How do we pull out of this tailspin oil prices have put us into? Quite simply, we don’t. Not for the next decade. Let’s examine why?
The people who put us into this have no capacity to resolve the problems. The oil price spiral started last year. What has the response been? First, we blame Bush. Next, we blame Big Oil. Have them in twice to beat them up on prime time TV. We try to pass a Windfall Profits Tax Bill and lose. Network TV says we let the American public down by not passing it. Is that reporting or spinning? Next we discuss suing OPEC. We send our President to Saudi Arabia to beg them to produce more oil. We give tax rebates. We debate suspending the federal tax for the summer. We introduce a bill in the Senate to raise prices called cap and trade. We discuss putting in rules for energy speculators. The dollar falls. Unemployment goes up. Durbin finds ways to halt two refinery upgrades that will allow his home state to process Canadian tar sand oil, our most secure supply source for the future.
Let’s assume for sake of optimism that we were able to replace all the Durbins in Washington with men and women who put our future ahead of the polar bear. Right thinking people who pledged to fix all the problems we have created by putting regulations in place to preclude any option to right the ship. It would take a year or longer to knock down all the barriers. It will be 2010 when we start trying to save the country rather than push for quicker destruction. All options go into play. No regulations, nothing is off limits. Permits are fast tracked. It’s a moon shot effort. We get nothing in year one. It’s now 2011. Nothing in year two. Tick tock, it’s 2012. Year three, nothing, it’s 2013. We are drilling in ANWR, offshore, building plants to process oil shale in Wyoming, plants to liquefy coal in Montana, Illinois, and West Virginia. The first relief comes from the pipeline that brings natural gas from Alaska. We have 50 nuclear power plants under construction. The first will be done in 2020. The oil from ANWR starts flowing in 2014. The first offshore wells will come in next year(2015). We have maxed out wind and solar and it’s adding 10% to the power grid.
No so-called clean energy has emerged. Oil is $300 a barrel. Big Oil is employed all over the world trying to find supply opportunities. China and India and other countries who were underdeveloped continue to grow. They are siphoning off all the demand at top prices.
Europe is totally wrecked. Russia periodically cuts them off on oil and gas to keep them humble. The great rush to solve the carbon emission problem that started in Europe is over. It cost nearly every country in Europe it’s standard of living. they have no options. The US has options but they are slow in coming.
The richest nations in the world are mostly Muslim and those who aren’t are hostile to the U.S. Our major industry is energy. Playing catch up for twenty years of bad decisions takes an incredible amount of money and manpower. Defending our country from hostile nations takes 50% of our energy supply. Rationing has been commonplace for the past 5 years.
In 2018 it begins to come together. The coal liquefaction and the shale oil kick in and combined with big new finds that start producing in Alaska and offshore, we start to heal. Conservation is the real fix. Cars that run on CNG, electricity, hydrogen, and combinations get an average of 50MPG. No one drives more than necessary. Trains replace planes as our transportation options. Running at 180 MPH, they take us where we want to go with utmost efficiency. Few people fly anymore. The average house is 1200 square feet. No lawns. No frills. Building smaller cars and houses and the new railroads has kept the economy afloat.
We are a different country. We are greener, not because we were told we had to be, but because the cost of energy forced us to be. We did it in the private sector, not the public sector.
We can exit this mess we have put ourselves into, but it won’t be pretty. It will be hard and the pain will be great. The longer we put it off the greater the pain will be. The American people will have to take charge of this change. It won’t come from the people we have in office today nor most of those who are running for tomorrow.
