Harry Taylor for Congress: Rep. Myrick’s Offshore Drilling Proposal an Ineffective Publicity Stunt
Submitted by Harry Taylor on Fri, 05/30/2008 - 9:42am
In a publicity stunt, Sue Myrick claims that the answer to high gas prices is to drill off the coast of North Carolina. What Myrick won’t say is that her proposal will not reduce the price of gas one single penny.
What Myrick won’t say is that over 44 million acres of public lands are already under lease, and only 25% are actually being explored.
What Myrick won’t say is that due to already record drilling permits being granted over the last year, the availability of locations is far outstripping the oil and gas industry’s ability to drill.
What Myrick won’t say is that since it will take five to ten years before a single drop of oil will be pumped from her proposal; the price of gas won’t drop by one penny.
The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough places to drill now. The problem is that though we have only 3% of the world’s oil reserves, we use 25% of the world’s supply. And our addiction to oil is threatening our economic security, our national security and indeed our standard of living.
Our leaders need to stand up and tell the truth. Gas is at $4.00 because China and India, one-third of humanity, are experiencing unprecedented economic expansion, and the era of cheap gas is over…forever.
We need to do four things immediately:
1. To offset the enormous burden on working families, we need a middle class tax cut of $2,000. They can keep the money to pay for high gas prices, but my hope is they’ll pocket the money by switching to more fuel efficient vehicles.
2. We should offer a $4,000 tax credit for the purchase of any hybrid vehicle that gets more than 30 miles to the gallon.
3. We should require that within four years, every car sold in America will be a hybrid, or better.
4. Most importantly, we should have a national call to service, a patriotic pledge, that for the interests of national security, economic security and the planet we all live on, that we will cut our gas consumption by 10% within 30 days.
If we act immediately on these four things, the speculative bubble in world oil markets will burst.
We have soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq, for oil. If we truly want to support our troops, let’s show them we’re capable of sacrifice by cutting our consumption of oil.
The effects of Climate change are already becoming apparent on our planet. The time to act is now. Conservation and efficiency programs, as well as alternative energy sources will help us become independent of foreign oil from unstable regions and hostile governments. Energy independence will also help us to mitigate the effects of rising global competition for shrinking supplies of oil, create green jobs, boost investment in new technologies, providing us the opportunity to be good stewards of this planet we are entrusted with protecting for future generations.
Crossposted on eenrblog.com
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Thanks, Harry!
I'll be so happy when you are in Congress and Sue Myrick is at home.
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
Pointing at Naked Emperors
cutting consumption
We need to focus on cutting our consumption as opposed to creating more supply. Sue "Ms. Family Values" Myrick needs to come into the current century and realize that can't continue to use, use, use. We need to save, save, save.
"jump in where you can and hang on"
Briscoe Darling to Sheriff Andy
Great post.
Perfect pitch.
Run this as an ad in the Charlotte Observer next Sunday. That would be a lightning strike. Don't screw around. Just do it.
J
PS Run it as an open letter from Harry. (Add "Sue" in front of Myrick at every mention.)
Aside from
Aside from the fact that exploration and drilling is prohibited on the entire east coast, the entire west coast, and much of the Gulf coast you'd have a point.
Here's an example Senate leaders pledge Florida will be protected from oil, gas rigs
It's funny, the same people who are shrieking that we need to "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" are the same people who are blocking the search for domestic sources.
What Myrick won’t say is that since it will take five to ten years before a single drop of oil will be pumped from her proposal; the price of gas won’t drop by one penny.
If find this to be particularly comic. The answer is if we had started five years ago that oil would now be on line.
You won't find anyone here shrieking about foreign oil
That is a right-wing worry, pure and simple. We are concerned about oil period, not foreign oil.
Even by Myrick's absurd pie-in-the-sky estimations, the destruction of Atlantic habitats from oil and gas exploration would produce less than 10 years of oil at current consumption rates. Less than ten freaking years.
Are you willing to trade in the environment and the largely unspoiled beaches of North Carolina so you can continue your gluttonous oil consumption for ten extra years?
If you had any sense, you'd be embarrassed by the shame of your short term mentality.
Never been explored
"...the destruction of Atlantic habitats from oil and gas exploration..."
It's exactly that kind of hyperbole that makes me laugh. Please support your assertion with examples of the destruction of the Gulf habitats where actual oil production (just just exploration) has been going on for decades.
