Replies

I hesitate to reply to you, since I doubt you will bother to actually read anything about US energy production or consumption. However you can't state: "Electric cars, especially when solar power is effective for providing the charging, will be a true (massive) win-win for American industry. We can become almost immediately 100% energy independent almost overnight." in one post and "Actually I was not suggesting it was likely or practical to convert America to all solar power." in another and claim to be consistent.

Very little of our energy dollars go to "terrorist-sponsoring regimes or South American communists." Most of our energy is produced here in the form of coal, natural gas, and via nuclear. We do import about 12-15 million barrels of oil per day. Less than 10% of our oil comes from Venezuela. Maybe 20% comes from countries that you are not clever enough to distinguish from "terrorist-sponsoring regimes".

It would not benefit the United State, our children or our grandchildren for us to become SELF-SUFFICIENT in energy. It benefits all of us when we trade with our neighbors and they trade with us. Your same arguments can be made about any other product or service, in which case why trade with any foreign country at all? Lets localize your argument to states and make each state self-sufficient. We can take your argument to the household level and outlaw trade entirely. Then we would all be self-sufficient (and far poorer).

Trade is what makes us wealthy. That includes trade in energy.

Chavez aside, "WE" are not paying people who hate us and want to destroy our nation. Most of our foreign oil comes from Canada. Our oil purchases are NOT insane, although your bear analogy is.

There is NO way to economically replace the energy we import. The only way to do it would be to double the price for petroleum products which would be immensely destructive the the United States and to American jobs.

If 10% of the cars on the road were to become electric cars then then we would need massive new electic plants to generate energy for them. That would raise the price of coal, nuclear, and gas generated electricity. We use oil because it is CHEAP and ABUNDANT. Switching to electric cars is not a win-win. It is a win-lose.

And switching to electric cars would be of no help whatsoever to the American car industry. I have no clue what you could possibly mean by that comment or your odd Gordon Gecko reference.

jas3

Sorry to cherry pick a comment to respond to, but it summarizes effectively why we do not agree:

"Trade is what makes us wealthy. That includes trade in energy."

Actually, we were once wealthy.

We are now broke. In debt, in fact. Trillions of dollars in debt.

Because of unbalanced trade.

If you have a nice, paid for home you can be considered wealthy.

If you take out a second on that nice paid for home, and spend it on trinkets, you are no longer wealthy.

You are now broke.

America cannot sustain indefinately losing our manufacturing capability and spending more than we have.

We must stop.

An immediate improvement, would be to re-invigorate the US auto industry, by aggressively producing the most efficient, most competetive and most innovative new auto technology.

And stop sending our money to terrorist sponsoring regimes.

You seem to believe otherwise.

It's a FreeCountry.