Posted on 08/04/2008 9:59:08 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Washington - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called on the United States to end its dependence on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years as part of a broad speech laying out his energy plans on Monday.
Obama, who celebrated his 47th birthday Monday, said he would direct the 'full resources' of government towards promoting renewable energy sources, investing 150 billion dollars over the 10-year period.
'Breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face. It's gonna take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy,' Obama said in Michigan, home to the nation's largest automakers.
Obama challenged struggling automakers in the United States to retool towards more fuel-efficient cars in the face of surging petrol prices that have led to slumping sales of sports utility vehicles and pickup trucks.
General Motors Corp last week reported a 15.5-billion-dollar loss in the second quarter and a 27-per-cent drop in July auto sales on a year earlier.
Obama called for 150 million plug-in hybrid vehicles to hit the roads within six years, and said he would aim for 10 per cent of energy to come from renewable sources by the end of his first term.
US consumers have been reeling from an economic slowdown and rising petrol prices that have become a focal point of the election campaign between Obama and his Republican rival John McCain.
(Excerpt) Read more at monstersandcritics.com ...
Hard to believe that a person could get that stupid in only 47 years.
Every time I read this STUPUID ADDICTION LINE I get so friggn mad. I'm sick of it! We are no more addicted to oil than we are addicted to our own blood.. I'm going to go find something to kick!!
Pie in the sky BS from the shape shifter.
It’s amazing when your the Messiah that you can pull a miricle off in such a short time. 10 years is that two terms for the Messiah?
Kinda like the Great Depression was a complete transformation of our economy.
Don’t ‘kick’ something...instead find something to ‘cling’ too. In the ObamaNation my bitterness serves me well...
Or it in other words, this is all just a lie for public consumption that has no basis in reality. The only way to ween our selves off a significant amount of “fossil” fuel is nuclear. Is Obama going to promote the production of massive new nuclear power plants???
We are “addicted” to oil because it is cheap and plentiful and will remain that way for quite some time.
“Sophisticated” talk of progressive “alternative” sources of energy is just another condescending, feel-good psychology of the left. It is fundamental in liberals’ nature to look down their nose at such things as patriotism, Christianity, heterosexual monogamy, profitable business and good old dirty petroleum.
I have a way to avoid foreign oil. First, drill here. Second, conquer some oil producing states like Venezuela, Iraq, etc. Then we won’t be buying Foreign oil, it will all be American oil.
Why now, the government has to build the car to go nowhere!
It will be nice when all we need is air to run our automobiles, planes, etc. etc. We are not there or anywhere near that so what happens when we are STILL needing oil 10 yrs. down the road? These people are the enemy. What a point this country has come to when these idiots even come close to the presidency, not to mention the incompetents in Congress.
Ummm... We use oil becauase that is the most efficient thing we have beside nuclear.
How is using crap that aint efficient, efficient?
From Obama’s speech in Lansing, MI:
“But I know we can do this. We can do this because we are Americans. We do the improbable. We beat great odds. We rally together to meet whatever challenge stands in our way. That’s what we’ve always done – and it’s what we must do now. For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time.”
Obama wants to end the age of oil in our time.
Huh?
Kindergartners call for brown cows that give chocolate milk in every school yard.
here, call for American independance from foreign oil, maybe they’ll think you thought of it all by yerself.
Does that mean we are also going to have electric planes, trains, busses and 18 wheelers? Maybe we’ll all be flying coast to coast in a blimp? Nobody seems to recognize the fact that we use a lot of petroleum and its byproducts for lots of other things besides vehicles. Totally clueless!
This man is so empty, its makes my head spin. Time to inflate my tires.
Can we run solar panel factory’s on solar power?
The answer is NO.
And to top that pipedream off we IMPORT 99% of the gallinium we use th manufacture solar panels
Or the kind of change that Lenin had in mind.
Yep, about 300 thousand megawatts of base load nuclear power -- or about 300 one thousand megawatt power plants -- to replace the present coal and gas fired capacity. The coal and gas then can go to liquification to make liquid fuels for transportation.
This from the party that prohibits domestic drilling that would come online in under 10 years time.
Obama has played his hand. It isn’t that too much of our money goes overseas for oil. Or that “terrorist nations” get oil money. It is that “we” use too much of the “world’s” oil (that is currently offered for sale). That and “oil pollutes”.
So instead we go to food for oil. Grow our way to new energy resources. Or go electric without building new power plants (hey, you CAN’T just set your thermostat whatever you’d like, they don’t even HAVE AC in Europe).
It isn’t about something better. It is about making Americans “pay” for “injustices”. And that is plain antiAmericanism 101.
How will he do this? By taking more of your money in taxes, and at the same time deem all cars built before 2007 as environmentally unfit.At the same time, he will put a 50% "carbon tax" on all new vehicles sold.
Then you will not be able to afford to drive a car, which will translate to a vast reduction of foreign oil imports. Isn't Obama economics wonderfull? Oh, and screw all you auto workers who will be laid off. Obama says thanks for the campaign donations your union stole from your pay checks and gave to him.
The sad part being I half expect McCrazy to say something equally stupid. We're so screwed.
Green jobs
I have a better idea. Let’s end the importation of foreign water when we have good product here at home and overthrow the despots who are sitting on the world’s oil.
The oil isn’t evil, Chavez and the muslim extremists are.
It’s like continuing to do trade with Hitler or Stalin.
Bingo
Buses definitely can be electric, because they are in all of Europe (and in a few places in the USA.)
