Lex Luz

1,238 Billion Barrels of Oil Reserves: Is This an Oil Price Bubble?

Well, paulk, we're going to face far higher taxes irrespective of what anyone thinks or says or does about oil. We can't fund our current obligations, let alone have a prayer of funding future obligations, and I see no one in Congress, irrespective of party affiliation, willing to tackle that issue. Even if taxes rise to 100% on individuals and corporations we can't fund ourselves, so sooner or later something absolutely has to break.

When you say "we've tried that before" with respect to cooperation and a multi-partisan approach to energy policy, I'm somewhat lost. I don't recall any energy policy in our country other than "keep it cheap and burn it all," which I recognize is hyperbole, but the point remains: I haven't seen the cooperation you speak of. Would love to have a countervailing viewpoint on that.

I'm not sure either that I understand the argument that environmentalists want to take away people's liberties. Certainly I think there are fringe elements that want us all to die in the name of Gaia, but the broader streams seem to be advocating more strongly for reducing energy demand and for cleaning up. Both of these seem like good things to me, especially in the longer term.

I am hopeful that leadership will emerge - and soon, at that - that will tackle the twin perils of fiscal irresponsibility and energy irresponsibility, and that will create a unified front, or at least a "middle path" toward restoring America's potential. We've squandered a lot of it. I don't think it's too late to turn it around but I do think we have to stop screaming at each other first and foremost.

By the way I think Lewisabroad is absolutely right: high energy prices are a great thing insofar as they spark innovation. We have indeed been too fat for too long.

1,238 Billion Barrels of Oil Reserves: Is This an Oil Price Bubble?

People who simply sit in the corner and shriek about the liberals and the so-called "green menace" are as much a part of the problem as people who drive their Escalades out to protest the latest fashionable environmental cause.

Demand for oil is rising, and though Hubbert's career was nearly destroyed for his peak oil prediction, it is entirely obvious that he was absolutely right. So, probably sooner rather than later, we will "run out" in the sense that we will not be able to expand production quickly and effectively enough to support growing demand. Sure, plenty of oil will be left in the ground, but that's not what's meant by running out in this scenario. We're going to go to war over this stuff, again and again, unless and until we can wean ourselves off it.

We must embark on an energy independence program in the United States, and that means drilling everywhere in the short term, building out nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and other viable alternatives in the medium term, and developing net-positive liquid fuels for the long term. Simultaneously, we MUST address an infrastructure and culture that is almost completely single-occupant automobile dependent. It's wasteful and stupid, and we simply can't pay for it anymore. That's also a long-term problem.

Real leadership in this country will emerge when we start looking inward again, and when we recognize that we're either all going to live together or we're all going to die together. Stop screeching about "liberals this" and "green menace that." Stop squealing about endless protections for places we can't afford to set aside forever anymore, thanks to our own stupidity, avarice, and profligacy up to now.

Let's start finding ways to come together as a nation so that we can have at least SOME chance to survive now and set our children up to thrive later.

America's Energy Policy: Coming to Terms with Reality

Just as with the mortgage mess, there is more than enough responsibility for our energy problems to go around. People who screech that the "whacko environmentalists" or the "democratic left" or the "greedy oil companies" are the sole cause of our current ills are all equally moronic. WE ARE ALL TO BLAME, ALL OF US.

We can fix this problem if we confront it honestly. It's my opinion that we need to drill everywhere now, AND that we need to increase refining capacity as well as investing heavily in nuclear, wind, geothermal, solar, biomass, and other alternatives for electric generation.

More important than drilling everywhere, though, is recognizing that drilling for more oil doesn't solve anything - it merely pushes out the horizon of the end. Unless you are among those few who do not believe that oil is a finite resource, you must recognize that we will eventually use all of it (within economic limits; yes, I'm aware of those arguments). We must, must, MUST develop alternative fuels for transportation AND alternative infrastructures. These changes are going to demand culture change as well. That's not a left/right, positional argument, it's just what is.

The longer we scream and screech about partisan nonsense, the longer we remain paralyzed and the closer we get to total self-destruction. It's time to recognize that we have all contributed to the madness and that we can all work together to overcome it.