matthutch

Drilling in ANWR: What's Not to Like?

a few points...

why do we keep talking about our "addition to oil"? as far as i can tell, using the same logic, i'm addicted to all kinds of things: air, milk and bread, concrete and steel (looking out my office window at several buildings 30 stories +), etc. rather, I choose to use oil b/c its cheap.

as far as the effect of drilling on the environment? first of all, we shown that with recent technology, the impact is minimal. second, we effect the environment every time we turn around. so what? so do animals. so does falling water. as far as science tells us, dinosaurs died by some crazy natural phenomenon. beavers build dams - cute; humans build dams - disgusting. why are humans less natural than anything else?

so what if we run out of oil? as we run out, the price of oil will skyrocket. that, and that alone, is all the incentive we need to go to other options. the more expensive oil is, the better other option will be. so why, in the meantime, should we limit the use of our resources? we can see what hoarding of food has done for other countries. we don't need artificially higher priced energy.

as for who benefits when we drill for oil in anwr? how about tax payers? the oil companies don't own the land right now. the land will be leased. and maybe we charge by the barrel for extraction. any money the treasury receives from selling the rights to extract is less money taxpayers will have to pay. (that of course assumes you think government will lower taxes; i personally think they'll simply spend more.)

why so we need some kind of "race to the moon" type government-funded program? why are we as a society better off because we went to the moon? no one lives there. no one's close to living there. we don't vacation there. the government decided we needed to go there, so we spent a lot of money doing it. i'm sure there was some rocket or satelite technologies that were discovered in the process, but was it worth the cost? i'm skeptical that it was. i can't think of many (any?) technological directions the government has chosen for us that have been better at the process than the market.

and to make a short list of our future energy sources and say "that's it" is ludicrous and shortsighted. how in the world can any of us predict the direction of energy? we can't predict what the market will do next week. energy innovation in 20 yrs? forget about it. didn't you see "back to the future"? using banana peels and beer cans was imaginary, but you can count on innovation. which speaks to one persons comments about t. boone pickens thoughts about the efficiency of wind. my belief is that you can't base the efficiency of an energy source right now on someone's investment. he's betting, just like al gore and others, that we will either 1) be mandated by government to use at energy (you don't think they aren't funding the green lobby, do you?) or 2) seriously run out of other energy sources at which time the relative efficiency of these energy sources will increase dramatically.

sorry for the long post.

Why Cap-and-Trade Beats a Carbon Tax

But isn't it only harder from a political standpoint? If senators and representatives want to go on record to help the environment and force Americans to pay the full price of the energy they consume, wouldn't we want that to be as transparent as possible? How much harder is it mechanically to raise (or lower) the tax rate than to raise (or lower) the cap? Depending on how the thing would be administered (and admittedly I don't know that), I assume, or hope, changes would go through the same process. (Surely the tax increase wouldn't go to the floor for a vote while cap-and-trade "tweak" would simply be delegated to the bureaucracy.) Part of my problem with cap-and-trade is that it would allow so much be done at a level unaccountable to voters.

Windfall Profits for Big Food: Where's The Outrage?

Answer: constituencies.

Greenspan: Bubbles Are a Necessary Part of Innovation

Bubbles certainly come with innovation. Whenever a new innovation comes out, the marketplace will struggle to price it. Sometimes "the market" is wrong. Whether or not bubbles are "necessary", I don't know. I do know, though, that I wouldn't sacrifice our capitalistic method of discovering innovation for a world without bubbles.