Drill Baby Drill
Here's the plan to bring peace and prosperity:
Drill everywhere we have oil...off the coast of Florida, Alaska, renew and restart the grasshoppers in Texas, California...everywhere.
Build 2-3 more mega-refineries domestically...wherever the big boys can get permitting and let the states jocky for who wants these cherry jobs.
A few things will happen:
1. Gas will go up to $5 - $6 a gallon because it is more expensive to produce gas domestically than in the middle east (we pay our people fair living wages...and then some for oil jobs).
2. With gas that high, the American spirit will take over and the working class will find alternative ways to reduce fuel consumption (bikes, motorcycles, public transportation...maybe some things we don't even think of now).
3. The sheiks will choke on their own oil and come to us with much reduced prices to halt this domestic production...our response will be (and this is important)...get your house in order, specifically get your radical family members in line and we will consider buying SOME of your oil, but until you are able to put a halt to this radical segment of your faith...we will not do business with you.
4. Global terrorism will subside drastically.
5. With 2-3 years of $5 - $6 a gallon gas, many forms of alternative fuels will be invented...again, the American spirit will take over...thus dwindling demand of said gas, driving the price down due to competition of said alternative.
That's the plan...shoot holes in it as you see fit...convince me I'm wrong...praise me for my brilliance if you agree. But please...talk about it.
posted by Hollywood at 1:28 PM
4 Comments:
Here's an idea, posed by Thomas L. Friedman in "The World Is Flat"--instead of drilling and all that, why not save a step? How about getting the best and brightest engineers and such and give them the same resources we did (and do) give NASA during the space race against Russia, only this time, come up with vehicles and homes that don't use fossil fuels. If that happens, can you imagine the stability of the world if we stop consumption of such? It's WAY bigger than bicycles and public transportation.
10:54 PM
Yes, and I think it will work...my idea allows free markets to drive it instead of politicians...I'm not sure we can get enough cooperation to make politicians do ANYTHING of substance.
3:36 AM
The main problem with your "drill" proposal is that we don't have the infrastructure to support gasoline at $7 a gallon.
See, in Holland ($7/gallon) and London ($9/gallon) they have public transportation to allow people to make the choice of whether or not they want to drive.
In Dallas, for example, you'd eat into people's budget in huge ways. There's nothing we could do but pay it: We have no bicycle paths (and the heat would be awful), no public transportation to speak of outside downtown--but we could grab a park & ride 20 minutes from my house, I suppose, but the schedule wouldn't support things like going to a baseball game or Six Flags...and we couldn't even shop for groceries.
So, initially, instead of drilling and snubbing foreign oil, let's just get the most brilliant and best engineers in the world (Did you know that 80% of NASA scientist are over 35?), commit the same financial/educational resources as we did in the "space race" in the 60's. And, how much better is our society because of the spin-off products.
Scrap sending a robot to Mars. If I wanted to do that, I'd have some high school kids have a contest to make a range rover and send it to Death Valley to do the same thing. Let's just commit, as a society, to dominate energy as we did space...
...and our society will be much better off.
And the rest of the world won't hate us anymore...they'll sing our praises. Well, except those who depend on our money for their oil...and what better way to have the "sheiks choke on their own oil?"
And, I think a candidate who ran on that platform would be inspirational and visionary...and, if you notice, both Bill Clinton AND George Bush, Sr., have said similar things since getting out of office.
If you read the book I read, I think you'd enjoy it.
2:31 PM
I've read it twice, and bought it 3 times for others. Thanks,
7:15 PM
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