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"What sacrifices?" The potential environmental damage and future value of that oil that I mentioned. Oil is becoming increasingly scarce. The areas of the plan

by natrius 18y ago

"What sacrifices?" The potential environmental damage and future value of that oil that I mentioned. Oil is becoming increasingly scarce. The areas of the planet that currently have a lot of it aren't exactly our friends. Saving that oil for when we actually need it as opposed to dropping the price of a gallon of gas by a couple of cents sounds like a prudent course of action to me. "I don't sit around taking my personal feelings and try to control world markets with them." The markets for natural resources are heavily influenced by people's personal feelings, so you should probably join the club. More people have a claim of ownership to a barrel of oil than a given widget, so those people will use their position to maximize their self-interest. I think you're trying to trivialize my concerns by referring to them as "personal feelings", but I don't think there's anything trivial about wanting to avoid environmental damage and minimize the damage to the American economy that will occur if the transition away from oil is too difficult. "There are all sorts of _possible_ dangers and warnings, but the markets indicate that there is a real, tangible need that's not going away." I don't see how that has any effect on the situation. Yes, everybody wants cheaper oil, but that doesn't mean more offshore drilling makes us all better off in the end. It will increase our current dependency on oil, making the transition harder when the effects of the new oil wear off. It has the potential to damage the environment. If we need oil for something more important than lowering the price of gas by a few cents in the future, we will have less of it. "The people impacted are third world countries -- mostly the poor. I would think that "screwing the poor to make the world a more pretty place for me" wouldn't be much of anything to be proud of." Ok... so what happens to the poor when we're out of cheap oil? It's incredibly myopic to suggest that we should drill more oil now for the sake of the impoverished. If this were a discussion about Pigovian taxation of oil instead of managing the supply of oil, then yes, we would immediately move into a wealth redistribution discussion. However, this has nothing to do with wealth redistribution. Poor people can afford fewer scarce goods. Oh no.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
I guess I need to be more clear. When we get into "potential environmental damages", unless you're prepared to make a risk-reward argument with hard statistics we're treading on personal opinion ground. The Chinese seem to have a fairly high tolerance for air pollution, for instance. Other people don't. The Chinese are going to start drilling off our coast. We are not. I also take issue with your statement we are running out of oil. Not to be pedantic, but it depends on what you mean by "oil". There's shale, sweet, sour, crude, light, etc. And that's not even getting into biofuels (which I know you don't imply, but "oil' could cover those) Look -- I don't know where the market is headed. I guess that makes me unique, because everybody else seems to think they know exactly what's going on. I've heard dozens of experts announce we were at 'peak oil' over the last month, which I personally think is BS. I've read at least one article by an expert that makes the case that oil prices will drop, not rise, over the next 50 years. So I am by no means trying to trivialize your opinions. But I would point out that we certainly have a LOT of opinions about the topic. I've got mine. You've got yours. As a voter, we get to go slug it out at the polls, as it should be. I get the fact that you feel you have a good grip on where the markets are, what the risks are, and what's the best way to manage our transition. To me, that seems presumptuous. No hard feelings. Not trying to label you or somehow put you down or anything. As we both know, you have lots of company. Just doesn't seem right to me. "Ok... so what happens to the poor when we're out of cheap oil?" -- doesn't the market provide the most goods at the lowest prices, thereby helping the poor much more optimally than a government policy would? When you start fiddling with the markets, you're taking responsibility for the delivery of goods in that market -- like it or not. Guess what? I'm happy being an idiot. I don't presume to know how to deliver the most energy the cheapest way to the world's consumers, and I don't think it's moral for me to hurt or help one group or another based on risks that are not scientifically verified. At least not to this huge degree. If we were talking about something easy like the death penalty, sure, the standard of proof would be much lower. But you're talking about potentially billons of people who will have a harder time reaching their potential for decades while we re-tool. Don't count me in for that.
- timr 18y ago
  Your whole line of reasoning rests upon the faulty premise that there's a "free market" for oil in this country, and that encouraging alternate forms of energy is somehow "tampering" with the unfathomably complicated mechanisms behind that market. All of which is utter nonsense. We subsidize the hell out of oil consumption in this country, and we've done it for as long as we've been consuming. Once we stop doing things like funding highway construction, suburban infrastructure and corporate oil exploration with our taxes (no, not just gas taxes!), maybe then we can start to talk about the "free market" with a straight face.
  - siculars 18y ago
    subsidized consumption? or subsidized production. the article specifically points out that higher consumption taxes are offsetting income taxes. the question is not taxing consumption but rather what exactly we do with those taxes. personally i think those funds should go towards funding and expanding renewables.
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    My line of reasoning says that the free market provides the best solution for energy production and delivery. Yes, the market is already subsidized. No, there's no such thing as a pure free market. No, trying to rationalize markets one way or another is a fool's game, but we still try (as any commodities trader will tell you) No, I did not say encouraging other forms of energy was tampering. Yes, my argument against tampering was our recent history of not providing energy for our own country, including nuclear, oil, and refining capacity for the past three decades. I made the extension that the offshore drilling now in question has been on the table for a long time. We should drill. (And in ANWR) Not because it solves the world's problem but because getting out of the way is sometimes better than continuing to be part of the problem. No I do not think that solar, wind, or any number of a dozen other areas are somehow tampering, at least not when compared to the other shenanigans we've been doing. And no, I don't think anything we do this year is going to stack up to shooting ourselves in the collective foot for that long. I'm all for them. It's best to correct the premise once you actually understand it.

