U.S. Rep. Edward Markey is calling for the repeal of roughly $7 billion in annual tax subsidies and free drilling that he said benefits the nation’s largest oil companies.
The Massachusetts Democrat, who is also a candidate in the special U.S. Senate election, said he would submit legislation mandating the repeal...
...America still needs imported oil. But growing production and shrinking consumption have created a most promising trend. According to the International Energy Agency, the United States will become the world's leading oil producer in just a few years. Imagine that. The United States could produce more oil than Saudi Arabia as early as 2017 and become a net oil exporter by 2030...
U.S. Driving Continues to Decrease - WSJ.com: "U.S. driving slid for the eighth straight month in June, making the decline more pronounced that the drop that occurred during the 1970s oil shock.
The U.S. Department of Transportation said Americans drove 12.2 billion miles less in June than a year earlier. With that, the decline since November is now 53.2 billion miles, topping the 49.3 billion decline three decades ago. Rural travel has fallen 4% since late last year, while urban driving is off just 1.2%. (See the Federal highway Administration data.)..."
Aug. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said he's willing to support an expansion of offshore oil drilling that's part of an $84 billion Senate plan aimed at increasing domestic energy production.
Obama, who has opposed more drilling off the nation's coastlines, said that while he ``remains skeptical'' about the idea, he would compromise because the proposal offers a ``careful and responsible'' drilling agenda. It also calls for other measures to wean the country off its dependence on imported oil.
``What I don't want to do is for the best to be the enemy of the good,'' Obama, a senator from Illinois, said at a news conference today in Cape Canaveral, Florida. ``If we can come up with a general bipartisan compromise in which I have to accept some things I don't like, then that's something I'm open to...''"
Sick of gas prices? Think it might go to $20 a gallon? So instead of subsidizing oil companies and spending trillions in Iraq, shouldn't the government be subsidizing the move to electric cars, which, if push comes to shove, can be fueled by increased nuclear power (yeah, I know, you prefer coal-- or maybe just freezing in the cold and dark.) Remember that definition of insanity? Well, our dependence on oil, both domestic and foreign, is not working out to the betterment of our citizenry and probably not to the world as a whole either. Following is just one of many ideas:
"...Let’s go back to 1993 when United States President Bill Clinton challenged US automakers to “Think Different”: President Clinton was surrounded by the CEO’s of General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford and he said that the US Government was going to help build cars with better fuel efficiency.He said that their research would lead to production of prototypes vehicles capable of up to three times greater fuel efficiency, for example, “radical new concepts such as fuel cells and advanced energy storage systems such as ultracapacitors, to produce more fuel-efficient cars that are affordable, meet or exceed current safety standards and retain the performance and comfort available today.”
TODAY.. Fifiteen years after President Clinton’s announcement, ultracapacitors are becoming more mainstream as engineers are now taking a second look at alternative energy engineering. Ultracapacitors outperform batteries in several key parameters such as power density, cycle life and temperature sensitivity..."
I'll take one of these (if anyone's buying, or I could buy it myself if I had $30k lying around or maybe if I had some sort of government incentive...)
". . .OK, America, it's time we make a choice, and this means our corporate leaders and our government leaders. Either we get off the tit of oil all together, right away, starting in 2007, or we lay in bed with these people. And I, for one, want out. Build nuclear plants in the U.S. We'll make them safe. We'll have to. Other nations do. Explore other areas of fuel. Get the Oil Tar fields in Canada going much faster. Sacrifice. Yes. Sacrifice. Rolling blackouts. Limited travel. Whatever. It's worth it to get away from being in bed with these people. I am sick of them telling us what to do, because they hold the cache of our drug of choice. . ."
