Interesting piece in the NY Times Magazine by Peter Maass, titled “The Price Of Oil.”
Long story short- environmentalists who have blocked the drilling of oil domestically often lose site of the fact thatthat oil will instead come from a country which does not have the environmental protections the United States does.
ppGaz
Is there an undertone here that the author is dying to be the guy who cuts down the last tree on Easter Island?
Because, you know, you wouldn’t want someone else to have that honor.
What is, exactly, the alternative to environmentalism?
Thoughts?
Paul L.
Hey ppGaz, I’ll let you in on a big secret. If someone cuts down the last tree on Easter Island, you can plant new ones.
The alternative to environmentalism is letting people do what they want with their property and not have the government micromanage it.
And if big government is the solution to protecting the environment, how do you explain the Soviet Union record with the environment?
srv
Jon H
” If someone cuts down the last tree on Easter Island, you can plant new ones.”
Only if you have seeds. And only if the deforestation hasn’t allowed the soil to become denuded and washed away, making the landscape unsuitable for planting. And even then, it’ll be years before you have anything usable.
ppGaz
Wow, that’s a lot of horseshit for just one post. Where to start?
Uh, Easter Island, figure of speech. Unless you want to argue that fossil fuels are replaceable. Well, maybe you do.
Letting people do what they want with their property? Uh, no, that ship sailed a long time ago. Try burning the chapparal on your Los Angeles County property and see how that “principle” of yours works.
Jesus, man, get a frigging clue.
Paul L.
fossil fuels are replaceable.
The price of oil skyrocketed and we are looking at ways to cut back/replace it (hybrids/oil shale/nuclear power).
Try Building anything in the People’s Republic of Los Angeles County and see how that “principle” works.
Gaia, man, you did not address my statement about the Soviet Union record with the environment. Or China’s
Angry Engineer
Our domestic oil reserves strike me as the sort of thing that we wouldn’t want to deplete just because they’re cheaper or more easily accessable. I’d like to see them kept in our collective back pocket for the day when we realize that we’re going to need a Manhattan Project for energy, and it’s going to take a heck of a lot of oil to fuel such an activity.
ppGaz
My bad, I forgot to take into account the possibility that you are just a troll.
Fool me twice, as GWB said, cain’t fool me again.
Tim F.
yep.
Tim F.
PaulL,
Easter Island will take centuries to recover from deforestation. The native tree species, which were uniquely adapted to its particular climate, were lost and the erosion and soil degradation associated with canopy loos mean that it may never recover to its original habitat quality. Sometimes people can’t simply fix what they broke.
gswift
What’s so frustrating about this debate is that it’s so often framed in this manner, that the only option is oil, and it’s either we drill it here or somewhere else. It would be nice to see us actually look ahead and develop other energy sources BEFORE it’s a crisis. The 70’s should have been a wake up call.
gswift
Those countries have horrible records because the regulations were either non existent, or weren’t enforced. What point are you exactly making here? The Soviets sucked at regulating the environment, therefore we should allow the unrestricting dumping of lead, arsenic, etc. in the drinking water?
The Soviet system was corrupt. It was bad at EVERYTHING. What makes you think the Soviets are at all analagous to the U.S.?
gswift
And most people don’t realize cheap oil=cheap plastics and a lot of other base materials. It’s a rather valuable reserve from a chemical standpoint as well.
Steve S
Oh that’s simple. Russians don’t give a shit about the Environment.
So I’m not quite clear what your point is? That the Republicans can destroy the environment more efficiently than the Russians?
Perry Como
Oil is abiotic.
Dale
We are running out of oil.
I am not for drilling in Alaska but fact is this nation will be screaming for it sooner or later. Nothing will stop it eventually.
The current administration is teaching the nation to shit on the Constitution, it will be easy to get them to go along soon. No will respect or care about anything but their own personal hides, that is the lessons of Republicansim.
Kerry is pissing in the wind on this one – only a matter of time before we will sucking the last drop of oil from the last caribou.
ha Wait till the tax cut freaks finish bankrupting us. At a time in our history when we really need smart, effective leadership we have an inept delusional dry drunk who thinks he’s King.
The Republicans are digging us a hole we won’t get out of…
Boardjones
Without writing a drearily long and detailed post on the economics of oil, I will stick with my standard supply and demand blurb:
Oil is a fungible commodity, the additional oil that would be produced from ANWAR does not go into some special US only pipeline, it is really added to the total world supply. The marginal increase in total world supply would be very small, as a % of the total. Bottom line, we would see very little downward movement in the market price (i.e. movement along the demand curve as the supply curve shifts). Essentially, the problem isn’t that the U.S. doesn’t produce alot of oil (the U.S. is a HUGE producer of Oil and Gas, much more so than people realize); the problem is, that we not only consume an amount equal to all of the lower 48 and Alaskan production, but that we then have to import an additional quantity equal to well over 50% of our total consumption.
Ok, ok, in laymen’s terms, we use too much fucking oil, and producing ANWAR will change the equation very little.