by natrius 18y ago

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

I guess I need to be more clear. When we get into "potential environmental damages", unless you're prepared to make a risk-reward argument with hard statistics we're treading on personal opinion ground. The Chinese seem to have a fairly high tolerance for air pollution, for instance. Other people don't. The Chinese are going to start drilling off our coast. We are not. I also take issue with your statement we are running out of oil. Not to be pedantic, but it depends on what you mean by "oil". There's shale, sweet, sour, crude, light, etc. And that's not even getting into biofuels (which I know you don't imply, but "oil' could cover those) Look -- I don't know where the market is headed. I guess that makes me unique, because everybody else seems to think they know exactly what's going on. I've heard dozens of experts announce we were at 'peak oil' over the last month, which I personally think is BS. I've read at least one article by an expert that makes the case that oil prices will drop, not rise, over the next 50 years. So I am by no means trying to trivialize your opinions. But I would point out that we certainly have a LOT of opinions about the topic. I've got mine. You've got yours. As a voter, we get to go slug it out at the polls, as it should be. I get the fact that you feel you have a good grip on where the markets are, what the risks are, and what's the best way to manage our transition. To me, that seems presumptuous. No hard feelings. Not trying to label you or somehow put you down or anything. As we both know, you have lots of company. Just doesn't seem right to me. "Ok... so what happens to the poor when we're out of cheap oil?" -- doesn't the market provide the most goods at the lowest prices, thereby helping the poor much more optimally than a government policy would? When you start fiddling with the markets, you're taking responsibility for the delivery of goods in that market -- like it or not. Guess what? I'm happy being an idiot. I don't presume to know how to deliver the most energy the cheapest way to the world's consumers, and I don't think it's moral for me to hurt or help one group or another based on risks that are not scientifically verified. At least not to this huge degree. If we were talking about something easy like the death penalty, sure, the standard of proof would be much lower. But you're talking about potentially billons of people who will have a harder time reaching their potential for decades while we re-tool. Don't count me in for that.

timr 18y ago
Your whole line of reasoning rests upon the faulty premise that there's a "free market" for oil in this country, and that encouraging alternate forms of energy is somehow "tampering" with the unfathomably complicated mechanisms behind that market. All of which is utter nonsense. We subsidize the hell out of oil consumption in this country, and we've done it for as long as we've been consuming. Once we stop doing things like funding highway construction, suburban infrastructure and corporate oil exploration with our taxes (no, not just gas taxes!), maybe then we can start to talk about the "free market" with a straight face.
- siculars 18y ago
  subsidized consumption? or subsidized production. the article specifically points out that higher consumption taxes are offsetting income taxes. the question is not taxing consumption but rather what exactly we do with those taxes. personally i think those funds should go towards funding and expanding renewables.
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  My line of reasoning says that the free market provides the best solution for energy production and delivery. Yes, the market is already subsidized. No, there's no such thing as a pure free market. No, trying to rationalize markets one way or another is a fool's game, but we still try (as any commodities trader will tell you) No, I did not say encouraging other forms of energy was tampering. Yes, my argument against tampering was our recent history of not providing energy for our own country, including nuclear, oil, and refining capacity for the past three decades. I made the extension that the offshore drilling now in question has been on the table for a long time. We should drill. (And in ANWR) Not because it solves the world's problem but because getting out of the way is sometimes better than continuing to be part of the problem. No I do not think that solar, wind, or any number of a dozen other areas are somehow tampering, at least not when compared to the other shenanigans we've been doing. And no, I don't think anything we do this year is going to stack up to shooting ourselves in the collective foot for that long. I'm all for them. It's best to correct the premise once you actually understand it.