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Yes. Think people have impression we are energy independent and Scot-free because of fracking. Really, fracking was a second chance. A reprieve. We'll just b

Yes. Think people have impression we are energy independent and Scot-free because of fracking. Really, fracking was a second chance. A reprieve. We'll just be behind 8-ball again if we don't take this reprieve and grow some other energy source.

whimsicalism 3y ago
I do not really understand why we are obsessed with energy independence. It only matters if we were to ban exports which is an absurd thing to do.
- rectang 3y ago
  Strong US domestic energy production disempowers petro-state dictatorships such as Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia etc. whose interests and values are not aligned with ours.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    Burning and bombing their countries down to the ground works pretty well too.
    - rectang 3y ago
      The sharp ramp up of US oil production happened under the "all of the above" energy policy of Obama, who famously opposed that burning and bombing. Energy independence is vastly preferable to waging war, and may be worth making some environmental tradeoffs for — even if we would like to see cleaner alternatives to fracking in the long run.
      - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
        > Energy independence is vastly preferable to waging war, and may be worth making some environmental tradeoffs Environmental collapse will lead to wars, so this statement is self-contradicting. In fact the sooner we run out of oil, the better - high oil prices mean that any alternative will get huge investment. France built out nuclear due to an oil price shock.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      We really are in a jingoistic moment right now.
      - Aerbil313 3y ago
        It is satire.
- markerz 3y ago
  Isn’t energy independence more about other countries exports? From the perspective of Germany, their reliance on Russian oil caused a high spike in cost of energy during the current Ukraine invasion. For the US, we don’t really want to be at the whim of OPEC. The 1973 Oil Crisis is a historical example of OPEC taking a religious and political stance and using their oil exports to coerce the US against Israel. Another way of looking at it is that oil production has largely been an effective monopoly for a long time by authoritarian states (many OPEC, China, Russia), many that are politically unstable (Venezuela). There are only a few oil rich countries and many of them are allied with each other so there isn’t strong competition or incentive to keep prices competitive. Many of them view the US negatively.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Exactly. Large parts of the economy require oil as feedstock or energy. Parts that cannot be down for more than a week, or bad things happen, and which by virtual of volume have limited storage capacity (at normal consumption rates). Consequently, US energy independence is about creating a credible detachment of the US from global market oil prices, such that countries thinking of using an oil embargo to pressure the US... don't. In reality, oil embargos obviously impose immediate and intermediate term costs on the exporters as well, so doing a painful thing that the US might be able to blunt anyway becomes less attractive.
  - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
    Germany's plight is entirely owed to their own political malfeasance in shutting down their nuclear power plants. With them, they would have managed just fine without Russian oil and natural gas.
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      There is still a bulk of our modern economy which relies on combustion engines and oil. You are out of touch with this reality if you think Nuclear is a quick replacement for anything but basic power generation. We are generations away from electrifying everything.
    - 3y ago
- jon_richards 3y ago
  Soft power. “European countries are estimated to have spent additional 792 billion euros in the last year just on the status quo system to protect consumers from the effects of the energy crisis introduced by the Russian invasion into Ukraine” Honestly I think building solar and wind farms in Europe would do more for America’s military power than more tanks.
  - pi-e-sigma 3y ago
    You have a flaw in your reasoning. More solar and wind farms in Europe make it more independent from both Russia and the US.