Trains are often electric as well, it is a very good deal.
But forget about the other vehicles on your list, they don't have fixed routes. In Europe 18-wheelers are replaced by trains wherever possible. Airplanes will always require autonomous power plants, and batteries won't cut it.
Maybe we’ll all be flying coast to coast in a blimp?
As an entertainment maybe.
Nobody seems to recognize the fact that we use a lot of petroleum and its byproducts for lots of other things besides vehicles
It is not politically expedient to mention this dirty secret because politicians have no "solution" to this problem. It's much easier to pretend that plastics, fertilizers and all organic chemistry comes out of nowhere.
Wait till you see the next years graduating class of Marxists. They'll be dumb as Obama before age 20.
I don’t know why he didn’t call on us to do so in one year, it’s equally fantastic.
“Barack Obama called on the United States to end its dependence on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years.”
Unless Obama plans on annexing Alberta and maybe the Norwegian coast, this ain’t gonna happen.
Better read your links more closely:
“In the United States it was estimated that it cost as much to electrify a railroad as it cost to build it in the first place. Overhead lines and third rails require greater clearances, and the right-of-way must be better separated to protect the public from electrocution, as well as from trains which approach much more quietly than diesels or steam.
For most large systems the cost of electrifying the whole system is impractical, and generally only some divisions are electrified. In the United States only certain dense urban areas and some mountainous areas were electrified, and the latter have all been discontinued. The junction between electrified and unelectrified territory is the locale of engine changes; for example, Amtrak trains had extended stops in New Haven, Connecticut as diesel and electric locomotives were swapped, a delay which contributed to the electrification of the remaining segment of the Northeast Corridor in 2000.[9]
In North America, the flexibility of diesel locomotives and the relative low cost of their infrastructure has led them to prevail except where legal or other operational constraints dictate the use of electricity. An example of the latter is the use of electric locomotives by AMTRAK and commuter railroads in The Northeast.”
We send how many hundreds of billions of dollars every year to the middle east in return for oil, and he's gonna replace that with 150 billion over a ten year period?
And calling it an investment is laughable. When one "invests" one expects a return on that investment. Will we be getting that 150 billion back with interest? I hardly think so. Its gonna go bye bye.
Absolutely, this costs money. But it's also an investment into the future. It's up to the people to invest or not.
Make no mistake. Mass Socialism, Marxist policies all the way across the board.
After all, it's for "Own Good"
Why Obama Is Losing and His Freefall In The Polls
If Obama had the most basic knowledge about the US auto industry, which needless to say he doesn't, he would know that putting 25 million new plug in hybrids on the road per year would require those hybrids to constitute about 150% - with the slower sales in the current down turn, perhaps 175% - of total sales.
The investment is fat federal grants to fellow libs in the universities and politically connected alternative energy companies.
The return is the campaign contributions and votes of the recipients.
In dollar terms that isn't a return at all, but that doesn't matter because the boy Marxist isn't investing a dime of his own money.
Obama's fantasy fits in so well and has just about as much a chance of happening as some of my "other fantasies" as a child...
"You're skin, it's so soft, can I rub it with this jello?"
Fantastic Video! Thanks for posting. I was laughing for 5 minutes at the ending.
Specifically: since 2000 the U.S. has quadrupled ethanol production. We'll double it again in the next two years. We're bringing cellulosic ethanol into production. Installed wind capacity in the U.S. has increased seven times and we've led the world in new installed capacity in each of the last three years. (China is now ramping up fast so I don't know how long that will last.) EIA reports that U.S. shipments of photovoltaic units is up more than tenfold. All this, again, is since 2000. This is a GOP/Bush success story which Obama is now trying to coopt.
None of this means we don't need to drill ANWR and the OCS, build more nuclear, build clean coal, develop tar sands and oil shale, etc. We need to do all the above. Obama doesn't understand or won't admit that, and this is where we need to hammer him. Renewables are not an excuse for opposing everything else.
But that said, renewables are (finally) going mainstream. Corn ethanol is already cost competitive with oil. Wind is close. Solar is still pricey but costs continue to decline while the cost of conventional energy continues to increase. I fully expect the lines to cross within the next decade. We'll still be dominated by coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear 30 years from now, but renewables will continue to capture market share. Given the record of the Bush Administration, the GOP can legitimately stake a claim to this, so I don't see why so many people want to concede the issue to the dems.
I want a plug-in hybrid myself. I like the sound of 150 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent, I have a garage where I can plug in, and I'm willing to build the nuclear power plants to generate the electricity. The numbers Obama is throwing around are nonsense -- plug-in's can't be introduced that fast -- but the rate of adoption will be rapid nonetheless. They will be commonplace in the next decade. The public needs to understand that all the heavy lifting has already been done; the next President, whoever he is, is not entitled to take the credit.
How do you do that without drilling your own?
Is Lord Obomba promising to put an end to the environmentalist obstructionism that is preventing the construction of new nuke plants?
Didn’t think so.
Read: "I'm gonna turn the clock back 100 years and y'all better learn to live with it and furthermore, I will do everything within my power to tear down this great republic and make it into a 3rd world craphole which will be responsible to the UN and make it feasible to be destroyed by outside forces who hate us and our free, capitalist, world-protecting, existence."
I can't be certain who coined this ludicrous bête noire (for you libtard lurkers, that is "something that is particularly disliked or that is to be avoided:) but the first time I heard it was during Jorge's State of the Union address.
Thank, W. Whether he was the first to use this or not, he certainly didn't help "the cause"!!!
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