Posted on 07/20/2008 10:37:56 AM PDT by NonZeroSum
Sunday, July 20 is the thirty-ninth anniversary of the first manned lunar landing.
At the time, it was considered a wondrous achievement. So much so, in fact, that a new phrase arose. “If we can put a man on the moon…” If we can do that, why can’t we cure cancer, end world hunger, achieve world peace, give everyone a pony?
Now comes a new call from former vice president Al Gore, for another Apollo program, this time to achieve “energy independence” and save the planet. It is thought by many that this, like landing a man on the moon, is a technological challenge that we can conquer if we simply establish a huge federal program, or even reassign NASA, to do so.
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If we can land a man on the moon, why we can’t we land one in the White House.
I think that landing a man on the moon and returning him safely was child's play compared to doing what you suggest. Sorry.
Achieving Kennedy’s goal changed a nation. Gore wants the nation to change in order to achieve a goal. Big difference.
Achieving Kennedy’s goal had the people behind it. I Gore does not have the people behind him.
I agree with Algore that energy independence should be a goal, but his hair brained schemes shouldn’t even be considered. Drill everywhere, produce everywhere, and develop viable alternatives until we would only buy crude in the international market when prices were favorable. BUT that means we always have our capacity to produce online, or that it can be brought to full output within a few weeks.
If we can land a man on the moon in less than 10 years, why can’t we get oil out of the ground in less than 10 years?
US Congress killed ITER funding for 2008. Dems have no standing to speak on energy matters.
I got yer “energy independence” right here:
Nuclear power from breeder reactors.
Why does anybody believe that our Corporate Overlords want energy independence?
Follow the money. They do whatever lines their pockets with the most silver. If energy independence increased their profits and income, we would have been energy independent decades ago. That we are not tells me loud and clear that the pigmen are making more money with the current system than they would with energy independence.
You can cry yourself to sleep calling for energy independence but it will never happen so long as those getting rich off the current system can’t make more by abandoning it. Get real.
Now, if $150/Bbl oil changes their math and profits, then it will change. If not, then it won’t. The rich in control will do whatever they think will make them richest.
Imagine the outcome if JFK had issued the moon in a decade challenge with the caveat that the trip must be done with anti-gravity technology. Had that been the case billions of dollars would have been expended and the only flags on the lunar surface would be Russian.
Answer me this question. If the evil capitalists is keeping us from energy independence then why haven’t nations without the evil capitalists become energy independent? Why the North Koreans have to import crude oil if the only thing keeping them from producing their own energy is Exxon Mobil?
Why would China be importing oil? You don’t think that communist scientists can’t come up with a car that gets 100mpg if some hick in North Carolina claims to do so?
Don’t fall for the democrats’propaganda: we can drill off
the Florida Coast and bring up oil in ONE year!
They aren’t evil capitalists. They are capitalists. Capitalism is raw force, it is not good or evil. It is going to follow the money, and it is neither going to peform altruism that reduces income, or perform acts of evil that reduce income.
My point was simple. Energy independence should not be a goal. The damn liberals are spouting this lie that energy independence is a necessary goal, which it is not. What is necessary is to pursue the most cost affect forms of energy for the time, within reason, augmented as necessary by somewhat more expensive forms of energy used in a targeted manner.
Oil was dirt cheap and therefore oil was used. Everybody is caught off guard with this meteoric rise in oil prices, which are mainly — perhaps even 70% — to do with a crashing dollar brought on by GW Bush’s economic policies.
That was the point of my thread. So there is not and should not be a plan to be energy independent. It is not a goal on its own. If sweet crude supplied by our enemies stays stratospherically expensive, then it is time to get oil from coal or from shale or to start pumping it from the ocean floor off our coasts. Or it is time to invest in nuclear power plants again, although that is mixing things, as oil is mostly used for transportation and nuclear power is used for electricity generation.
But the point stands. We need an energy policy that utilized the most cost affective sources of energy and the dictate that we not depend on the market for energy is absurd. We need to get our energy from the cheapest source and if foreign sources cost far more than domestic sources, then it is high time to exploit those domestic sources, such as shale oil.
A side benefit will be that we will be at the mercy of the robber barons who provide the energy domestically, rather than the robber barons who provide it from overseas. No difference to the consumer.
Energy independence is not in itself desirable. We should not be trying to become energy independent in and of itself. If you re-read the post you responded to, that is exactly what I said in less words. Those who run the domestic energy companies will do whatever cost them the least and earns them the most, pure and simple. End of discussion.
As for why China and Korea are not energy independent — they know as we do to seek the cheapest energy, not the closest energy.
For what it is worth, it seems you read more into my throw away term “our energy Overlords”, as if I thought there was some evil conspiracy by them to obstruct an obvious and attainable independent energy sources just waiting to be tapped. No such thing. My term was just a throw away line reflecting their monopolistic power over our lives and how they are interconnected with the government and how it is far less a matter of simply “free market forces” than most people think or want to think.
Other than that, it was just a throw away term I wanted to insult them with. You seemed to focus on that term and then project into the rest of my post, a conspiratorial meaning that was not there. If you re-read my post you responded to, replace the term “energy overlords” with “major US energy companies”, you will see I didn’t accuse them of conspiring to hide magic sources of domestic energy.
My point was simple. They worship the mighty dollar and go where it flows. If they can make more money from foreign sources, they will. If they can make more money from domestic sourcs, they will. It is that simple, and the concept of “energy independence” is just another brain-dead fantasy of the green Utopian left socialist communist, like all the rest of their Utopian fantasies, like unilateral nuclear disarmament.
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