    - politician 3y ago
      The EU is dependent on the US for nuclear deterrence, so the dependency relationship will continue even after they choose to use less imported US LNG. That’s probably a long time from now though, as they are expanding LNG regasification terminals (6 projects that I’m aware of) since the pipelines from Russia became unavailable.
- spacebanana7 3y ago
  Export bans of politically sensitive commodities are not that uncommon. For example, India banned onion exports this year [1] & the US has restricted oil exports before. [2] Moreover, without officially banning exports a similar result can be achieved by mixing exports taxes with consumption subsidies. If international oil prices got too high, like over $200, the political pressure for an oil export ban / restriction than made domestic prices $50-$100 would be hard for congress to tolerate. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/asia-feels-sting-indias-onion-export-ban-2023-12-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/asia-feels-sting-... [2] https://ballotpedia.org/Crude_oil_export_ban#:~:text=The%20crude%20oil%20export%20ban,and%20lifted%20in%20December%202015 https://ballotpedia.org/Crude_oil_export_ban#:~:text=The%20c....
- rayiner 3y ago
  Why would you want to be dependent on other countries if you didn’t have to be?
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Because comparative advantage means that we all get richer collectively? Like - the basic principle driving better living standards over the last 80 years?
    - rayiner 3y ago
      Define “better living standards.” Obviously has been great for third world countries. But folks in the west don’t seem to happy about the situation. I don’t think the widespread availability of cheap Chinese crap offsets the downside of hollowing out the industrial base and non-college jobs.
      - astrange 3y ago
        That was caused by bad US monetary policy. You've confused cause and effect. (Americans hate inflation so much they preferred the Volcker recession in the 70s, which is what caused the deindustrialization, which is what caused things to move to Asia.)
        whimsicalism 3y ago
        volcker recession was in the 80s
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Ah. I see. You are going back to old Adam Smith. Let places/people that can make things more efficiently, do them. Example: Don't give subsidies to car companies in countries that aren't good at making cars, it is inefficient. Better to focus on what you are good at. There are exceptions: National Security. See Energy, Semi-conductors. or To protect an industry while it grows, gets up to speed. Japan didn't become industrial power house out of nothing, they were very protectionist. Now they are dominant, but they aren't dominant because they let anybody at all come in and compete. They subsidized and protected their industry until they could stand on their own.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  This is because you’ve been living a very comfortable life with no real foreign threats thanks to US hegemony and the globalization it allowed. Due to other countries growing and wanting to have a say, this can’t be expected to continue going forward and so we have to think about things from a strategic perspective and not from a purely economic one.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    We have more than enough significant allied countries in the Americas that we never have to worry about energy security ever again - in the sense of literally getting enough electricity to meet domestic demand. If it is about getting low price energy, then integration with the global system is unavoidable, no matter how many domestic export bans you enact, etc. - you will be impacted by global energy prices.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  "independence" means we don't have to buy energy from the outside. Send money to someone, so they give us Energy. It is super important. Think of it like this. How many oil producers do we have a problem with? That are dictators, at war, or generally bad. Every time we buy gas, we give them money. We send trillions of dollars to our enemies. It is such an overwhelming National Security issue, that I'm frankly surprised Republicans fought renewable energy for so long. Oil isn't going to last forever. We should have been throwing resources at our own internal energy R&D. .
cinntaile 3y ago
Wind and solar are pretty nice and rapidly growing.

