Drilling
Oil is becoming an object of the 2008 elections. In particular from the McCain ad I've seen on television Continental Shelf Drilling is being massaged into a wedge issue Oil May Become GOP's 2008 Issue . Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has done
something that few Republicans thought possible just a few months ago:
given them hope. . I guess they've done their home work and see this issue working for them. But the price of Gas? If it goes up if it comes down who benefits? I can't see how higher prices benefit the McCain campaign, It's likely this is simply spin to consolidate a portion of marginal opinion. Lower prices might favor McCain if it appears natural and not induced by policy trickery. Higher prices can be used to induce fear and concern, but only in the short term until people recall what party has been running the country the last eight years. In any regard for a few days it shook money out of the tree. Mainly from deep and very vested interests
Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling..
What's Up with Oil anyway? What are the causes of the current stark increase of the price of oil. The Washington Post attempts to determine this with their favorite tool a giant crushing series
Oil Shock This time, it's Different. The question they're concerned with is whether this price shift is permanent and structural or mere volatility caused by concern for the election, possible war with Iran and increasing use of oil as a financial instrument and speculation.
Among the details provided its possible to examine offshore drilling on its merits
3 West Coast governors oppose new offshore oil drilling - Los Angeles Times. The first claim here is to control price and enhance U S security. However offshore drilling available for license now would account for only pennies on the dollar, decades from now. The amount that drilling on the continental coast or in the Alaskan arctic is often discussed in terms of what it could add to American production. The critical comparison is to the less than 1% of U S consumption it constitutes
Offshore Drilling: We Have a Choice of Simple Confusion or Outright Lies | Environment | AlterNet. The McCain campaign
McCain promotes drilling for oil off US coast - Yahoo! News acknowledging that a congressional vote this week would not flood refineries with price reducing crude this year or next counterd that oil company executives have told the candidate there are fields they could bring into production in the near term. This might even constitute a hundredth part of one percent. The argument for this drilling is essentially nonsense despite its temporary popularity
Greenspace | Offshore oil drilling more palatable to Californians | Los Angeles Times. Other points to consider are the notion of this capacity as a strategic reserve, and as Public Relations. There are types and levels of strategic reserve. There is an official strategic reserve. I believe this is mainly what used to be the Navy Reserve, the Teapot Dome fields. Fragile geographies together with difficult geographies make further de-facto natural strategic reserves, best left touched only lightly until greater need necessitates. At the same time having some infrastructure in place and some careful and controlled production from these areas would appear forthright as we expect, and our needs require, other nations do the same. $4 per gallon gasoline is not the petro-economies endgame. It is simply a sign post as we move into an era of total global use, where asia and south asia begin to consume oil at the rates of the western economies. And we begin to catch glimpse of the end reaches of an oil driven world. The current price surge is mostly due to low capital investment (exploration and equipment) during previous 10-15 years of low and stable prices. Otherwise it could accommodate current increased use. This has left the industry behind a power curve. There are issues here as to where the center of expertise and capital is located. In the end this is a rectifiable matter. For the United States by whatever policy it is key to have an ordered and methodical approach to US oil exploration and subsequent exploitation. This is opposed to crisis driven Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Even the best intention of offshore drilling amounts to no more than keeping the price at a point where things do not change. This was Cheney's rebuttal to those questioning why alternative energy and conservation was not part of his energy task force ("we won't be doing that"), It was our message to the Saudis in the 1970's: if the price of oil keeps going up the people will find other ways and means and the habit will be broken. Another thing I think of at this point is where are the Green Entrepreneurs? Beyond small businessmen or women getting in touch with their inner tree hugger
What Will Drive the Energy Innovation Revolution? - Dot Earth - Climate Change and Sustainability - New York Times Blog. Where is the emerging class of Start-Up CEO's and investors, the corporations, the fortunes - Bill Gates sized fortunes, forming around alternate energy solutions and the future? Where is the knowledge base, the know how, the Sustainability MBA's to guide this money. Where are the markets for this way to wealth. The answer are the Petro-Chemists. By which I refer to the group of extremely wealthy men, technologists, apologists, and their associated political apparatchiks. As a class resistant to change. While innovation, conservation and alternative energy development may be critical for the nation. It doesn't pay or privilege those in the conventional fossil fuel industries. It likely does pay them to gather up rights and permits to resources even if they can't deal with them yet. They doubt their ability to compete or stay in the vanguard of the controlling wealth of the world. They use their existing leverage to co-opt and stifle change. This is the era of peaked oil. This was implicitly the point of all those Washington Post column inches. While consumption and production have not yet hit their highest level. And the point where we have pumped and refined through to the median of what oil the earth will give up probably has not occurred yet. We have entered the era where that will occur. An era where the size of oil based economies will have closed frontiers, measurable limits, and within these, ever increasing competition for remaining resources. All periods of history have organizing theory. Many now put forward the ideas and outlook of the late University of Maryland professor Julian Simon, (
Julian Lincoln Simon - Wikipedia). Guiding light of various camps of anti-Malthusians: Those who believe that scarcity and environmental degradation are simply non-issues. Markets react to scarcity with higher prices, this revenue provides opportunity for innovation and solutions emerge. As long as whatever famines, wars, upheavals, genocide and clashes of civilizations such as exist fall short of catastrophic, and are far away. They are are content to believe the system works fine. Even taken narrowly in the realm of manufacturing and production. If political or economic power can strip complete and true cost from price, if externalities can be marginalized, masked, those concerned attacked. The technologists have not served mankind or human wisdom. Simon was brilliant (see the Wired profile of him from a few years ago
The Doomslayer - Wired), but he was a contrarian and iconoclast; the truth is never as easily obtained as conventional wisdom turned on its head. The recent news that a British channel 4 documentary was found in breach of OfCom [which I presume stands for, Office of Communication, a UK government entity similar to our FCC] rules forms a case in point
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate documentary 'broke rules':. A cynical set piece of obfuscation it exists to honor the notion that simple opposition presented loudly can change perceived reality. Despite presentation of information indifferent to facts or accuracy the filmmakers were merely warned and not fined. This is the problem with the Lomborgists in general. Their only message is "nothing is happening, and even if something is, concentration of capital can fix it better than any human planning. So far their energy is expounded solely on the former. This is going into the future with one hand tied behind our backs.
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