Meanwhile, in energy conservation news the strangest thing is happening:
a coalition with widely divergent political philosophies and constituencies is pressing Congress for a sweeping new energy policy with a strong focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels.
The reasons for the change are as differing as the groups themselves – a loose collection of conservatives, liberals, environmentalists and evangelical Christians.
The goal is ambitious, a reduction of 2.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2015 and a cut of 10 million barrels per day by 2031. As current U.S. consumption is 20 million barrels a day, that’s a lofty goal – not to mention a radical one. But we find ourselves in a tenuous and dangerous situation regarding energy, and it’s best to take extreme steps while they’re still an option and not a necessity.
The whole story has a potent strange-new-world feeling. Evangelicals, liberals, environemntalists and conservatives working together on an energy policy, it sounds like the sort of thing that makes too much sense to ever actually happen. After graduating from a liberal arts college where people could correctly define ‘ecofeminism’ (go ahead and google it, ye pikers), I never thought that I’d hear again somebody say the words “it’s best to take extreme steps while they’re still an option and not a necessity.” Damn straight it is. The longer we wait on reforming our energy practices the more painful it’ll be when the adjustment is involuntary.
This passage jumped out at me:
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, said, “This is a bipartisan effort. This is just good common sense. This is where the public wants us to go. They want us to not be so dependent on foreign oil.’’
Well good lord, you live long enough and everybody will surprise you eventually. Thank you Senator Brownback, you’ve done good.
Zifnab
Finally, Republicans are showing themselves as votable again. I’ve missed this.
Shygetz
Dogs and cats living together–mass hysteria!
Seriously, glad to see it. Doesn’t make up for everything else, but it’s a serious start. Never could understand how energy conservation didn’t catch hold years ago. The only people who wouldn’t like it is the energy companies. Oh…
Lines
Just for those who are curious:
I’m working on a personal design for a serial hybrid vehicle. I’m currently searching for a source for flywheel energy storage.
I’m tired of waiting for a decent hybrid. Fuel cells will fail because of the lack of mineable platinum and palladium.
stickler
I’ll agree that this sounds revolutionary. From the rhetoric alone one might be tempted to believe that Bush & Co’s “just pump more” energy policy is truly bankrupt.
But this jumped out at me:
Words are important. But they are pretty inexpensive. Call us when some real, live, conservation laws are enacted and enforced.
Steve S
Don’t worry. President Bush will veto any bill suggesting reduced oil consumption, as it’s bad for his Oil Companies.
TM Lutas
Distorting the energy markets by mandating conservation is just plain stupid. I’ll look to see the actual legislation if/when proposed but this is just one more blind walk down the dark alley of government intervention in the economy.
In case you folks haven’t noticed, there are no oil companies anymore. All the oil companies have diversified out into energy production from all reasonable sources. Shell does hydrogen as well as oil. Any political shift from one source to another is just going to grow one division at the cost of another, not actually impact their bottom line. There’s no money in it for the energy majors to buy up politicians to hold back new energy alternatives when they’ll get their money no matter what gets used.
With India, the PRC and a number of other nations coming onto the global market for energy in a very big way, the profits will only be limited by the ability to produce. If they get more of their money in rupees instead of dollars, so be it.
Steve S
But giving the Oil companies $500 billion in tax dollars a year is good sound policy?
Give me a break.
I’ll wait for the legislation too, but I’d rather see us giving tax credits to people to buy more efficient cars, than to build more oil refineries. Put the money back in the people’s pockets.
Shygetz
Ah, yes, the propertarians rear their heads again. Free markets are not a panacea for all society’s ills. Like all self-selecting systems, they are slow, they are clumsy, and they leave broken bodies in their wake. The only thing they have objectively going for them is that, given enough time, they always come up with something that works. It may not be optimal, but it will be good enough.
If we don’t mandate conservation while we still have energy, then by the time the market demands conservation, any switch to a new energy standard will be prohibitively expensive. Conservation legislation buys us time to switch our energy usage, nothing more. Who cares if oil companies are researching other methods–unless we have enough time and energy to switch our infrastructure, then we are gonna have big problems. Hooray for conservation.
ppGaz
To paraphrase an old bromide, you can conserve and pay me now, or conserve more and pay me a lot more later.
All extractive models have the same outcome: Exhaustion of the resource. Economically, shit hits fan long before exhaustion. As we now know, it hits the fan when production levels off and begins to decline.
Prepare, or suffer the consequences.
tzs
If I were going to place some money into commodities, I wouldn’t go just for Platinum, useful as it is for catalysts. Rhodium as well (used to scrub CO from air).
StupidityRules
Completely agree. God has given us enough fossile fuel to last until the second coming of Christ. It’s obvious that the people who wants to conserve either are the greatest sinners fearing the wrath of God or they are atheist or follow one of the heathen religions and don’t want to be proven wrong. The faster we burn oil the faster Christ will come back.
BIRDZILLA
How about getting us off the dependency on OPEC and forgein oil and drilling in the ANWR and quit listening to the jerks at GREENPEACE and BEYOND PETROLUIM