I've been to the Texas Gulf Coast. Have you? Those habitats are doing just fine. In fact marine life thrives at the oil rigs.
Most of the east coast, the west coast, and the Gulf coast have never even been explored. We don't know what those reserves are. Claim and counterclaim are meaningless. We should find out. But I understand that your agenda is to keep us from finding out so you can claim there's no oil there anyway.
"We are concerned about oil period, not foreign oil."
Yeah, I know its a left-wing worry to want the U.S. economy shut down. You won't be happy until we're set back to the 1870s. Not going to happen. Get over it.
I don't care if there's oil
Because if there is, we'll just pump it and burn it. We'll add millions of more tons of NOX, SOX and CO2 to the atmosphere, accelerate climate change, turn most of our fresh water into acid, destroy mountaintop forests throughout the world, and all for another ten years of "economic growth."
When you say the last five years could have been spent drilling, I say the last five years should have been spent on a full-court press to find economical alternative energy.
The price ain't going down, no matter what you drill for and where. Not with China's 1.6 billion people all wanting their own cars. Not with India modernizing just as fast. Not with Russia developing Siberia as the new post-warming sun belt.
I've been to the Texas Gulf dozens of times. Some parts of the coast are gorgeous. Some are so filled with tar that you can't walk without turning your feet black and sticky.
You lose
So you admit that your agenda is to choke off the oil supply by any means necessary and that the argument in the original post is just so much bullsquat window dressing. Got it.
OMG!
You figured it out!
PS Actually, you lose
Unless you somehow managed to organize your life so it's minimally dependent on oil. Many, many people all around the world have seen this coming for the last decade.
You must have missed it.
Set an example
Turn off your computer. Somewhere there's a lump of coal being burned and it has your name on it.
If we worked really hard, and used all our resources...
Maybe we could have used the last five years to come up with a car that gets 50 mpg. Oh, wait, we already did!
In 1985. The Chevy Sprint.
Not to mention the 100 mpg electric vehicle that was tested and loved in California.
Trust me James, forget this guy/gal. They're sitting in the dark glow of their computer screen getting their jollies by provoking you. They don't think, they spew.
I rode in that vehicle
One of my buddies was working on the EV-1 in Torrance, CA. When I was in LA he had me come over for a ride and the insider's tour.
We hopped in and then noticed the battery indicator was down. His comment, "Oh, someone must have driven it already today, can you come back in 6 hours?" I couldn't but I did get to drive it around the parking lot on the last dregs of remaining charge.
His manager's wife wanted him to bring it our to her workplace so all her eco buddies could take a spin. Problem was it couldn't even make the round trip in a day.
Real practical.
Couple things you might not know.
There was a waiting list for that car, even though it was only for lease and it was really expensive. My recollection is that it was 10s of thousands of people long.
Second, it ran on a very old-generation battery. My blackberry charges fully in about 15 minutes now and lasts for several days, even with email and web access. My cell phone back in the 90s took hours to charge and only had hours of usage.
Lastly, based on a few things I've read, it seems like the patent and technology for one of the better electric car batteries (NiMh battery) is owned by....Chevron Oil. And, they say there is no demand so they aren't researching or building out this battery type. This is supposedly the only battery that allows purely electric cars to function. Of course, this was all a long time ago and things have changed.
Now, imagine if Chevron hadn't owned that patent and our best researchers had been working on this problem like dogs for the last decade.
A car for the masses? Not really.
There was a waiting list for the EV-1. Like I said, my buddy's boss wanted to loan one to his wife so they could all have a look at it. But the car didn't have the range to get there. There are plenty of people who are willing to overlook the operational deficiencies of a car like that just to have one. But in CA "thousands" of people is a tiny fraction of the population.
I'm amused when people point out that the Tesla is representative of a car that can be a practical electric vehicle. The article you quote omitted the list price. Go price out all those Li-ion cells. Be sure to take into account that they have an inherent wearout mechanism meaning a life span that is much shorter than the life of the car and that you'll have to buy them more than once.
And have you ever seen a Li-ion battery in a fire? Wait for the first crash of a Tesla and you will. Remember all those laptop battery fires? Lithium burns like mad and water can't be used to put it out.
Extinguishing a lithium fire
"...water is not an effective extinguishing agent for a battery fire."
"Do not use CO2 or Halon directly on a battery fire as the exposed surface of the contained lithium may react with these materials."
The liability lawyers will have a field day.
The EV-1 used lead-acid because they are cheap and easily recycled.
