied, lied, and spun, spun, spun, and made great fun of the man.”
Too bad we rural folk are increasingly being prevented from our annual burnings of fields and yard stubble by liberals so concerned with air quality.
jo, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Every year Indonesians burn off their fields, and every year Malaysia declares a state of emergency because of the smoke. You couldn’t even see half a block in Kuala Lumpur a couple months ago.
Posted by: American Pundit at October 4, 2005 08:28 AMIt’s interesting that this is pretty much a non-partisan issue now. Maybe if you guys kept a tighter leash on your Republican representatives in Congress something might happen. Democrats have been trying to increase fuel efficiency standards for about a decade, but the GOP leadership is solely responsible for the obstructionism. Tell ‘em to knock it off.
BTW, alternative energy is expensive right now because there’s no infrastructure and everything’s hand made. For example, if hydrogen cars were built on an assembly line, they’d be as cheap as any other car. The government needs to stop funding research and start funding commercialization through public/private initiatives.
If we wait for the market to dictate a switch to the next energy economy, the transition will be much harsher economically and environmentally than if we implement a brilliant plan.
A nation’s energy resources are a vital security issue, not a market like toaster sales. You don’t go to war over toasters.
Posted by: American Pundit at October 4, 2005 08:43 AMAP,
Unfortunately, Detroit is in a Democratic state. So, I’d have to wonder what kind of behind-the-scenes machinations took place to let those fuel efficiency standards fail to pass? To continue with my first post’s Animal Farm reference, can we still tell the pigs from the humans?
Posted by: Dave at October 4, 2005 12:21 PMA nation’s energy resources are a vital security issue, not a market like toaster sales. You don’t go to war over toasters.
France will surely use his UN veto to unlegitimate any war over toasters!
;-)
From EuroLand,
Posted by: Philippe Houdoin at October 4, 2005 12:26 PMDicerner,
America is about freedoms…do we wish to tell people how green they are mandated to live?Who decides?
I think you let the market take care of it…
Problem is the market is all about *consuming*.
And consuming too much energy is more and more the americans problem, not talking the planet.
If you want to drive them to reduce their energy needs, you have to introduce money incentive into the energy market.
Taxes cut for every hybrid car owner and oil efficient ones, for example.
The current move only focus on short-term energy issues US is facing: build more oil industry, basicly.
But what about long-term?
Okay, I agree, with such short-term focus they also chose to make things worse for global warming and polution. One can say that way they’ll also make the long-term sooner!
How ironic?!
From EuroLand,
American Pundit-
Your link states:
The haze has shrouded Kuala Lumpur … in the country’s worst environmental crisis since 1997.
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi declared a state of emergency in Port Klang and in Kuala Selangor, a tourist area known for its fireflies, after the air pollution index topped 500 - the emergency level.
The index measures harmful particles in the air, and Thursday was the first time the 500-level has been passed in Malaysia.
And you stated:
“and every year Malaysia declares a state of emergency because of the smoke.”
Maybe it is just my inferior midwest rural brain, but i see a discrepency here.
Again from your link:
… 10 Malaysian firms clearing land in Indonesia had contributed to the fires.
In my unevolved primitive state, i consider there to be a difference between one time industrial development projects such as land CLEARING for mines and the annual maintenance and managment of agri-businesses… similar to the difference between an out of control blaze consumming unmaintained and mismanaged forests and a controlled underbrush burn off. Now which causes greater environmental damage, i do not know— simplistic burning, or the products and resources necesary to manufacture excavation/grading, transportation + recycling equipment and the fuels to run them?
Perhaps some segregation would diminish the hatred and frustration of urbanites toward rural societies if city planners would develop their centers on bare rock mountains and sandy deserts where their superiority would be less encumbered by the primeval relics of plants and animals.
Until such accomodations are made, maybe it will suffice to restrict all “Mother Earth” derived plant and animal imports to KL so the superior evolved homo sapien progressives may sustain themselves in wholesome “Mother Board” purity.
Meanwhile we old-time backward rural folk will, as long as we are allowed, continue to the best of our ability our traditions of respecting and working WITH the land rather than dismissing it as obsolete. Another interesting fact: at the same time we are being denied the right by liberals to burn off our stubble in town, these same progressive ideologues SPONSER that tradition for the land now under THEIR control. Hypocrites, yes. But we do what we have to do with what strength we have. And private ownership no longer affords protection for our lands.
Dave,
Painting your own wall is not illegal….or decided to co-opt graffitti to legitimze (ie. make it boring), that’s your choice.
i see you are doing your part in sustaining the stereotype that the underlying intent of progressives (60’s hippies in suits and casual wear) is anarchy. Their sole pleasure is in regime change… whatever establishment is present must be condemned, defied and dismantled.
Also interesting is the effect the liberal takeover of our colleges and universities has had on the character of this generation’s politicians and businessmen. What had then been exciting must be getting rather boring to you now that society in general has co-opted the progressive attitude with a collective thumbing of the nose at arcane institutions like the Law. i suppose this is where the ‘evolving’ bit comes in, with liberals tearing down the very establishment they established. i surely hope there comes a beneficial mutation soon.
Posted by: jo at October 4, 2005 08:05 PMjo, the article clearly states the fires are an annual occurence caused by farmers and plantation owners burning off their fields. Beyond that, I’ve lived here for two years now and see it first hand.
AP,
Sorry i did not quote enough. i was not contesting that they burn every year, only that there were emergencies declared annually. i do not doubt that wise land managment includes annual burn offs. i have not only seen it, i have done it since i was a small child. Even progressive liberals attest to its necessity… erm, when they are the custodians of the land.
;)
Link to a pic of the burn on my old land.
jo, unrestricted burn-offs are a killer for anyone living downwind. Isolated/regulated burn-offs are beneficial, and the burn in that picture you linked is totally insignificant compared to the burn-offs in Indonesia every year where entire cities disappear in the haze.
Here’s a before and after shot of KL this year:
AP,
Yes, i googled earlier and saw a few pics of the smog. It is terrible. Very similar to what i often see of Californian cities when they have uncontrolled forest fires.
As i noted in my first response, i think this year’s problem was so bad because of the added industrial component. That is not to say people should not do as much as possible to minimize the effects of the anuual burnings to KL. (And perhaps use this experience to learn and restrict industrial clearing burns to maybe one or two rather than ten. )
i was wondering if it would be somehow possible to use fire fighting ships in the Strait of Malacca to mist the skies before the smoke gets mingled with the traffic exhaust of KL. On the prarie we just use garden hoses to mist the air and keep the smoke down, but it is just grass burning, not trees. i do not have a clue what equipment is available to foresters in their management arsenol.
Posted by: jo at October 5, 2005 12:07 PMjo said: i see you are doing your part in sustaining the stereotype that the underlying intent of progressives (60’s hippies in suits and casual wear) is anarchy. Their sole pleasure is in regime change… whatever establishment is present must be condemned, defied and dismantled.
Can someone explain this in non-schizophrenic terms?
Posted by: Dave at October 5, 2005 10:22 PMDave,
Stereotype of progressives:
no set principles merely anti-establishment
stereotypical progressive view:
tradition=regress
status quo=stagnate
change.. good, bad or otherwise=progress
