Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to D'oh

But his point remains
Larry J — (archived)

There are known oil sources in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore in California, but environmentalists and politicians want to put them off limits. There are massive amounts of oil in Alaska but environmentalists and (non-Alaska) politicians want to keep them off limits, even in areas set aside specifically as oil reserves. Estimates are that ANWR could produce the amount of oil we currently import from Saudi Arabia for upwards of 30 years. That's not exactly an insignificant amount of oil.

Back in the 1990s, the Clinton Administration encouraged electric companies to switch from coal powered to natural gas powered powerplants. Nothing wrong with that, natural gas burns cleaner than coal. Only, there are groups doing everything they can to prevent drilling for natural gas, which is creating a tight market and higher prices. As a result, my local energy company just announced plans to build a new billion dollar coal-fired powerplant. If the goal is to clean up the air, shouldn't we be using the cleanest sources of energy that are economically viable?

How much of the projected shortages are due to people doing everything they can to prevent reaching the energy resources that are there. I'm a big fan of alternative energy from renewable sources, but they have to have the prospect of being economically viable. Subsidizies for initial R&D can be acceptible in the short term, but continuous subsidizies with no prospect of ever being cost competitive are just another welfare program.

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