The thing about fast recharging is that it requires a high power electrical source. You need to transfer an incredible amount of energy (joules) to drive 200 miles. The faster you do it, the more power you need (joules/second = watts). You can't get enough electricity out of your wall outlet to do that in anywhere close to the time frame you can gas up your regular car. In fact you can turn off everything in your house and devote everything to charging your car and it's still going to take a while.
I think hybrids, or plug in hybrids, may be the way to get the next jump in gas mileage. My buddy said GM had wanted to work on hybrids but was forced to go all electric when California essentially legislated that they must have "zero emissions". So GM dropped their hybrid work because they couldn't do both. Of course, all-electric vehicles don't actually have zero emissions. They have remote emissions. The laws of physics trump the laws of man every time and so the real solution, hybrids, was put off while the legislators indulged in wishful thinking.
Robert, I keep hearing about cars fueled with H2O
How feasible is that?
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
Pointing at Naked Emperors
Hi..
...from the tenor of your posts you misunderstand me. In no way do I advocate "shutting down our economy." I am…and have been for more than three decades…the quintessential independent small businessman. I earn my keep in our economy, so it's critically important that it doesn't get "shut down." Our free enterprise system works and must continue to work. But its viability to continue in a healthy fashion is threatened. That threat isn't an aberration. It's real and serious and we, as a country, must address it. Elected public officials must do so in an honest, sensible, and rational way. The global supply of crude oil is finite. We know that. It isn't a fabrication or lie created by people to trick you and me. It's a fact. Period! And we in the US do not control its price.
But…and this is the crux of my comments and plan…because we have this efficient and capable economy, because we're good at solving problems, because we're creative and resourceful, driven to do great things, we have the ability to find alternative fuels. We have the ability to create storage batteries. We have the ability to change what George Bush calls "our addiction to oil." We have financial systems that can and will finance better ways.
Good grief! Just last week we landed a vehicle on Mars...Mars for lord's sake! We shot a rocket into the sky, guided it remotely for 9 months…9 months!...and caused it to land safely. It's rolling around up there, digging into the surface, analyzing what it finds, taking photographs, and sending data back to earth 24 hours a day. You cannot convince me…nor do I believe you would try…that we as Americans are incapable of developing other energy sources to power our vehicles. The diminution of the world's oil supply has been an issue since the shortages in the early 70's, a fact of which I know you are aware. Yet, we as country have refused to address that one day we'd run out of crude oil. You are also well aware, I'm certain, that the elected leadership, of both political parties, have ignored this because it is politically more expedient…not to mention safer for their next re-election…to pretend the supply will last forever, pretend we don't have to make changes, pretend the issue will go away, that they have a magic plan.
Stand up and walk with me, please. Be a real American patriot. Help us, as a country, become independent of the need to buy this critical raw material from people who despise us. Whether we drill off our coasts or not, the supply of oil is going to end. Leave your children a legacy that includes a better, cleaner, independent way for us to travel.
I realize this is a lengthy reaction to your post, but I want you to understand that in no way do I advocate the destruction of our economic system. I am pragmatic and sensible, much like you. I can see that we cannot continue on this path indefinitely. Let's be proactive. Let's find a better way. We can do this…together. In fact we must do this together. I promise that you and I are trying to get to the same place. We can walk side by side and solve the problems we face today. We do have that ability. We are…after all else… Americas. Cheers. Harry.
Wow. Thanks, Harry.
And I agree with James ... run this in the CharO. Actually, you could step it up a notch for a double whammy ... do a national blog fund raiser specifically to run this as a full page ad in the CharO ... as is.
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." - Harry Truman
Hybrids aren't the answer
While hybrids are popular with the press, there are a few things to consider:
How long do the batteries last?
Will they be easily replaced and what happens to the used batteries?
How much are regular folks willing to pay to replace batteries in a hybrid?
What is the carbon footprint of a hybrid versus a traditional diesel car? or a used car?
As far as things go, the technology exists to make 50+ mpg cars. Electric vehicles, hydrogen power and other new technologies aren't ready for prime time. It makes more sense to look at developing efficiencies in mass transportation, telecommuting, and sustainable urban planning. If you must drive, dump the SUV for a more fuel efficient wagon or hatchback. If you can, try using a bike for trips less than two miles. This is the kind of sacrifice we all will have to make as the the era of cheap oil ends.
We are losing 100,000 acres of prime forest, farmlands and open spaces for parks and recreation to development each year.