whimsicalism 3y ago

I do not really understand why we are obsessed with energy independence. It only matters if we were to ban exports which is an absurd thing to do.

rectang 3y ago
Strong US domestic energy production disempowers petro-state dictatorships such as Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia etc. whose interests and values are not aligned with ours.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  Burning and bombing their countries down to the ground works pretty well too.
  - rectang 3y ago
    The sharp ramp up of US oil production happened under the "all of the above" energy policy of Obama, who famously opposed that burning and bombing. Energy independence is vastly preferable to waging war, and may be worth making some environmental tradeoffs for — even if we would like to see cleaner alternatives to fracking in the long run.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      > Energy independence is vastly preferable to waging war, and may be worth making some environmental tradeoffs Environmental collapse will lead to wars, so this statement is self-contradicting. In fact the sooner we run out of oil, the better - high oil prices mean that any alternative will get huge investment. France built out nuclear due to an oil price shock.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    We really are in a jingoistic moment right now.
    - Aerbil313 3y ago
      It is satire.
markerz 3y ago
Isn’t energy independence more about other countries exports? From the perspective of Germany, their reliance on Russian oil caused a high spike in cost of energy during the current Ukraine invasion. For the US, we don’t really want to be at the whim of OPEC. The 1973 Oil Crisis is a historical example of OPEC taking a religious and political stance and using their oil exports to coerce the US against Israel. Another way of looking at it is that oil production has largely been an effective monopoly for a long time by authoritarian states (many OPEC, China, Russia), many that are politically unstable (Venezuela). There are only a few oil rich countries and many of them are allied with each other so there isn’t strong competition or incentive to keep prices competitive. Many of them view the US negatively.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Exactly. Large parts of the economy require oil as feedstock or energy. Parts that cannot be down for more than a week, or bad things happen, and which by virtual of volume have limited storage capacity (at normal consumption rates). Consequently, US energy independence is about creating a credible detachment of the US from global market oil prices, such that countries thinking of using an oil embargo to pressure the US... don't. In reality, oil embargos obviously impose immediate and intermediate term costs on the exporters as well, so doing a painful thing that the US might be able to blunt anyway becomes less attractive.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago
  Germany's plight is entirely owed to their own political malfeasance in shutting down their nuclear power plants. With them, they would have managed just fine without Russian oil and natural gas.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    There is still a bulk of our modern economy which relies on combustion engines and oil. You are out of touch with this reality if you think Nuclear is a quick replacement for anything but basic power generation. We are generations away from electrifying everything.
  - 3y ago
jon_richards 3y ago
Soft power. “European countries are estimated to have spent additional 792 billion euros in the last year just on the status quo system to protect consumers from the effects of the energy crisis introduced by the Russian invasion into Ukraine” Honestly I think building solar and wind farms in Europe would do more for America’s military power than more tanks.
- pi-e-sigma 3y ago
  You have a flaw in your reasoning. More solar and wind farms in Europe make it more independent from both Russia and the US.
  - politician 3y ago
    The EU is dependent on the US for nuclear deterrence, so the dependency relationship will continue even after they choose to use less imported US LNG. That’s probably a long time from now though, as they are expanding LNG regasification terminals (6 projects that I’m aware of) since the pipelines from Russia became unavailable.
spacebanana7 3y ago
Export bans of politically sensitive commodities are not that uncommon. For example, India banned onion exports this year [1] & the US has restricted oil exports before. [2] Moreover, without officially banning exports a similar result can be achieved by mixing exports taxes with consumption subsidies. If international oil prices got too high, like over $200, the political pressure for an oil export ban / restriction than made domestic prices $50-$100 would be hard for congress to tolerate. [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/asia-feels-sting-indias-onion-export-ban-2023-12-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/asia-feels-sting-... [2] https://ballotpedia.org/Crude_oil_export_ban#:~:text=The%20crude%20oil%20export%20ban,and%20lifted%20in%20December%202015 https://ballotpedia.org/Crude_oil_export_ban#:~:text=The%20c....
rayiner 3y ago
Why would you want to be dependent on other countries if you didn’t have to be?
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Because comparative advantage means that we all get richer collectively? Like - the basic principle driving better living standards over the last 80 years?
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Define “better living standards.” Obviously has been great for third world countries. But folks in the west don’t seem to happy about the situation. I don’t think the widespread availability of cheap Chinese crap offsets the downside of hollowing out the industrial base and non-college jobs.
    - astrange 3y ago
      That was caused by bad US monetary policy. You've confused cause and effect. (Americans hate inflation so much they preferred the Volcker recession in the 70s, which is what caused the deindustrialization, which is what caused things to move to Asia.)
      - whimsicalism 3y ago
        volcker recession was in the 80s
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Ah. I see. You are going back to old Adam Smith. Let places/people that can make things more efficiently, do them. Example: Don't give subsidies to car companies in countries that aren't good at making cars, it is inefficient. Better to focus on what you are good at. There are exceptions: National Security. See Energy, Semi-conductors. or To protect an industry while it grows, gets up to speed. Japan didn't become industrial power house out of nothing, they were very protectionist. Now they are dominant, but they aren't dominant because they let anybody at all come in and compete. They subsidized and protected their industry until they could stand on their own.
edgyquant 3y ago
This is because you’ve been living a very comfortable life with no real foreign threats thanks to US hegemony and the globalization it allowed. Due to other countries growing and wanting to have a say, this can’t be expected to continue going forward and so we have to think about things from a strategic perspective and not from a purely economic one.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  We have more than enough significant allied countries in the Americas that we never have to worry about energy security ever again - in the sense of literally getting enough electricity to meet domestic demand. If it is about getting low price energy, then integration with the global system is unavoidable, no matter how many domestic export bans you enact, etc. - you will be impacted by global energy prices.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
"independence" means we don't have to buy energy from the outside. Send money to someone, so they give us Energy. It is super important. Think of it like this. How many oil producers do we have a problem with? That are dictators, at war, or generally bad. Every time we buy gas, we give them money. We send trillions of dollars to our enemies. It is such an overwhelming National Security issue, that I'm frankly surprised Republicans fought renewable energy for so long. Oil isn't going to last forever. We should have been throwing resources at our own internal energy R&D. .

cinntaile 3y ago

Wind and solar are pretty nice and rapidly growing.